Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,128
a billowing Alexander McQueen dress in pale pink organza with embroidered flowers. Bridget, off to the side, photographed all the arrivals. The women showed up in waves, in groups and alone, all carrying a little piece of home to contribute to the ceremony. Leah was touched to see many familiar faces: Roya Lout from the cheese shop with her mother and her mother’s book club, women from the wine and cheese classes, Anouk the real estate agent, and many people she’d seen taking selfies with her mother on that very spot during the course of the summer. But one familiar face—both familiar and strange at the same time—stood out from the crowd: Delphine Fabron.
Leah had found her through social media, happily living in Boston with her husband—one of the restaurant wine reps she had gotten fired for sleeping with those many years earlier.
Delphine appeared on the steps of the veranda swathed in a black cashmere cape and wide-legged black pants. She wore high Louboutins, and her formerly gleaming dark hair, now a striking white silver, loose over her shoulders. The only blight on her otherworldly beauty was the creases around her mouth that signified her as a lifelong cigarette smoker. Leah remembered the days when her parents constantly admonished her not to smoke near the oak room, that the cigarettes would “blunt” the wine.
“It does not hurt us in France,” she used to say. Delphine, the rebel. Delphine, the first woman to be cast out of the winery. She herself was the second. Now they were reunited.
“Thank you so much for coming,” Leah said, leaning in to accept Delphine’s double-cheek air kiss.
“Little Leah!” she said in the same lyrical accent that had so delighted Leah as a girl. “Hearing from you . . . life is just full of surprises.”
Vivian stepped forward to embrace her. “I never stopped thinking about you,” she said.
“Nor I you,” Delphine said, still with a smile that hinted at mischief. “Read any good books lately?”
Leah and Vivian shared a look.
“Actually, we both have,” Leah said. “And we’d love to talk to you about it later.” She checked her phone. Sadie still hadn’t returned from her trip to JFK to meet Maria Eugenia’s flight. She couldn’t start the ceremony without them. More important, she couldn’t finish without them: Leah planned to have everyone take seats after the Harvest Circle ceremony. She would give a speech about offering them an exclusive chance to preorder a case of the rosé they would make from that night’s starter yeast, and conduct a Q&A about harvest and winemaking. Sadie would go around with her digital credit card reader and process any orders they might get.
She checked her phone; Sadie texted that they were still twenty minutes away because of traffic on the Long Island Expressway.
“Let’s get these bottles poured,” Leah said to her mother and Peternelle, who was one step ahead as always and had a full tray of Cabernet Franc. The air filled with the sound of corks popping, the fizz of sparkling white filling flutes, and the buoyant laughter as people greeted one another.
“A toast,” Leah said, climbing up to stand on a chair and raising her glass. “To friends, to harvest, to the next great vintage of Hollander Estates wine that will be in no small part possible because of all of you here tonight.”
Everyone raised their glasses with big smiles, unaware of how literally she meant her words.
Fifty-nine
They formed a circle under a blanket of darkness, the only light coming from the star-filled sky, the full moon, and the flickering candles. The evening had cooled from the low eighties to the seventies, and a breeze blew in off the water.
The ring of women around the veranda was two-deep, and in the center, a table with a large glass jug filled with freshly pressed Chardonnay juice. It was the same carboy her father had been using every year since she was little, as the tiny chips around the rim and scuffs along the sides reminded her. Leah stepped forward, looking at the happy, expectant faces surrounding her. Only her mother looked tense.
“Promising a vintage of rosé is just going to make it that much more humiliating when we announce the closing,” Vivian told Leah in the days leading up to the harvest. She was always so worried about surface appearances, she missed opportunities to make fundamental changes. There was no room for that kind of thinking anymore.
And it was up to Leah to prove that.
“I’m happy to