It’s a Monday evening in late September, ten minutes before Sara’s Sins will close. Denica is on the sofa under a photo of a sugar-dusted orchid, sipping a pumpkin mocha without the whipped cream. She’s down from her father’s winery, where harvest is in full swing and Ian will be preoccupied for at least another month. These days he sleeps early, rises early. Gabe has returned to the university. In the morning, she won’t be immediately missed.
Sara has sent her employees home and offered to close tonight. One patron reads a book by the unlit fireplace. Two others talk in low voices over nearly empty mugs and a plate holding two forks and the crumbs of a chocolate torte.
“You promise me that this cocoa is sustainably farmed?” Denica asks as Sara clears crystal trays out of the display case and carries them back to the kitchen. “Because I looked at the packaging and it doesn’t say anything about being fair-trade certified.”
Sara returns from the kitchen and leans on the counter. “I promise. The cacao for my drink mixes comes from a little plantation in Ecuador. I visit once a year, usually in March. The farmer’s name is Jorge Gomez, and he has a weakness for Bit-O-Honey candy. Latin America hasn’t put slaves to work for more than two hundred years, and Señor Gomez is no exception. He has nine full-time employees.”
“But why isn’t he certified?”
“He can’t afford the certification—and explaining why is practically a college-level course in economics. Look, it’s good that awareness is being raised about slavery in chocolate production. Your passion is admirable. But while it’s true that fair-trade chocolate isn’t produced by slaves, it isn’t necessarily true that non-certified chocolate is produced by slaves. Do you see how easy it is to be misled?”
“So how do people like me sort it out?”
“You keep telling people what you know . . . and what you don’t know.”
“That’s hard if I don’t know what I don’t know,” Denica huffs.
Sara laughs. “That’s the problem we all face, isn’t it? Especially when the world changes as quickly as it is. So you keep learning too.”
The bell over the door chimes. Dylan and Marina come in, followed by their grandmother.
“We’re closed for the night,” Denica calls out.
“Family privilege,” Dylan says. “We might have to boot you out.” He quickly crosses the room and sits on the same sofa with her, but on the opposite end, a gap of awkwardness between them like their difference in age. Denica hands over her pumpkin mocha to share a sip with him.
Marina comes across the room more slowly, a slim book bag draped from one shoulder to the opposite hip. She’s come from one of her extension courses. New term at the university.
Lena lingers in the doorway, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath through her nose. “Oh my,” she murmurs. The copper threads of her autumn blazer catch the café lights.
Sara comes out from behind the counter and gives Marina a hug.
“How are classes?” she asks.
“Dull. Hard to concentrate.”
Dylan says, “You’d find it easier if you had one of these before class every day.” He holds up Denica’s mug.
“True. It might put me into a sugar coma,” she says, and the mention of a coma silences everyone for a few seconds. But I find it makes me want to laugh.
Denica too. She tries to suppress it, but she can’t, and everyone breaks smiles in her direction.
“What is that you’re putting away?” Lena approaches the counter, eying the glass plates in Sara’s hands.
“These are cherry and ancho chili clusters,” Sara says. Her voice lacks confidence, as if Lena is the master artisan and Sara an impostor. The bells on the door jingle as the couple who ate the chocolate torte leave, and the man at the fireplace closes his book and lifts the last sip of his drink to his lips.
“In milk chocolate?” Lena asks Sara.
“Dark, actually. Uh, sixty-five percent.”
Lena’s eyes dart to the other tray.
“These are clove-caramel truffles,” she says. She glances at Marina.
“I’ll take five of each,” Dylan says.
“He’ll be diabetic by daybreak,” Denica says to Marina.
“You’d think. But he’s one of those guys.”
“Disgusting,” Denica says. But she looks at Dylan as if he’s the very opposite and takes back her mug.
“Is it too late for me to buy a sampler?” Lena asks.
