Mill Valley, California
July–November 2000
AFTER TELLING DAVID I WANTED A DIVORCE, I rented a bungalow in Mill Valley, a small town in Marin County. Camille had sold her apartment and was traveling in Thailand but cut her trip short to come back and be with me. She was my lifeline during that time, after David and I sat Josh down and told him we were separating, and drove to Los Olivos, where Andrew was working at his internship on a vineyard there, to tell him in person. We had planned exactly what we’d say to them: a sterilized version of the truth—that we had grown apart, and that they deserved parents who were happy, even if that meant separate houses.
They took the news as well as could have been expected, although I saw the sadness in their eyes, the thoughts they wouldn’t say out loud. It was the most identical they had looked in as long as I could remember. With a heavy sadness, I realized our divorce might cause the rift between them to grow, with no united family front anchoring them together ever again.
I thought back to the day my parents broke the same news to me and Camille. We’d sat with our fingers entwined, my sweaty palm searching for a grip on hers. I’d felt her sigh of relief in tandem with mine. But Josh and Andrew had never been close the way we were.
Since David would remain at the Golden Grape—it was his family’s winery—Josh would live primarily with him until he left for college, which was our attempt to keep things as stable as possible. For the rest of the summer, I saw him on weekends. I would never admit it, but the time away was freeing for me. I didn’t have to see his face every day and be reminded of all the ways I’d failed him, and all the things I’d do differently if I could.
They left for college at the end of August—Josh to Berkeley, Andrew to Stanford. They’d gotten into top-tier schools. As I watched my sons, both of them tall and handsome, walk across the stages to collect their diplomas, I realized there were some things I had done right as a mother. David and I hadn’t failed them completely. They were disciplined, hardworking boys. Their futures were bright, either because of or in spite of us.
But any sense of accomplishment was soured when I considered how much of their academic success had been engineered by David. The tutors, the private lessons; making sure nothing had gone on Andrew’s record about the incident at St. Helena. Their paths had been cleared, but at Abby’s and Michelle’s expenses. The tears that collected in my eyes at their graduation ceremonies weren’t out of happiness, but out of a conflicted fusion of pride and deep sadness.
David and I remained amicable, sharing fifty-fifty custody of Kieran. I had him four days during the week, and David the other three; I became familiar with the drive from Mill Valley to Napa, the lolling, serpentine route punctuated by foothills and wineries. We’d both agreed we didn’t want the divorce to get messy. David didn’t do messy. Deep down, I knew he hadn’t given up hope that we’d reconcile. That I’d start to miss him and would change my mind.
And I did miss him. I missed us. The idea of us, the one I’d held on to for so long, that I would have held on to so much longer had his affair not pushed me down a different path. I had been with David for more of my life than I had been without him. I missed the Golden Grape and the built-in sense of purpose it provided. I didn’t know what the second act of my life would look like.
October sneaked up on us, full-fledged autumn in the valley, vineyards stained russet and gold, the summer heat burned off in favor of a chill that refused to recede. When I dropped Kieran off for his time with his father, I saw the cabernet reach the end of its fermentation, and I felt the loss of the winery like an ache. The dead yeast cells, with no sugar to feast on, died out and sank to the bottom of the barrel, and the wine was racked into a new container. I stared at the leftover sediment, realizing that I, too, had nothing left to feast on here, nothing feeding my starved spirit.
So many times, I thought about calling Emilia and telling her David and I had separated. Camille kept encouraging me to get in touch with her—she knew me better than anyone, and she knew I was still in love. But I talked myself out of making that call. Maybe I was afraid of Emilia’s reaction—that it wouldn’t change anything between us, because I was still rooted here, and her life was so far away.
I did speak to my divorce lawyer, Bradley, a few months into divorce proceedings, about the possibility of me moving overseas and retaining custody of Kieran.
He looked at me over his wire-rimmed glasses. “Would it be for work?”
“No,” I answered. My career was a sore spot. I could have easily found work on a different vineyard, or even studied to become a sommelier, with my decades-long experience working with wine. But it felt like a betrayal to the Golden Grape, and I wasn’t sure how to reconcile those feelings.
I couldn’t tell him the truth. After all, no judge would agree to let me take Kieran to another country and deprive David of custody just so that I could chase after the woman I loved. And I couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave Kieran to grow up without a mother.
“You and David have joint custody,” Bradley said. “In this case, it wouldn’t be in Kieran’s best interests to have him uprooted from everything he knows.”
He wasn’t trying to make me feel guilty, but I still felt the weight of his words. It wouldn’t be in Kieran’s best interests to take him away from this life.
“It’ll be okay,” I told Kieran, and he gave me a smile, his tiny white teeth showing. “It’ll be okay,” I repeated. Lying to children is easy. They trust we are telling the truth.
Whenever Kieran cried at night, it was Camille who heard him—I slept through it. During the days, I stared into space as he played in front of me. I tried to push Emilia out of my thoughts, but found myself dwelling on so many what-ifs, imagining what we’d be doing right now if we were together.
I napped with Kieran one afternoon, my arm wrapped around his little body. Sometime while I slept, he had wriggled out; I startled awake when I heard him cry. He had fallen out of bed and bumped his head on the floor, and blobby tears rolled down his red face. I picked him up and attempted to rock him, kissing the spot where a bump had begun to rise, but he wouldn’t settle.
“What happened?” Camille asked. Kieran turned in the direction of her voice and reached out. I let her take him from my arms.
“We were sleeping, and he rolled out,” I said.
Camille sat down beside me with a sniffling Kieran in her lap and rested her head on my shoulder, her presence the same warm security to me that it had always been. “Kids fall. It happens.”
