This isn’t Marina’s convertible anymore, the one Dylan pinched, the one that smells like suntan lotion and fresh strawberries. Sara’s rental car smells like vanilla-scented carpet shampoo, and the fresh air coming in through the open windows can’t blow the artificial odor away even at top speeds. She isn’t sitting behind me anymore; now she’s beside me, in the driver’s seat. She’s racing away from her shop, from her past, from the possibility that Dylan might come back before she knows what to do about him.
It’s easier to watch her drive than Dylan, though she might be as distracted as he is inexperienced. The odd sight granted to me in my present state confirms that he made it home safely without me, but the sight of him bent over the computer in his bedroom tells me nothing about the condition of his heart after his encounter with the woman he thinks is his mom.
Sara looks out the windshield without seeing anything. She points her car out of Montecito and descends the low hills to the oceanfront streets. The sun is a philosopher’s stone dropping into the ocean, turning the water to gold. A stoplight changes to yellow, then red, and she slows. She stops, then doesn’t notice when the light clicks back to green. The driver behind her honks. She flinches, then moves on.
She rolls up the windows and gives her voice-activated cell phone the command to place a call to “the vineyard.” When nothing happens, she remembers that she isn’t in her own car. Her cell phone is on the console. She fishes it out and dials the old-fashioned way.
“Karen, it’s Sara Rochester,” she says when her call is answered. “Well, I’ve been better. I really need to get away. Is there any chance Ian has a vacancy tonight at the B&B?”
Ian McCleary’s success with the bed-and-breakfast side of his business surprised some folks around here. Most tourists think “wine country” exists only farther north: Sonoma County, Napa Valley. Fewer visitors come as far south as San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties. The scenery isn’t as spectacular, and the name dropping not quite as potent.
But not even someone like me can pretend that acres and acres of vines bowed with purple grapes against a backdrop of blue sky and golden grass aren’t eye-catching. The foothills are low, smooth, soft, the ocher yellow of a dun horse that lay down to soak up the sun. Pluck a person out of the congested Southern California hubbub and drop her into a landscape that’s quiet, orderly, and scented with salt air even though the ocean isn’t in sight. The chaos swirling within the heart, the brain, the stomach will take on the nature of its surroundings. At least for a little while.
I gather from the phone conversation that Sara goes there often for this effect.
Karen, the B&B manager, has good news. There was a cancellation the day before, so Sara’s in luck. Her new plans reanimate her. She calls her head confectioner and makes sure Sara’s Sins will be in good hands the following day. She drives home and packs a small bag with a change of clothes and sturdy walking shoes. She leaves a message for Ian announcing her spontaneous visit.
It takes her a full five minutes to figure out how to put the convertible’s top down. And then she’s off, unaware that she’s not traveling alone.
With the Pacific at her back she heads up into the Los Padres National Forest along the San Marcos Pass, along the inky waters of Lake Cachuma, and down into Santa Ynez, home to old Ford pickup trucks and roadside fruit and vegetable stands. All it lacks today is John Steinbeck sitting under a shady oak tree writing a new novel. The journey from beach to vineyard takes less than forty-five minutes.
Ian isn’t there when she arrives and settles in for the night. He won’t return until quite late, Karen says, plump-cheeked and smiling and rosy as if she’s already had a few glasses of something red. In fact, the manager offers, Sara probably passed him on the highway without realizing it. He’s with Denica, gone to fetch her brother, Gabe, from the Santa Barbara airport.
Of course. Of course. Now Sara remembers Gabe’s long-anticipated visit. Ian has mentioned it several times, but she never noted the specific dates.
Sara veils her disappointment with cheerful gratitude. She knows the way to her room. She walks there alone, her floral-print overnight bag knocking against her leg. Her wedged sandals make soft noise on the stamped concrete path. A breeze swirls her summer skirt around her knees and blows the silver eucalyptus leaves across her way like apologetic rose petals. The resort house on the north end of the estate is booked, but as she makes her way there, it seems she is the only one in this whole small world, the universe gone out to dinner or over to the beach she has just left behind.
