Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,5

she said. But inside, the answer was a stunning no. She’d never thought of it that way before. She’d always worked hard, but writing short stories felt natural to her—like flexing a muscle that ached to be stretched. Writing this paper, based on research and a sort of rigid academic logic she wasn’t accustomed to, was like she was asking her body to lift two tons.

“Sadie, the purpose of this time of your life is to push yourself. Get out of your comfort zone. Dig deep.”

Dig deep? Sadie’s ideas were subterranean. There was nowhere deeper to go.

So no—she wasn’t in the mood to spend the weekend at the beach meeting Holden’s family.

She looked up at him.

“The truth is, Dr. Moore fired me from my research position. I have to get back on track. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t be offtrack if I wasn’t going out all the time.”

“Going out all the time? You’re a twenty-one-year-old hermit.”

What was he talking about? She went out. Sometimes. Not everyone could keep up with his drinking.

“Look, I’m not outdoorsy like you. I didn’t grow up in Connecticut.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Holden said.

Sadie was not a beach person. She didn’t want to lie down in glorified dirt. She didn’t want to walk barefoot and step on creatures. She didn’t want to deal with plastic bags packed with moldering food.

Holden didn’t wait for her response. “Sadie, I’m sorry about the gig with Dr. Moore. But you have all summer to figure this out. Let’s get on the road.” He walked over to her dresser and pulled out some clothes, tossing them into the half-packed bag. “No more excuses. We’re going to have a great time. My parents and sisters can’t wait to meet you.”

Sadie wanted to meet them, too. She wanted to meet his mother, Catherine. His dad, Douglas. And his sisters, Lily and June. She wished she were the type of person who could run around with the sunny blond Dillworth family, clamming and sailing and doing whatever it was normal people did on a summer weekend.

But she had to work. Surely, Holden would understand that.

“You’re asking me to choose between you and my work.”

Holden tossed his car keys from hand to hand, impatient. “Are you coming or not?”

When Sadie didn’t move, Holden kicked the desk chair. She flinched.

“So that’s it?” Holden said. “You know, it’s one thing to work all the time, to never be spontaneous . . .” There it was again. She wasn’t “spontaneous” enough. “But now you’re just bailing for no reason. It’s bullshit.”

“I’m sorry,” Sadie said.

“This is over.” Holden headed for the door but then stopped and turned around. “One more thing: don’t be sorry for me. I feel sorry for you. You think you’re living some big ‘life of the mind.’ But you’re not living at all.”

Three

Sometimes Vivian Hollander wondered if her husband was testing her. At the very least, he was trying her patience. But after fifty years together, she could never stay angry for long. And at that particular moment, she couldn’t let her irritation show at all.

She was surrounded by customers on the vineyard’s back deck, a four-thousand-square-foot space the family called “the veranda.” Lots of groups of women in sundresses, open-toed shoes, jumpsuits, aviator sunglasses. Men in cargo shorts and baseball hats. People were out to have a good time. Her employees, wearing dark blue T-shirts that read Hollander Estates Vineyard on the front and Family owned since 1971 on the back, poured glasses of wine at the long bar.

The veranda offered a perfect view of the vineyard. From her vantage point it was just endless green fields. Not a single house could be seen in the distance and never would be; decades earlier, her husband had sold the development rights of all their acreage to the county as protected farmland.

The sun was shining, and a breeze blew off the nearby Peconic Bay. The North Fork of Long Island had roughly thirty-four thousand acres of active farmland but was also a peninsula framed by the Long Island Sound, the Peconic, and Gardiners Bay. The terrain and climate offered unique—and uniquely challenging—conditions for founding a winery. And no one had done it before Vivian and her husband, Leonard.

In recent decades, dozens of new wineries had followed the path she and Leonard had forged. Today, other North Fork wineries might have flashier ads or trendier packaging, but one thing Hollander Estates had was legendary status. They were the first, they were the original, and plenty of