“Yes,” Sara says, turning her back on Lena’s disappointed expression. “But if you come back here I’ll make a fresh one as a gift.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t.”
“Isn’t your birthday coming up?”
Lena slips behind the counter. “My stars. How on earth do you remember such things?”
Sara takes a gift box off a high shelf in the back room, then begins to fill it from the nearly empty glass trays. Sara doesn’t tell Lena what each candy is. She works quickly, busying her hands and eyes.
Lena notices all of it. She goes to the display case and removes the last remaining glass tray, which bears a single chocolate-dipped marshmallow rolled in cracked peppercorns. I remember the hot chocolate Sara made for me. Lena pops it into her mouth and chews and mmms and sighs like a little girl.
When she is finished she says, “Until I lost Misty, I never understood what it meant to have your life’s purpose taken away from you.”
Sara concentrates on setting each piece of candy into its rippled gold foil cup.
“It would have been a great loss if you hadn’t pursued your purpose, Sara. I’m very sorry I didn’t understand that.”
“It’s okay,” Sara says into the box.
“I think not. Your parents made up all kinds of reasons to be offended by you, and I just made their opinion my own. Now it’s my turn to have a strong opinion about you, broaden their horizons a bit.”
The box is full now, and Sara sets the snug lid in place. “Good luck with that.”
“Oh, I don’t need luck, my dear. Do you have an annual report?”
“A what?”
“An annual report—you know? A publication of your earnings for investors?”
“Yes, I know. I mean, I do, but why—”
“I’ll give one of those to your father for Christmas. Show him how you’ve grown his money over the years, right? And I’ll upstage your mother at her own party with a dessert tray full of these confections of yours. But I won’t say where I got them from until they’ve gorged themselves. That ought to force them to change their story about you, don’t you think?” She takes the box from Sara and giggles. “Happy birthday to me. I’m just tickled.”
Lena leaves Sara in the kitchen and returns to the kids, who are chatting out in the café about school—Dylan in his senior year, working with a tutor provided by the school district, Marina at the extension, and Denica taking yet another year off before attending college somewhere, anywhere. She’ll make up her mind when she’s forced to. She kind of likes attending the college of life, she declares.
Sara hangs up her apron and puts away the remaining chocolates, most of them going into a box for Dylan and another box that Denica will take back to Ian. She washes her hands. She shuts off all the lights at the front of the café, leaving a gold dome over the sofa set and her family.
Her new family.
She carries the boxes of candy out and sets them on the table.
“I was thinking,” she says. She stops and clears her throat. “Maybe Marina and Denica might want to go to Ecuador with me in the spring. College of life.”
Denica leans forward. “Seriously?”
Marina is looking at her brother. “What about Dylan?”
Lena guffaws. “A few boxes of these ought to keep the two of us out of trouble for a few weeks. What do you say, Dylan?”
“I can handle the house by myself,” Dylan says.
“’Course you can. The question is, can you handle a crazy old lady?” Lena asks. “I have a feeling your big sister hasn’t taught you how to party, young man. And for heaven’s sake, you’ll be a legal adult a year from now. That’s downright embarrassing.”
This puts everyone but Sara into stitches. She hasn’t had much practice with this sort of thing yet.
“I’ll take you to Venezuela when you graduate,” Sara says to Dylan.
“I’d rather go to Ireland.”
There’s Sara’s grin. “That would work too.”
“He’s never even been out of the state,” Marina says. “Out of the country—”
Denica says, “If I can surf, he can make it to Venezuela and back. Do those pop-up drills, Dylan. You know what I mean.”
He looks to Lena. “Maybe I’ll practice by making a few dry runs to your house between now and then.”
“After you get your license,” Marina says.
“Think I can borrow your car?” he asks Sara.
She shakes her head. “Not on your life.”
“I’ll buy you one of your own,” his grandmother says. “What do you like?”
