Napa County, California
September 2022
IT’S JUST PAST TWO P.M., California time, when my flight lands at the Napa County Airport, a flight I charged to my business credit card. It’s technically a business expense for the bar, coming here, and serves the dual purpose of concealing the trip from Kyle. Guilt chewed away at me the entire flight: I’d lied to both Kyle and my staff at Grape Juice, leaving everything that mattered to me on a whim.
As soon as I’m off the plane, I fight the urge to call Kyle and admit to where I am and what I’m doing. At the airport, I rent a car to drive myself to the Backyard Winery. My only mission is to see Andrew Smith in person and figure out exactly who he is, and I want to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I plug the address of the winery into my iPhone’s GPS, which tells me the Backyard is a thirty-four-minute drive, mainly down the St. Helena Highway. My palms are damp, and nervous sweat is forming in the armpits of my blouse, making it tacky against my skin. I open my phone and send Kyle a quick message letting him know I’ve arrived. He kissed me goodbye this morning, thinking I was renting a car and heading upstate to Kettler Ridge Natural Winery, and here I am, multiple time zones and practically an entire country away from him.
Anxiety clenches my stomach like a fist as I start driving, and I watch the clock on my GPS as the number gets lower. Twenty minutes to the Backyard, then fifteen, then ten. I drive through Napa itself, the grape-studded sign greeting me: WELCOME to this world famous wine growing region. Vineyards crop up on both sides of the highway, green vines and stone buildings and rolling foothills in the distance. Normally, I’d be excited, but my nerves have made it impossible for me to notice much of anything.
It would be so much easier if I hadn’t seen the picture of Andrew Smith. If his resemblance to Josh weren’t so undeniable. I’ve revisited the photo almost hourly. My wedding to Kyle is on the horizon, my future finally ready to begin. But I’m feeling every emotion at once. Apprehension, terror, and—perhaps most frightening—the smallest amount of hope. The hope that I was right, and Josh is somehow alive, even though that would totally upend my life. Because it would mean that Josh left me on purpose—that he’d knowingly caused me a decade of pain.
My GPS tells me I’ve reached my destination, and even though I’m nowhere near ready for it, I ease the car into the driveway of the Backyard and pull into a vacant parking spot in the lot. The main building, as I already know from looking at photos online, has a stone front and a sunbaked path leading to the boutique hotel and spa. Behind the main building with the tasting room is a stamped concrete patio with a small fountain and several circular tables repurposed from wine barrels. There are people milling around, laughing and having fun, on what looks like a guided tour being led into the vineyard. I have to force myself out of the car on numb legs.
I stride into the tasting room, which is beautifully antiquated with stone walls and low tables, its earthy smell inviting. There are three women at one of the tables and an older man pouring wine into their glasses. He flashes me a smile.
“I’ll be right with you,” he says as the women look at each other and sniff their wineglasses gently, then break out into giggles.
A memory creeps unbidden to the surface of my brain. A date with Josh at a tiny Italian restaurant in the Village. He’d told me to swirl the wine, then sniff it, and then he’d put his hands over mine on the stem of my glass, the mere contact sending electricity down my spine.
Your nose can pick up thousands of flavors, he’d said, dipping his lips to my neck. Your tongue, only four.
I knew that already—arguably, I knew as much about wine as he did—but I kissed him, letting him believe he was teaching me something new.
He’s here, I think, the hairs on the back of my neck raised, like those of an animal picking up a particular smell. Any second now, Andrew Smith could emerge from the vines. It’s harvest season for the white grapes: Does he pick them himself? The Backyard’s website spoke of the winery’s dedication to traditional hand harvesting and machine-free processes. It sounds like they’re careful about the interventions they use. Josh never came to appreciate or understand natural wine, despite my best efforts. But he knew so much about conventional wines that I can easily picture him on a winery—on this winery—gently tending to the grapes.
How are you real? I once asked him, because it felt like I was living in a fairy tale, and I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. He had laughed it off, silencing me with a playful I’m not, along with a wolfish smile.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” the man in front of me says now. He looks to be in his late sixties, with gray hair and deep laugh lines. “Welcome to the Backyard Winery. My name is Marcel, and I’m the tasting-room manager. Are you interested in having a tasting? We also run tours here—usually sign-up is required, but today isn’t very busy, so you can certainly join the next one.” He glances at his watch. “It starts in half an hour.”
I return his smile, trying to match his friendly demeanor. “Thank you. Actually, I was hoping I could meet with Andrew Smith. I’m … I’m an old friend of his.”