She slips her modern plastic key card into the slot in an ancient-looking wood door, which swings on iron hinges into the well-appointed room. The guest rooms are named—tongue-in-cheek—after what Ian calls “the first vineyards”: Noah’s Acre, Solomon’s Song, Heaven’s Parable. The little getaway that is Sara’s for the evening is called Eden’s Garden.
Out of the hearing of guests, Denica refers to the room as the Serpent’s Lair. On Sara’s first visit to the B&B, during a rare late-spring cold snap, she was welcomed by a garden snake with a fine taste for warm floors. It found the room’s subfloor heating system when it came in through a tear in the sliding screen door. Eventually the greedy little snake curled up in her warm slippers, where Sara’s toes found the tiny reptile the following morning.
Ian quickly repaired the screen. Sara paid for the ceramic vase that broke after she kicked off her horrifying slipper, and she apologized to the guests she woke with her ear-splitting shriek. So each time Sara enters the room and sees that the glass slider is closed, she feels a little relief.
Her overnight bag sinks deep into the feather duvet. A lamp in the corner of the room casts light and shadows across the mission-style furniture: the plump pillows, the wide picture windows, the complimentary bottle of red wine standing on the dresser with a vase of roses. A small box containing four of her very own confections sits between the bottle and the roses. Her spicy dark chocolates and red wine don’t really pair well, she keeps telling Ian, and he keeps saying that it doesn’t matter. Visitors receiving the gifts hardly care what the critics say.
I know a few things about the appeal of a tightly controlled environment.
Everything is beautiful, private. Perfectly staged. Empty.
Exactly what she would’ve got if she’d stayed home.
The coffee-brightened voices of other guests slip under the door of Sara’s room and wake her. They’re already eating breakfast on the enclosed patio.
In the light of morning Sara is more inclined to think that her chance for redemption has come. She showers, she dresses, then she steps out of her room via the sliding glass door so she can avoid conversation with strangers and walk toward the house with the vineyard in view.
I have waited outside through the night, thoughts heavy with Marina and Dylan, feeling no urge to leave. The powers that be allowed me to stay.
The rows of grapevines are alive with hushed movement. It’s veraison time—red wine grapes are turning purple, white wine grapes become more yellow than green. Harvest is about a month away, and Ian still does his by hand. Workers in bandanas or wide-brimmed hats are moving among the rows of vines, tying holographic foil bird tape to the trellis wires. The iridescent streamers glitter in the sun and make metallic noises in the wind, frightening off starlings and robins. Other employees are draping the vines with nets to protect the rich fruits from hungry squirrels.
At the private residence where Ian and Denica live, Sara passes by the gate beside the vegetable garden. The vineyard’s pervasive peacefulness makes it easier for me to hear her thoughts. She’s happy that Ian is comfortable entering her home through the back way, but when she’s here, she prefers to use the massive entry at the front of the swooping driveway. It might be different if he lived alone, but he has family. Sara has never met Ian’s son. He attends the university in Edinburgh, and she hates the idea of intruding on them. Also, although she likes Denica, she fears the young woman a little bit. Denica’s love for her father is fiercely protective, and she watches Sara with a wary eye. It seems she sees more than she ought to.
Sara rounds the garden fence and passes under the kitchen window, then pauses. Sounds spill out: a whisk beating eggs in a bowl, a gurgling coffeepot, a family enjoying being together again. The view through the glass is almost Rockwellian. Tall Denica, slim as a model, chops onions and uses the knife to instruct her brother on where he’ll find a frying pan.
“It’s not that long since you’ve been here,” she says.
“But you wouldn’t allow me to cook last time.” Also tall, Gabe has a high brow and a nose made crooked by rugby. Together these give him an open, approachable demeanor. Gabe bends to look into a cabinet. “What happened to your vegan phase? What—raw foods, no honey? Now you want me to scramble eggs? You’re asking me to keep up with a lot!”