A crowd of busy seasonal workers fills the winery with energy. Denica is helping to toss plucked grape clusters into the crusher when Sara arrives. The younger woman waves a greeting, then points to the northwest, where her father is.
Sara parks in a place that seems out of the way and hikes a short distance to where the workers are concentrated. She quickly picks out Ian’s red work shirt.
“I’ve come at a bad time,” she says. He looks up, smiles at her approach. His hands and clothes are stained purple. He holds the curved picking knife that is a permanent part of his gear between August and October.
“No, no,” he insists. “But if you were dressed for it I’d put you to work. Just keep up.”
His employees are making noise, a kind of spontaneous singing and hollering that is spirit boosting. The grape leaves are rattling as the workers cut purple clusters off the vines and drop them into bins at their feet. They seem to have a rhythm to their work—grasp, cut, drop; grasp, cut, drop—and when the bins are full, they make a dash to the tractors. Many of the workers jog with the bins balanced on one shoulder, some even on their heads. They dump the bins and run back to the vines. The air is filled with the scents of musky sweat and earth and grape juice.
“Everyone seems in a rush,” she says.
“Sort of. Have to get the grapes into the winery before they warm up. We work fast, in small batches.”
“I just wanted to thank you,” she says, bending to pick up a cluster that has missed the bin. His hands are buried in grape leaves. “For knowing what was needed.”
He nods. “You’re welcome.”
“This giving without expecting a return—it’s a little scary. I don’t know how to be a mom.”
He releases another cluster. “Sara, they’re not asking you to be their mother. They’re both adults.” Grasp, cut, drop.
“Then what do they need?”
“Just you. They need you to be you. Don’t pretend, don’t put on a hat, don’t try to be someone you’re not.”
“You’re a good friend, Ian.”
“Why yes, I am.” He grins at her.
Grasp, cut, drop.
“You could do this in your sleep,” she says.
“True.” His bin is full. He bends at his knees and hefts the full load, carries it toward the tractor to dump it. “Though I can’t run these to the tractor on my head anymore.”
Sara walks with him.
“I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a foundation to further research for people who have bipolar disorder.”
“Something in your cousin’s name.”
“Yes. And maybe a partner organization, support groups for family members. Resources, meetings, that sort of thing.”
“I like it.”
Sara is fidgeting with the zipper pull on her vest. She clears her throat.
“Would you be my cofounder?”
“Aye.”
“Just like that—aye?”
“The best word in the world.”
“I can’t imagine you’d have the time.”
“For you, as much time as you need.”
Her foot comes down on a stone and tips her sideways. Her shoulder bumps Ian’s the way it did the first time I saw them together at the winery. “I’ll need a lot of time. I don’t know the first thing about running a foundation.”
“We’ll learn together.”
“And I’ll . . . well, I’ll need someone to teach me how to not shut people out anymore.”
Ian tosses his entire load into the tractor’s half-ton container. “Aye,” he says. “I’m good for that too.”
“Then would you have dinner with me? When you’re free? I mean when the harvest is over?”
He makes a comical show of rolling his eyes. “We’ve eaten dinner together.” He heads back for the trellis sagging with heavy vines, the empty bin swinging in his hand.
She jogs to keep up with him now, light on her feet. “You don’t do a very good impression of me.”
“I thought you didn’t date,” he says.
“Aye.” She winks at him. “But you can’t always love someone and expect nothing in return, now can you?”
The nurse at the station has no idea that I can see her make the call to my daughter. The woman isn’t even confident that I can hear what’s spoken at my own bedside.
“He’s taken a turn for the worse,” she says. “I would suggest you come as soon as possible.”
I watch them come. Marina and Sara in the shiny new car, breaking speed limits to the UCLA medical center where I’ve been for more than three months. Dylan’s nowhere in sight. His absence makes it that much harder to lift my head. My limbs have already reached their deadweight.
They drive in silence. They reach Ventura before Marina says, “I really want to go to Ecuador with you.”
