St. Helena, Napa County, California
September 2022
AFTER BREAKFAST, I SIT DOWN with Nadia on the little patio area behind the Barn and let her show me the wedding packages the Backyard offers. She flips through each photo on her iPad, describing their wine pairings, their farm-to-table catering services, even the names of photographers in the area. I smile and act impressed, but what I’m really watching is Sadie’s house. My seat at this table offers an unobstructed view of her navy-blue front door. She had mentioned an event off-site today, and about ten minutes ago, I watched her exit that door in a hurry, her children filing after her: two blonde girls, the older one holding the toddler’s hand, and a lanky teenage boy.
Now, I’m biding my time to make sure she doesn’t come back, and to ensure nobody is watching before I make my way into the empty house.
It’s a crazy plan. I’m not someone who knows how to pick a lock, and there are probably security cameras, maybe even the kind that would alert Sadie on her phone if someone encroached on her property. It’s for this very reason—that I know my chances of getting caught are high—that I’ve already packed my belongings into the rental car, ready to leave quickly when I have the answers I need. The idea of breaking into the house came to me shortly after my interaction with Sadie. There was something unsettling about her face, a hardness in the set of her jaw. She was hiding something.
“Moral of the story is, whatever you want, we can do,” Nadia says, forcing my attention back to her. “We’re super relaxed about weddings around here. We’ve done big outdoor ceremonies, but ever since the pandemic, we’ve also seen a lot of the smaller micro weddings, and we had one ceremony right in the tasting room. You can walk around and try to imagine where you see yourself. The whole vineyard is yours.”
I smile, trying to appear light and carefree. “I love it here. I noticed during the tour that there’s a beautiful pond—have you ever done a ceremony back there?”
Nadia’s face instantly darkens, but she recovers quickly. “No, not yet. But, I mean, all the decisions are up to you.”
Anxiety tightens my chest. I want to keep her talking, hoping the conversation will careen into some of the answers I need, but her attention is diverted by her ringing phone. “I’m sorry, I have to take this, but I’ll be here later if you have more questions.”
I nod and watch her walk away, grateful she’s given me the perfect opportunity to be alone. I don’t know how long I have until Sadie returns, and I need to get into the house before she does. I grab my purse and start strolling toward the vineyard.
I’m not alone as I move from row to row. There are vine pickers stationed above containers, carefully snipping bunches of grapes and sifting through them to avoid sunburned fruits and vine rot. None of them pay me much attention, and I quickly make a beeline for the house, my gaze darting around to make sure nobody is watching. The clock on my phone tells me it’s almost noon.
The gate creaks as I slip inside. I don’t see any security cameras, but that doesn’t mean they’re not around.
I don’t expect the door to swing open when I pull on the knob. It almost feels like a trap: How could Sadie have left without locking her door? But then I remember the teenager who was the last one out of the house, his eyes focused on his phone.
It’s now or never, I tell myself as I step inside and close the door behind me, my chest practically ready to capsize. Taking a deep breath, I raise my eyes to the first thing in my line of vision. I’m standing on a well-worn mat in a small foyer, and directly beside me is a gallery wall.
I forget how to breathe. I’m face-to-face with the life I could have had with Josh, in photo form. The largest one is a tall canvas panel, the kind of professional family portrait that is Phoebe’s bread and butter, everyone barefoot in denim, kids bracketed by loving parents. Sadie is holding a blanket-bundled baby, and her smile is a joyous beam. Her loving, square-jawed husband has an arm protectively around her shoulders—protective, but never controlling—and his eyes bore into me, still stormy blue even in blown-out pixelation.
I sink to the ground, tears blurring my vision, my breath coming in sharp gasps. As much as I might have secretly hoped that this was all a coincidence, these photos are undeniable. They’re the essence of Josh, every angle and every facial feature. Andrew Smith and Josh Kelly are one and the same. My husband is alive.
I don’t know how long I remain there, a shattered shell, before standing up on numb legs and following the canvases through the foyer on some sadistic impulse into the living room, where they form a happy-family trail, the road map of Andrew and Sadie’s life. There they are in a maternity photo shoot, Andrew’s hands cupped around Sadie’s belly as she stands ethereal in a cream-colored gown, their eyes locking with what I can tell, even from here, is genuine affection and love. There they are in front of the trellises, everyone laughing, nobody looking at the camera, a candid moment of glee. There they are on the beach, holding hands, so young—even younger than when Josh and I met. I slump over again as I get dizzy and out of breath.
Josh isn’t dead.
It’s what I wished for ten years ago—but I didn’t wish for it to look anything like this.
I force myself to keep moving, and when I stand up straight, I’m in front of a mantel buttressing a stone fireplace. There are two snow globes on the mantel’s edges, framed photos lining the space between them, and the blood chills in my veins when I see who is in one of the photos. Bev Kelly, Josh’s mother, on what looks like a pier, holding her granddaughters on her lap, one on each knee.
So she knows Josh is still alive, and she’s obviously a part of his new life. Bev, who never approved of me. You’ve said that before, Joshua. You barely know her, and she barely knows you.
I had strained my ears to hear more of their conversation that day. Snippets of their voices had carried into the living room, especially Josh’s as he became more heated. Kieran, sitting next to me on the couch, had warmed to me instantly; he was telling me about a new video game, inviting me into his world like he’d known me for years, and I felt bad for not giving him my full attention.
“—not pregnant. But when you know, you know, and I know.” He sounded defiant, and my heart swelled.