Marcel hesitates for just a second before answering. “I’m afraid Andrew is out of town on business right now. Is there something I can help you with instead?”
I shake my head, feeling both dread and disappointment. “No, I’m just here checking out wineries and thought I’d drop in and say hi. Do you know when he’ll be back?”
“Unfortunately not. He was only supposed to be gone for a few days, but I believe he extended his trip.”
I want to ask Marcel exactly where he is, but the question sounds too intrusive. Is he in Brooklyn? Was it him I saw in the park and in front of Grape Juice?
“No problem,” I say. “Is his wife here? Sadie?” The idea of meeting Sadie Smith is, for some reason, almost more terrifying than seeing Andrew in person.
“She left to pick up the kids from school, but I’m sure she’ll be back before too long.”
The kids. He says it casually, an afterthought, but the effect is shattering.
“The kids,” I repeat robotically. “Um, I haven’t seen them in years. How old are they now?”
Marcel gives me a quizzical look. “Declan is fourteen, Ariana’s eight, and Mila … she turns three in a couple months. How did you say you know Andrew and Sadie?”
My legs are fixed to the ground, my body in a state of gluey paralysis, where I have no idea what it will do or what words will come out of my mouth. It’s almost a relief: Andrew can’t possibly be Josh, because it would mean he had children before he even met me. That would mean every conversation he had had about wanting to be a young father was something that had already happened, which is impossible.
“I’m just an old friend,” I say, my voice trailing off. Marcel is looking at me expectantly, waiting for me to say something else, and I manage to mumble something about wanting to go on the wine tour.
“I’m actually getting married soon,” I add, making sure he sees my engagement ring. “My fiancé and I are considering Napa for our honeymoon.”
“Wonderful,” Marcel says. “I hope you love it here.”
I busy myself before the tour starts by looking around the tasting room, at the bottles of wine on mahogany shelves, at the Backyard’s sophisticated black-and-gold label. I take notice of the dates on the wine bottles: 2014, 2015, 2018—years I spent practically numb. On a small gallery wall are framed photos of the vineyard throughout the years, a few featuring Sadie and Andrew, but even when I stand on my tiptoes and squint, they’re not close-up enough for me to make out Andrew’s facial features with any degree of certainty. In fact, the more I stare, the less Andrew looks like Josh at all, and for a panic-soaked moment, I realize the earlier resemblance was likely just another cruel trick of my brain, and this entire trip was probably a waste of time and money.
As I fixate on the framed photos—the winery’s sun-warmed stone buildings, the verdant hills in the distance—I recall conversations where Josh had described the place he grew up, the Golden Grape. I can’t think of any specifics that would tie that place to this one. I glance over at Marcel, trying to figure out a way to ask him without seeming suspicious, but he’s pouring a flight of wine for a young couple, and the ornate wall clock lets me know that the tour is about to start.
The tour is led by a woman named Nadia, who has curly black hair in a ponytail and flawless dark skin, and is probably in her early thirties. She leads our small group into the vineyard, pointing out the grapes and how the winemakers know they’re ripe. She’s charismatic and knowledgeable, and I nod and smile with everyone else, playing the role of wine neophyte.
“What are these for?” one of the other people on the tour, a short blonde woman in a denim jacket, asks, pointing to the black irrigation lines.
“Great question,” Nadia says. “They’re a crucial part of the irrigation system. We need to store our winter water so that we can irrigate the vines during our hot, dry summers.”
I turn around, using my hand to shield my eyes from the sun. Every trellis is meticulously maintained, and maybe it’s just my imagination, but I feel Josh here. It’s easy to picture him crouched in the vineyard, his hands on the grapes.
“We’ll continue along—feel free to take as much time as you like. Our next stop will be to the fermentation room and the barrel room, and you’ll get a glimpse of the lab too.”
On the southeast corner of the vineyard is another building—a house, a yellow-sided two-story with elegant pillars and a white fence that closes it off from the rest of the land.
“Is that part of the winery?” I ask Nadia.
“Oh, not exactly. That’s where the owners live.”
“Andrew and Sadie?” I blurt out.
She nods. “Yes, their family lives there.”
My pulse quickens, my stomach twisting. I stare at the house, picturing the beautiful family that inhabits it. And as the sun hangs low in the sky, burning a hot trail across my vision, I see a curtain flutter in one of the upper windows, a fast enough movement that I can almost convince myself it didn’t happen.
I’ve spent ten years trying to convince myself that something didn’t happen the day Josh disappeared. And now that I’m here, I’m more unconvinced than ever.