Three

Sometimes Vivian Hollander wondered if her husband was testing her. At the very least, he was trying her patience. But after fifty years together, she could never stay angry for long. And at that particular moment, she couldn’t let her irritation show at all.

She was surrounded by customers on the vineyard’s back deck, a four-thousand-square-foot space the family called “the veranda.” Lots of groups of women in sundresses, open-toed shoes, jumpsuits, aviator sunglasses. Men in cargo shorts and baseball hats. People were out to have a good time. Her employees, wearing dark blue T-shirts that read Hollander Estates Vineyard on the front and Family owned since 1971 on the back, poured glasses of wine at the long bar.

The veranda offered a perfect view of the vineyard. From her vantage point it was just endless green fields. Not a single house could be seen in the distance and never would be; decades earlier, her husband had sold the development rights of all their acreage to the county as protected farmland.

The sun was shining, and a breeze blew off the nearby Peconic Bay. The North Fork of Long Island had roughly thirty-four thousand acres of active farmland but was also a peninsula framed by the Long Island Sound, the Peconic, and Gardiners Bay. The terrain and climate offered unique—and uniquely challenging—conditions for founding a winery. And no one had done it before Vivian and her husband, Leonard.

In recent decades, dozens of new wineries had followed the path she and Leonard had forged. Today, other North Fork wineries might have flashier ads or trendier packaging, but one thing Hollander Estates had was legendary status. They were the first, they were the original, and plenty of customers—not all, but enough—knew that a conversation with Vivian Hollander was worth every penny they paid for their glass of Chardonnay or case of Cabernet Franc. Vivian made daily appearances in the tasting room and on the veranda. Her primary role had become that of the winery’s glamorous figurehead.

But she still had opinions, and that was why, when one of their employees made a beeline for her, explaining that, “There was no one in the office to sign for the new labels,” she was disconcerted. New labels?

“I tried to find Mr. Hollander,” the employee said. “But he’s not answering his phone.”

Vivian didn’t bother asking why he didn’t try to find Asher. No doubt their son—the vice president of Hollander Estates—was on one of his endless lunch breaks.

She looked out at the vineyard and spotted her husband walking among the vines in the distance.

“If there’s no one to sign for the labels, just let them be returned,” she said. The employee shuffled back to the office, and she made her way down the veranda steps to the grass. Shielding her face from the sun with her hand, she walked through the rows and rows of leafy plants tied with trellis wire, just the smallest green berries beginning to appear.

Leonard, as always, was lost in his own world. His love of the vines perhaps rivaled even his love for her.

When he finally noticed her, his hooded dark eyes lit up. Okay, so maybe his love of the vines didn’t compare to his feelings for her. No, she could never stay angry for long.

And yet.

“Leonard, you aren’t changing the labels on any of the bottles, are you?”

Vivian hadn’t been involved with the day-to-day running of the business for many years now. In the early days, she’d done everything from weeding the crops to knocking on restaurant doors to, yes, designing the labels. They were eggshell colored with a parchment edge and midnight blue lettering—elegant and timeless. Why mess with them? It had to be their son’s misguided idea.

“Asher suggested it was time for a change. I’m giving it a try,” Leonard said.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“To encourage his involvement, Vivian. You know I’ve been asking him to contribute more.”

“Well, let him contribute in some other way,” Vivian said, distracted by a text from her head of housekeeping: There’s a problem with one of the guest suites.

Vivian could not imagine what that problem might be, but with her daughter arriving in two days for a long-overdue visit, she couldn’t take any chances. Every summer, she counted the days until her daughter arrived with her family. She wished Leah visited more often—really, she wished she’d never left. But she couldn’t blame her for creating a new life for herself in Manhattan. Not after the way Leonard had handled things.

“I need to get back to the house. Leonard, promise me—don’t change the labels.”

He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. He smelled like fresh-cut grass and the sweet apple shampoo he used of hers while complaining it was too “girly.”

The trellised stone path from the winery to the main house was worn and familiar to Vivian. She had walked back and forth under the pergola, with its winding vines of roses and wisteria, for nearly fifty years.

The sight of the mansion still surprised her sometimes. When she had first set eyes on the house as a young newlywed, it had been a humble, rambling three-hundred-year-old farmhouse befitting the potato fields it had once stood upon. Over the decades, as the winery flourished, the house had evolved to the châteauesque wonder that had landed it on the cover of more than one architectural magazine. But in her mind’s eye, it was still the home of her early marriage, the days when she woke at six in the morning to start pruning vines. It was the land that had created their fortune, but lately, it was the house that made her feel rooted in her own life.

Vivian took a shortcut to one of the side entrances. The red Italian slate was hot under her feet; she could feel it through the thin soles of her ballerina slippers. She still wasn’t used to wearing flats, but she had finally made peace with the fact that at her age, she could no longer spend every day in heels. It didn’t matter that some customers somehow felt no hesitation in showing up to the tasting room wearing shorts and sneakers; Vivian still valued decorum.

As soon as the house came into view, she saw a flash of movement, a figure walking toward the hedgerow and disappearing from sight. If it weren’t for the hair, she might have missed it. But that hair.

Bridget Muldoon had first appeared in her son’s life last August, the latest in a seemingly endless parade of vacuous young women, none of whom he ever seemed inclined to settle down with—not that Vivian wanted him to settle down with any of them. Admittedly, since Asher was almost fifty, this did not reflect positively on his judgment or life choices. But he was her son, and Vivian worried about him.

Bridget was twenty-eight years old, with long auburn hair the shade of a purebred Irish Setter. Asher marveled over the color as if it were a miracle of nature, despite the brown roots that appeared once a month.

She took the winding back stairs to the third floor, where the guest suites—formerly her children’s bedrooms—were located. Only one of them was still occupied: Asher’s. He’d never moved out, and Leonard didn’t mind because he was always on call to help with the business.

She passed a sitting room, a decorative ottoman, a reading room, and continued down a long hallway to the bedrooms.

“In here, Mrs. Hollander,” the housekeeper said, leading her to the en suite bathroom of Leah’s childhood bedroom. Vivian and Leonard entertained a few times a year, and during some of their more extravagant weekends, their visitors stayed overnight. But Leah’s room had not been occupied since their New Year’s weekend celebration, when the governor of New York stayed with his wife.

“Oh, my good lord,” Vivian said.

The bathroom was all white marble and custom millwork, with an antique cherrywood-framed mirror mounted above the vanity. The white monogrammed towels hanging on the nickel bars were the first hint that something was amiss: they were all smudged with lipstick and streaked with peachy beige face makeup. The vanity was covered with jars of moisturizer, lipsticks, bottles of nail polish. A hair dryer was left plugged into the wall; the trash bin overflowed with tissues and round cotton discs also bright with makeup. Dirty clothes were piled in one corner.

What on earth was Bridget doing in this bathroom? If she was sleeping in Asher’s room, why not use that bathroom? Clearly, she’d decided to use this room as her dressing space.

“Please, just throw all of this away,” Vivian said. “Salvage whatever towels you can clean, and the rest—just dispose of those as well.”

“Throw it away? The makeup and hair dryer, too?”

“Yes! This is a trespass. Total disrespect for this home. And lock the door behind you.”

She took a deep breath. In just a few short days, Leah would be in this space. For now, Vivian would forget about Asher and his ill-mannered girlfriend. She wouldn’t worry about labels, or changes, or anything else. She wanted to focus on the positive.

Her daughter was coming home.