Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,61

a woman finding her own power, or how much her grandmother waxed nostalgic for the days when casinos were glamorous and women wore Halston, Sadie knew the book was all about sex.

It annoyed her. She read books to expand her mind, to grow as an intellectual. She didn’t want reading to remind her that her life of the mind had led her to neglect her life of the body. She didn’t want to think about her breakup with Holden or her inconvenient attraction to Mateo.

Maybe the women in the book had it right. Sex could be just sex, and there didn’t have to be a messy relationship, an intimacy doomed to failure. It didn’t have to be all or nothing. This was good news for Sadie, who had failed at her only serious relationship.

There was one element of the book that Sadie did appreciate: the heroine, Lucky, was fueled by rage. And female rage was a topic that no feminist reader could ignore, regardless of the package it came in. The heroine of Lace, Lili, was also full of anger and vengeance. Sadie wondered if other books of the era had a similar message. Was that what had attracted women to read them in droves?

She tucked the book back into her tote and carried the bag up the stairs to the second level to see what other 1980s novels were in her grandmother’s collection. She passed the section where the photo albums had been stored, the shelves now empty. In the absence of all those books, she noticed a collection of marble notebooks in the farthest corner of the bottom shelving. She reached for one, sitting on the floor and opening it.

The pages were penciled notes, mathematical equations like 2.46 × 16 = 39.36. Records of pH balance. Dates with annotations like “topped everything in house.” Page after page of numbers and phrases that meant nothing to her—a foreign language: “1984 white wine kegs & CB racked into 1 SS drum. Topped Amphora with CC Viognier drum, balance went to blue drum.”

The notebooks were like the one she’d seen in the bottling room a few weeks earlier, the one where the senior winemaker, Chris, had kept his notes. Except the bottom of these pages were initialed with “LH.”

They were her grandfather’s wine ledgers. The playbook for his creations.

“Sadie, are you in here?”

Her grandfather’s voice boomed from below. What was he doing here? It was as if she had conjured him with her snooping.

“Um, yeah, Grandpa. I’m up here.”

“Well, come down,” he said, his voice echoing off the high ceiling. “There’s work to be done.”

Why was he so interested lately in making sure she was busy working in the vineyard? When she first got there, he barely seemed to notice her. That was how it always was with her grandfather; he was always working or thinking about work. So what changed that he would, in the middle of the morning, have it on his radar to check on Sadie? Was it the impending sale? Did he suddenly realize he couldn’t take their time in the vineyard for granted? Maybe there were things he’d always planned to show her and never got around to it.

“Leave those books and the computer here.”

Or maybe he just didn’t respect her life choices.

She followed him outside, along the dusty, stone-lined path to the barn. Everywhere she looked, grapevines; the plants had transformed in just the month that she’d been at the winery. The horizontal branches that had sported hard little green berries had spawned grapes hanging in full bunches under the canopy of leaves.

“A vineyard is a communal place,” Leonard said as they walked. “If this is our last summer with the winery, I want to at least know that my children and grandchild have learned how to be part of something larger than themselves.”

Up ahead, workers moved field equipment into the barn. She and her grandfather passed them, stepping around machinery and bins. Leonard didn’t talk to anyone but headed straight for Mateo’s office.

This was going to be awkward.

Mateo’s door was open, and he was busy typing on his laptop.

“I’ve got a helper for you,” Leonard said.

Mateo looked up from the computer. “Oh—hello, there, Mr. Hollander.” He barely glanced her way.

“What’s on the agenda for today?”

“The Malbec; dropping some fruit.”

“Take Sadie with you. Show her how it’s done, eh?” Leonard patted Sadie on the shoulder. “Put in a solid day’s work and you’ll forget all about screens and other nonsense.”

Sadie watched him walk off. When