“Then I hope you’ll come.”
“Is it bad for me to want to get away?”
“No.”
“Then why do I feel so bad?” she asks.
Sara hesitates. “Getting away isn’t the same as running away. Getting away will make you stronger, more caring when you go back. Running makes everything . . . harder.”
Marina stares at her hands. “Sometimes I want to run.”
“We all do. Some of us actually make a break for it.”
Marina raises her eyebrows.
“Exactly,” Sara says. “You’re not running, Marina. You and Dylan are on the brink of new things. It’s going to feel strange for a while.”
Marina leans her head back against the headrest and reclines the seat. She closes her eyes. “You know what?”
“What?”
“I really like not driving.”
Sara laughs. “Let’s see how you like it in Ecuador.”
The screen is darkening. The theater is stuffy and warm. The wait makes me sleepy. All I want to do is close my eyes. I finally give in.
Forgive me, please forgive me.
The man in the beret is close at hand. He picks himself up and moves to the seat at my left hand.
I’m glad they know. Carrying the lie around has worn me out.
He puts his hand on my shoulder.
Will you make everything better for them now? I don’t deserve a dying wish, but that’s mine.
He gives my shoulder a squeeze so firm it pinches a nerve and a burst of pain shoots down my arm. I can’t take that as a yes.
The scent of sweet peas fills the room. Someone is holding my hand. Soft, smooth, feminine. Short nails.
“Dad?” she says. “Dad, we’re here. Sara and me.”
And your brother?
My other hand is picked up and sandwiched between two cool, dry palms. “Hi, Garrett.”
Marina touches the finger where my wedding band should be. Sara strokes my skeletal fingers.
“He’s so skinny,” my daughter chokes out.
Don’t cry, Beautiful.
Her strong daddy was always this weak—someday she’ll see that also, that I was as weak as she is strong.
Forgive me that too.
She composes herself.
“Dad, I want you to know that we’re going to be all right, Dylan and me. Lena—Grandma—is helping us out. She’s got the house, the bills. Dylan really likes her, you know. He’s doing well. This girl Denica, a new friend, she’ll be good for him. The panic’s down. And Sara. Sara’s helping too. I just don’t want you to worry about us.”
There’s life insurance. I know you thought I forgot that, but there’s a policy—ask Jamie.
“We’re going to have a service for Mom this weekend. Up in Monterey. With her family.”
Your family too now. Thank God, thank God. They found you. I had to hide you to hide myself, but they found you.
“Her ashes—we want to scatter those at home, right there on the water we look at every day. Would you be cool with that?”
So very, very cool. A tremble overtakes my muscles. Relief. Gratitude. Exhaustion, like the kind that comes at the gym on the last, heaviest set.
“I know you did it so you could be with us,” Marina says. “I know you didn’t want us to be alone, and you thought maybe Mom’s family would take us away from you, or worse. I might have done the same thing. I just want you to know I understand, and I’m not mad about it.”
She squeezes my hand again. “Dylan is still working through things. He’ll come around. Don’t worry about that. He’s got a good team. There’s this man Ian—you’d like him. He’s pretty cool. I think Dylan will open up to Ian when it’s the right time.”
I don’t want to leave that job to some other man. I want it for myself, but some opportunities are only available once in life, and when they’re gone, they’re gone forever.
The man in the beret stands in front of me now. I didn’t notice when he moved. The theater has fallen away. Nothing exists but a darkness and a faint breeze and these two invisible, merciful women holding my hands. Beret leans forward and scoops me up by the armpits, irresistibly strong. He expends no effort at all to lift me up. My fight is weak. He’s a Navy Seal and he’s lifting me out of a roiling ocean of regret—Marina’s perfect storm—me limp in his arms while he gives the helicopter the signal. Up, up, up.
Not now, not yet.
Sara says, “I love your children very much, Garrett.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Then the rushing wind carries the rest of their words away.