Blush - Jamie Brenner Page 0,15

bicycle. He taught her about the grape plants and the flowers in her grandmother’s garden. He was just impatient and didn’t suffer fools. Which made it inexplicable that he seemed to favor Uncle Asher over her mother. She had to chalk this up to good old-fashioned sexism. Toxic patriarchy.

“I’m glad you’re making use of the library, but I need this room for a meeting,” he said. “You’ll have to come back later.”

Flustered, she looked around at the pile of books on the floor.

“Okay. I’ll be down in a minute.”

She shoved the journal back into the cubbyhole, closed it up, and then jammed all the photo albums back in as orderly a fashion as she could manage. Surveying her cleanup, she felt confident there was no hint that anything had been disturbed. It was as if she had imagined the hidden compartment. But she hadn’t.

And she would be back.

Seven

Leah followed her mother to a spot in the field just off the veranda so Vivian could show her the new varietal they were planting, Auxerrois Blanc.

“Why didn’t Sadie join us? There’s no use sitting in the library all day. She could do that back at school,” Vivian said, putting on her trademark oversize sunglasses. Growing up, Leah never saw her mother without three things: big sunglasses, usually Chanel; high heels; and her gold Bulgari necklace featuring a panther head with emerald eyes.

It was just after nine in the morning, a gentle breeze blowing through the vineyard. In the distance, an owl hooted. Aside from that, silence. The winery would open in two hours, and her mother had suggested they spend quality time together before the day got started.

“Mother, please. Just be happy that she’s here.”

“Don’t get me wrong—I’m delighted. But, Leah dear, if you have to preface something with ‘just be happy that,’ it means you’re settling. And one should never settle.”

Leah chose not to take that bait. She wasn’t sure what her mother was implying she’d settled for: Her life in Manhattan? Running a cheese shop instead of working at the vineyard? As if she’d had a choice.

She spotted a familiar face a few yards away: Javier Argueta was tending to an unruly row of plants.

“Hi, Javier,” she said, giving him a wave. In his fifties now, Javier had a thick head of silver hair and sun-weathered skin. His eyes were still the same deep black pools that never failed to remind Leah of her girlhood infatuation with him.

Javier was from Guatemala, a place that seemed impossibly far away and unknowable to her as a teenager. He spoke Spanish. And it had been his idea to use only indigenous, native yeast to ferment the Hollander wines. This began Leah’s favorite vineyard tradition: on the first day of harvest, they asked each employee to bring something from home—an apple from a tree in the backyard or a seashell from the beach—and they added it to a sample of the first press of juice off the vines. They mixed it all up, and within twenty-four hours they’d have active fermentation—kind of like a sourdough bread starter. The resulting yeast was used to create all the wine that year. Leah had loved dropping in a dandelion or a pebble from the front yard, a small gesture that gave her a connection to that season’s vintage.

For a time, everything Javier said or did made her feel lit up inside. She could blush now just thinking about the very vivid fantasy she used to have about the two of them in the barn—a rustic building at the edge of the fields that had long ago been converted into the vineyard management office. But back then, it was just storage for field equipment.

She walks into the barn late on a hot summer afternoon. Her father has sent her there to fetch something—a pair of shears. Javier is there, wearing a tight T-shirt, his muscled arms glistening with a fine sheen of sweat. His brow is smudged with dirt. His dark eyes flash at her.

“What are you doing in here?” he sneers, contemptuous of her privileged life.

“I’m just trying to find something,” she says. “Can you help me look?”

He doesn’t want to help her but feels obligated. They hunt around for the shears, and their hands accidentally brush each other’s. They both freeze, the electricity between them as shocking as it is undeniable. Even though it’s wrong—so wrong—they can’t resist. They kiss . . .

“Welcome home,” Javier said with a smile, jolting her back into reality.

“Thanks,” she said.