“… don’t go,” the muffled response had been. “… a healthy relationship …” I couldn’t make out the rest of her sentence.
“I’m in love.” Josh’s reply was loud, assertive, but I could tell he was defending himself. I listened for the reply, but I couldn’t make out anything beyond whispers, and one tiny sentence fragment.
“… she doesn’t know …” Her last rebuttal was clear and firm. “She deserves to know everything about you.”
Josh emerged from the kitchen and sat down beside me. When he raised my hand and kissed it, he was smiling. On the drive away from Mill Valley, I tried to suss out the root of Bev’s hesitation. Why didn’t she think our relationship was healthy?
“She’s questioning us,” I said, feeling like a rebellious teenage girl in the face of a practical parent, not the almost thirty-year-old woman I was. “Do you know why she’s so doubtful?”
“She’s not doubtful,” Josh said, without hesitation. “She’s just a worrier. She was worried we’re moving too fast. That’s all. It was nothing personal.” But his jaw was tight.
“She didn’t like me,” I said, my mouth curling into a pout. I hated how much it bothered me, but I’d just met my future mother-in-law, and I desperately wanted her approval.
“She does,” Josh assured me.
“I heard her say something about how I deserve to know everything about you. Don’t I already?”
Annoyance crossed Josh’s face. I rarely ever saw him bothered by anything.
“Of course you do,” he said. “You know me better than anyone.”
Not more than half an hour later, he pulled over on the side of the highway, his blue eyes trained intently on my face, a wild spark within them that, by then, I recognized. “What are we waiting for? I’d marry you today. Let’s do it, right now.”
“Are you serious?” I gaped at him. “What about having our families and friends there?” I hadn’t even started looking at wedding dresses, or thinking about venues, or preparing for any of the traditional bridal rites of passage. All I had was a Pinterest board I’d been casually adding to as I saw my friends get engaged and married. Above all else, I’d visualized my loved ones in attendance. I knew my mother—and Phoebe—would be devastated to be left out.
But Josh was convincing. It would be so romantic. We didn’t need a show. We’d save the money we would have spent on a big ceremony and use it to travel together. And maybe I was afraid that if I said no, the bubble would burst.
Ultimately, I saw his vision, and that’s why we turned the car around and ended up getting married on a beach in Santa Barbara, barely six months to the day we met. We’d found an officiant who lived in town after a quick Google search, not giving any thought to witnesses or signing a license. We’d worry about the legalities another time. Our loved ones would have to understand.
I walk deeper into the house, even though at this point, I don’t know what I’m looking for. Andrew Smith doesn’t exist. He’s Josh Kelly. Or maybe Josh Kelly was the one who never existed at all. There’s a soul-sucking finality to everything, a delayed shock that I won’t let myself feel until I’m somewhere else.
I’m not sure what pulls me toward the stairs, besides a tiny voice in my head telling me to keep going. There are school photos of the children lining the walls. The two girls are Sadie’s spitting image, but the teenage boy’s resemblance to his father is uncanny. Was he too young to remember the six months his dad was gone from his life, or did Josh make up an excuse? Did he come home with a souvenir, telling him Daddy had been on vacation?
When I reach the top of the stairs, I venture down the hall, past three bedrooms. The first is sloppy, with a tangled plaid bedspread and rock-band posters, the obvious habitat of a teenager. The second has a pink canopy bed and a net of stuffed toys hanging from the ceiling. The third must belong to their youngest, with a vintage rocking horse in the corner and cubist paintings of farm animals framed on the walls.
The biggest room, at the end of the hall, belongs to Sadie and Andrew, a four-poster queen bed against the far wall, probably because the room isn’t quite large enough to fit a king. There are nightstands on either side of the bed. Josh always slept on the right, so I open that drawer, expecting to find something of his, but all I see is a tube of L’Occitane rose hand cream. The nightstand on the other side—Andrew’s side, apparently—holds a charging block and a case containing a pair of reading glasses. Josh had perfect twenty-twenty vision. Has his vision degraded in middle age?
I leave the room, blowing out a frustrated breath. My phone vibrates in my purse, but I ignore it. Adrenaline keeps me moving forward, even as my instincts tell me I should leave before I get caught.
A half flight of stairs takes me up to a third-floor loft, a small room with low ceilings. It looks like it’s being used as an office, tidy but cramped, one of the walls slanting dramatically into a triangle to accommodate the dormer window. I sink into a desk chair and click the keyboard mouse, firing the desktop screen to life. But I don’t have the password.
I need to leave this place—this house, the Backyard, Napa—and go home, and figure out what I’ll tell Kyle, Phoebe, my parents, everyone. Will I go to the police? If so, what will I say?
I begin to rifle through the contents of a filing tray, a last-ditch effort before giving up and leaving the house. There are different printouts pertaining to the winery, papers likely awaiting organization. I glance at each one, not even knowing what I’m looking for.
Until I find it.
My blood runs cold, a deepening chill collecting at the base of my spine.
COBBLE HILL WINE BAR GRAPE JUICE A TRIBUTE TO LIFE AFTER TRAGEDY
It’s an article about me.
Andrew—Josh—has looked me up. He knows about my bar—about my life. It really was Josh whom I saw in Prospect Park and in front of Grape Juice.
I fold the paper in half and shove it into my purse. I’m about to stand up when there’s a tap on my shoulder. My heart races, and a deep male voice asks:
“What are you doing here?”