But it didn’t happen with Camille. It didn’t happen with David. It only seemed to happen with me. Every bump, every injury, every scar.
“I talked to my lawyer,” I blurted out. “I thought maybe … I could move away with Kieran. But it’s not possible.” My conversation with Bradley had been two weeks prior, but it felt like two years.
“You don’t need to move away, Bev. Things are going well here, right? With you and me and Kieran?”
“But you have a life too,” I said. “It’s not your responsibility to stay here for us.”
“I’m not,” Camille replied. “This is where I want to be. And Kieran seems happy. Look, there’s no bruise or anything. He’s fine, Bev.”
He was fine, but I wasn’t. Because without the distractions I was used to—the fast pace of the winery, and juggling the boys’ schedules—the same intrusive thoughts I’d denied entry were floating around untethered. As much as I loved Josh and Andrew, the nagging worries I had about Michelle’s death wouldn’t go away, no matter how hard I tried to push them down. I wanted to talk about it—to know what really happened—but I knew they would deny involvement, just like they already had. My questions would only make my sons feel like their mother didn’t believe them—a thought that broke my heart.
I stared at Kieran. The sweet, innocent toddler in Camille’s arms, his cheeks stained with tears, deserved so much more.
Motherhood could be done without sleep, without energy, without money or status. But it could not be done without heart, and my heart had been broken by the job. My boys needed someone who would believe them unconditionally. Someone who wasn’t living with a dark, festering tapeworm of doubt. Someone like Camille, who could still see them as wholly promising and good. The ambiguity over what had happened that night, and the unavoidable certainty of what I’d seen in the barn, was sending me over the edge.
“I need to find a way to make this work,” I finally said.
“We will,” Camille said, reminding me that we were a we, that I wasn’t alone in this. “We’re going to figure it out.”
I didn’t believe her. But when Camille said something, she meant it. I should have known better than to underestimate my sister.
It was almost a month later—on a random Friday in early November, with Camille out picking up groceries—when the doorbell rang. Kieran was in his high chair, his jam-smeared hands splayed on the tray, his feet sticking out of his dinosaur pajamas. He was going through a growth spurt and would need a new pair soon. I didn’t answer the door. I hadn’t made any friends in Mill Valley. It was undoubtedly a solicitor, and I was wearing my threadbare sweatpants, idly circling job ads in the newspaper spread across the kitchen table.
Camille had gotten used to constantly being around me and Kieran. She had helped me to babyproof the bungalow, and she automatically bought Kieran’s favorite foods at the grocery store. The longer she stayed, the guiltier I felt. Camille did so much for me. She needed to be living her own life, going on dates and having fun, instead of always focusing on us. It was time for me to start looking in earnest for a new career, and possibly a house of my own—one where I could put down roots, but still close enough to David that the custody arrangement wouldn’t be impacted.
The doorbell rang again, and I walked over, preemptively annoyed at whatever sales pitch I knew I was about to hear.
Instead, I opened the door to Emilia, who was standing on the doorstep of my rented bungalow in boots and a long skirt, her skin burnished with a golden tan. I blinked repeatedly. She couldn’t actually be here. She didn’t know where I lived, had no way of knowing where I was.
“Hi,” she said, her lips curling into a smile.
“You’re here,” I said, tears clogging my voice as I tried to catch my breath. “I thought you were in Croatia.”
“I was,” she said. “I mean, I am. But I needed to see you.”
“How did you even find me?” I said. I didn’t wait for her to answer. “Camille called you.”
“She did,” Emilia said, fiddling with the strap of her purse. “Can I come in?”
“Of course,” I said dumbly. She followed me into the house, trailed after me into the kitchen, took a seat at the table, and folded her hands in front of her. I took in her manicured fingernails, and the dam burst behind my eyes.
“God, I’ve missed you,” I said, closing the gap between us and pressing my lips against hers. I almost wished the desire were gone because it would have made things easier. But it felt even better than it did before. Our kiss was electric with sadness and anger and elation and everything in between.
I broke away, a sob surfacing. Kieran clapped his chubby hands, then smacked them against his tray, grinding Cheerios into dust on the plastic.
“Are you moving somewhere?” Emilia said, gesturing at the newspaper on the table.
“Eventually,” I said. “This isn’t my place—I’m just renting it. I can’t stay here forever. I guess Camille must have told you about me and David …”
She nodded. “I had no idea. I thought you would have called me and told me yourself.”
I reached for her hands. “I wanted to, but I didn’t see the point. It wouldn’t change anything. You have your life, and mine is very much still here, as much as I wish it wasn’t. I even talked to my lawyer … I wouldn’t be able to uproot Kieran like that.”
Emilia’s reaction wasn’t one of resignation, as I’d expected. Instead, there was a knowing gleam in her eyes. “What if you didn’t have to?”
“I’ve gone over every scenario,” I said. “David would never give up his custody, and I don’t want him to. Kieran is doing so well with our arrangement … Moving here to Mill Valley was a big enough adjustment.”
Emilia knelt in front of me, squeezing my fingers. “Are you happy here? Is this what you want, Bev? Or do you want something different?”
“You know what I want,” I said carefully.
She ran her finger along my collarbone, a velveteen heat rising under my skin. “There might be one scenario you didn’t consider.”
“Trust me, I’ve considered them all, and there’s no way.”
“Bev Jamieson,” she said, her smile slow and deliberate. “There’s always a way.”
As Kieran babbled in his high chair, Emilia sat down beside me at the kitchen table, our knees touching, and told me her plan.