Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,71

She didn’t want to pry, and she definitely didn’t want to pry in front of Vivian.

“What are you two doing in here?” Sadie said, setting her bag on the table.

“Just chatting,” Leah said.

“Actually, I was telling your mother I want to start a book club with the three of us, but I’ve been informed you’re leaving after the weekend.”

“Leaving?” Sadie said, looking at Leah.

“Dad’s coming, and I’m going back with him.” Leah looked at the two disappointed faces staring blankly at her. Her mother’s, she understood. But what was going on with Sadie? “We’ve been here over a month. We can’t stay here forever. I have work, you have your thesis—”

“I like the idea of the book club,” Sadie said, turning to her grandmother as if Leah hadn’t said a word. “I’m in.”

Thirty-three

“Come in,” Mateo said from inside the closed door of his office.

The barn was hot and humid, and Sadie pulled a rubber band from her wrist to lift her heavy curls from the back of her neck. After the sting of the previous night’s debacle, she had planned to keep her distance from Mateo for a few days. Why push it? She probably already seemed like a psycho. But now time was running out.

With her father coming this weekend and her mother ready to pack her bags, there was absolutely no justification for staying any longer herself. It was true: she needed to either get her thesis going or find a summer job, or both. She had to get back to real life. The book club excuse was pretty flimsy. But in the moment, she would have agreed to anything just to stall.

What did she expect to happen with Mateo? Nothing, probably. All she knew was that she wanted to spend time with him. She felt pulled to him, an itch she had to scratch. Leaving the vineyard was probably the only way to get rid of it. But as long as she was still there, she would indulge herself.

“You lost again?” he said, but with a smile. Hot and a sense of humor. Who could blame her for acting a little crazy?

“No,” she said, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head. “And I left my phone back at the house.”

“With your track record, that’s probably smart.”

“Funny.” She pulled a chair up to the front of his desk. “Am I bothering you, or can you take a break?”

“Do I have a choice?” But again, the warmth in his tone, the light in his eyes, belied the edge to his words.

She looked at the photographs hanging on the wall.

“I meant to ask you about these,” she said. “What are they from?” She had no doubt the framed pictures were Mateo’s and not a relic from the days when old Joe Gable occupied the space.

Mateo leaned back in his seat and looked at the frame closest to him, the one of the man with gray hair, dressed in a blue vest and blue pants, drawing vertical lines in a long row along the side of an orange building. He glanced at Sadie, as if considering what he was going to say—or if he was going to say anything.

“What do you know about Guatemala?” he said.

“Not that much,” she admitted. “I know about the Mayan ruins. I know about the civil war. But if you want to make me feel uneducated and uninformed, I can guarantee it will be very easy.”

He shook his head. “I’m not trying to make you feel uneducated, though most people are when it comes to my parents’ country. Like you said, they either know it for its tourist attractions or for its violent history. But there is so much more to it. Like beautiful art.”

She nodded. “So this is a Guatemalan artist?”

“This photo is by Francisco Morales Santos from a piece of 2008 performance art by Isabel Ruiz. The performance is called Matematica sustractiva—Subtractive Math. Ruiz drew forty-five thousand lines to represent the number of people who ‘disappeared’ during the three-and-a-half-decade civil war. He dedicated the performance to the disappeared Guatemalan writer Luis de Lión.”

Sadie knew so much about literature but very little about visual art, especially from other cultures. She tried to think of something to add to the conversation, something indicative of her intellect, but came up short. Then she was saved by the proverbial bell when his office phone rang.

“Hey, man,” Mateo said into the receiver. “How’s that Chenin Blanc looking?”

Sadie watched his long, tapered fingers drum his desktop. He swiveled his