“Not so much. I’m a flexitarian. It’s all about balance, harmony. Everyone says they want it but hardly anyone goes out and gets it.”
Ian enters the kitchen, and Sara finds herself admiring the deep lines of his happy face, the curve of his contented smile. He heads directly for the coffeepot in front of the window where she stands. “Better make sure those eggs are free range,” their father advises Gabe. “And local. Or next time you come she’ll have talked me into a hen house of our own.”
Denica puts a hand on her hip. “That would defeat the purpose of supporting our community farms.”
Ian winks at her and she softens. Gabe lifts the egg carton and examines a broken eggshell with unnecessary attention. Denica pokes him with the butt of the knife. Sara smiles. This, after all, is what she really came for: the confirmation that this kind of scene exists in the real world. A brother and sister getting along, a single parent enjoying his children. It used to be my scene, and I’m filled with yearning.
Ian knocks on the window and holds up the coffee mug he has just filled. “You coming in or will you take your breakfast outside today?”
Sara blushes on the spot.
Gabe cranes his neck. “Who’s that?” he asks.
Sara retraces her steps to the garden gate and lifts the latch as Ian comes out to meet her. I don’t try to follow but wait under the open window.
“You caught me peeping,” she says.
Ian lowers his voice and hands the coffee to Sara, then holds the screen door open. “If you tell Denica there’s a box of microwavable popcorn in my wine cellar I’m going to have to ask you to stop dropping in unannounced.”
“Popcorn?” Sara whispers back, wrapping her fingers around the cup. “That’s serious. Is it organic?”
“Artificially buttered.”
“Genetically modified?”
“No doubt.”
Sara shakes her head gravely and the two go into the kitchen.
“Hey, Sara!” Gabe waves the skillet at her as if he’s known her for years, though Denica has just clued him in. “Top o’ the morning to you!” He makes more than needed of the accent she likes so much and puts the pan on the stove.
“And the rest o’ the day to yourself,” she replies in kind, butchering the brogue.
“Ah, she’s a keeper, Da.”
“She’s a colleague,” Denica corrects. At the butcher block, Denica gives Sara a weak wave and a dim smile that might meet her father’s lowest expectations of courtesy. Ian draws Sara into the large kitchen and pulls out a stool at the center island.
“If you’re the one who made those sweets I found in my room last night, I’ll place a standing order,” Gabe says. “Do you ship?”
“For free to Ian’s family.”
“Take care where those chocolates come from,” Denica tells her brother. Sara smiles fully and doesn’t take the bait.
“I didn’t mean to intrude,” she says to all, but to Denica especially. The girl pours olive oil into the skillet.
“Never,” Ian says. “In fact, I have to keep reminding you that we have space for friends in the house.”
“That would have been awkward, coming home to find Sara in Gabe’s bed last night.”
Gabe laughs, but Sara is feeling every bit the interloper, even more when Ian hushes his daughter with one flicker of his eyebrow. Denica extends a peace offering: “Make you some breakfast?”
The temptation is there, but the moment is gone. Her craving to be with this family can’t be sated with one meal. She has never been more aware of it than she is now, sitting outside the circle. She and I will always be sitting outside.
Sara shakes her head and lies. How easily they come these days. “Just the coffee. I need to leave soon. Appointments in Solvang today.” Ian gives her the same eyebrow that was a warning to his daughter. He doesn’t believe her. “How long are you here, Gabe?”
“Six weeks, until the fall term kicks off,” he says. “Thought I’d come to warmer climates for a bit, help get the harvest started.”
“The three of you should come down for dinner next week. Pick a day, we’ll go out before things get too busy around here. There’s a new seafood place on State Street that I hear is five stars.”
“Brilliant,” Gabe says.
“Mercury.” Denica throws the onions into the hot oil and they sizzle. Gabe swats her on the back of the head. The gesture might mean Don’t be rude, or I agree with you but at least I’m not rude.
“I’m sure they have vegetarian options,” Ian says.
“I’ll dig up some reviews,” Sara says, standing. Steam is still rising off her coffee. “It’s nice to meet you, Gabe. I hope the jet lag’s not too bad.”
“It’s easier to come than go,” he says.
He speaks more truth than he knows. Ian walks Sara outside.
The sun is already warm and glancing off the estate’s clay-red stucco. A basket holding a pair of gloves and clippers sits ready to collect zucchini and tomatoes from the yard. It would have been a nice way to spend the morning, in different circumstances.
“Denica gives it to all of us,” Ian says. “Please stay.”
“It’s right for a girl to want her dad and big brother all to herself for a while.”
“She’ll want to boot him back to university soon enough.”
“I mistimed my visit.”
“Was there something you wanted to talk about?”
She grins. “Even now, Denica is racing to cook those eggs and drag you back in to eat them.”
“I never minded my eggs cold. Now out with it, before I force you to come on back in and eat with us too.”
“Garrett Becker’s son came to see me. He thinks I’m his mother.”
“Ah. That’s a tricky one. Did you explain?”
“He couldn’t hear it. He’s so young still, Ian. He needs a mother—or at least a parent.”
“So be his friend.”
“I think that might be difficult. For them. And okay, for me too. I wouldn’t know the first thing about what to do.”
“No parent does, no matter what they say. You learn as you go.”
“I always thought someone should offer training first. Parenting certification.”
Ian laughs. “Yes, that would have been helpful for me when Gemina died.”
“I can only imagine,” she says gently. “But you’re a natural.”
“No one’s a natural, but some of us manage to find our way. You don’t need training, Sara. You have a good heart.”
“I can’t really be their mom, of course. Not at their ages. But how can I help? If they know I’m the one who destroyed their family, they’ll never speak to me.”
“My children speak to me,” Ian says.
“You have a different story,” she says.
“Do I? Listen, Sara, you can’t force anyone to accept help. You can only offer it.”
Denica’s shout from the kitchen cuts in. “Food’s hot!”
“Right there,” Ian says over his shoulder. “If you want to help, treat them with respect. That’s how you earn trust. Then, when they trust you, they’ll tell you what else they need.”
“Dylan couldn’t even accept me saying that I wasn’t his mom.”
“Nothing you can do about that.”
“I wish there were.”
“See—you’re a natural. All mams and das wish our kids would just listen to what we say.”
Sara laughs and shakes her head. He nods and crosses his arms. A breeze lifts his graying hair off his forehead. His brow is raised.
“I’ll send Denica a link to the menu at the fish place,” she says. “Then let me know if you can come.”
“Oh, we can come,” Ian says.
They wave good-bye and she makes her way back to her room, where she hastily prepares to leave even though she doesn’t need to drive to Solvang and won’t be missed at her shop. When she finishes, she sinks onto the bed and holds her stomach, clutching anxiety.
My plea comes out in a rush.
“There is a way to help them,” I say to her. “There’s a way you can do it, a way they’ll let you. Even Marina will. You don’t know her yet, but she’ll remember how good you are. She’ll remember.”
An image of Marina, just three years old and running to Sara with outstretched arms, comes to mind. Christmas lights in the background.
I cross the warm floor and kneel down in front of her, so that I look up into her bowed face.
“They need your help, Sara. There’s no one else.”
I can’t hold her hand and I can’t wrap her in a hug. Instead, I place my palm over her heart and let my hand go straight into her chest. Right through her blouse and her skin and her ribs and her lungs. I can feel her life beating in the palm of my hand. It’s healthy and strong and good. Marina and Dylan need that so much. She shudders, and I ask her a question.
“Do you still love my kids?”
I’m thinking of Marina, barely twenty, still a child to me.
“If you ever loved them, protect them, Sara. Protect my little girl and—”