Twenty-eight

The library was bright with sunshine. Sadie blamed the brightness, the reminder of the beautiful day outside, for distracting her. An hour at the library table, immersed in Susan Sontag essays, and no progress on her thesis.

She stood up, crossed the room, and closed the heavy curtains, knowing all the while the light had nothing to do with it. It was that damn book.

No matter how much her mother tried to frame Chances as a story about a woman finding her own power, or how much her grandmother waxed nostalgic for the days when casinos were glamorous and women wore Halston, Sadie knew the book was all about sex.

It annoyed her. She read books to expand her mind, to grow as an intellectual. She didn’t want reading to remind her that her life of the mind had led her to neglect her life of the body. She didn’t want to think about her breakup with Holden or her inconvenient attraction to Mateo.

Maybe the women in the book had it right. Sex could be just sex, and there didn’t have to be a messy relationship, an intimacy doomed to failure. It didn’t have to be all or nothing. This was good news for Sadie, who had failed at her only serious relationship.

There was one element of the book that Sadie did appreciate: the heroine, Lucky, was fueled by rage. And female rage was a topic that no feminist reader could ignore, regardless of the package it came in. The heroine of Lace, Lili, was also full of anger and vengeance. Sadie wondered if other books of the era had a similar message. Was that what had attracted women to read them in droves?

She tucked the book back into her tote and carried the bag up the stairs to the second level to see what other 1980s novels were in her grandmother’s collection. She passed the section where the photo albums had been stored, the shelves now empty. In the absence of all those books, she noticed a collection of marble notebooks in the farthest corner of the bottom shelving. She reached for one, sitting on the floor and opening it.

The pages were penciled notes, mathematical equations like 2.46 × 16 = 39.36. Records of pH balance. Dates with annotations like “topped everything in house.” Page after page of numbers and phrases that meant nothing to her—a foreign language: “1984 white wine kegs & CB racked into 1 SS drum. Topped Amphora with CC Viognier drum, balance went to blue drum.”

The notebooks were like the one she’d seen in the bottling room a few weeks earlier, the one where the senior winemaker, Chris, had kept his notes. Except the bottom of these pages were initialed with “LH.”

They were her grandfather’s wine ledgers. The playbook for his creations.

“Sadie, are you in here?”

Her grandfather’s voice boomed from below. What was he doing here? It was as if she had conjured him with her snooping.

“Um, yeah, Grandpa. I’m up here.”

“Well, come down,” he said, his voice echoing off the high ceiling. “There’s work to be done.”

Why was he so interested lately in making sure she was busy working in the vineyard? When she first got there, he barely seemed to notice her. That was how it always was with her grandfather; he was always working or thinking about work. So what changed that he would, in the middle of the morning, have it on his radar to check on Sadie? Was it the impending sale? Did he suddenly realize he couldn’t take their time in the vineyard for granted? Maybe there were things he’d always planned to show her and never got around to it.

“Leave those books and the computer here.”

Or maybe he just didn’t respect her life choices.

She followed him outside, along the dusty, stone-lined path to the barn. Everywhere she looked, grapevines; the plants had transformed in just the month that she’d been at the winery. The horizontal branches that had sported hard little green berries had spawned grapes hanging in full bunches under the canopy of leaves.

“A vineyard is a communal place,” Leonard said as they walked. “If this is our last summer with the winery, I want to at least know that my children and grandchild have learned how to be part of something larger than themselves.”

Up ahead, workers moved field equipment into the barn. She and her grandfather passed them, stepping around machinery and bins. Leonard didn’t talk to anyone but headed straight for Mateo’s office.

This was going to be awkward.

Mateo’s door was open, and he was busy typing on his laptop.

“I’ve got a helper for you,” Leonard said.

Mateo looked up from the computer. “Oh—hello, there, Mr. Hollander.” He barely glanced her way.

“What’s on the agenda for today?”

“The Malbec; dropping some fruit.”

“Take Sadie with you. Show her how it’s done, eh?” Leonard patted Sadie on the shoulder. “Put in a solid day’s work and you’ll forget all about screens and other nonsense.”

Sadie watched him walk off. When she turned to Mateo, she thought about making a joke, something like: Thought he’d never leave . . . wink wink. But she refrained.

“So, you’re here to help out?” Mateo said, stepping out from behind his desk. He wore a gray T-shirt, jeans, and work boots.

“That’s my grandfather’s big idea. I’ll probably just slow you down.”

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Mateo said casually. If there was any leftover tension from the fact that she told her mother about his job search, he was clearly willing to let it go.

“Okay, I’ll give it a try,” she said.

They walked outside, and Mateo climbed behind the wheel of a dilapidated golf cart.

“Hop in,” he said, his dark eyes shining with a hint of mischief. He really was so hot. The T-shirt pulled tight against his biceps, his big, callused hands on the steering wheel.

They took off in the cart, the motor rumbling loudly. A breeze whipped up her hair, and they bumped through the borders of grass between the rows of grapevines. The cart picked up speed, and Sadie felt a lightness of spirit she hadn’t experienced in a long time.

Mateo steered down a path next to a wooden post marked with an “M.”

“And here we have the Merlot,” Mateo said, cutting the engine. They disembarked from the cart. The sun was so strong Sadie felt like she could reach out and touch it. Mateo pulled a Hollander Estates baseball hat from the back and put it on. “I think I have another one in here somewhere . . .”

“It’s fine,” Sadie said.

“Are you sure? You’ll be able to see better with some shade.”

Sadie dutifully accepted a battered cap and pulled it on.

Mateo handed her a pair of shears that had a springing mechanism in the middle. “I just happen to have an extra pair of snips.”

“Why are you cutting grapes now?” She knew the harvest wasn’t until fall.

“The vines are growing rapidly this month. We need to thin the clusters to just the right amount that the winemaker needs for bottling and also to keep the vines in balance. The vine’s natural tendency is to produce hundreds of clusters, but we can’t let them do that or they’ll all be weak, insipid flavors and stunted growth. When we thin the clusters, the remaining ones ripen with better flavors.”

“I guess no one wants insipid flavors and stunted growth,” Sadie said.

“No,” Mateo said. “They don’t.” They shared a smile, and Sadie felt another wave of powerful attraction.

“I’m sorry—what was that?” She realized Mateo was explaining something, and she’d completely zoned out.

“We’re cutting in two types of areas: big clumps, where it’s all jammed up with fruit—like here—or short shoots.”

“What’s a short shoot?”

Mateo pulled out a wispy branch. “See the size of this compared to the others? There aren’t any leaves, and this section won’t grow good fruit, so we might as well cut it off now.” He pulled a bunch of grapes away from the vine and lopped it off. She felt herself leaning toward him like a plant toward the sun.

“I thought you didn’t want too many leaves,” she said. “The last time we were out here you were thinning leaves.”

“It’s all about balance. Too many leaves, the fruit has reduced sunlight and airflow and you’re more likely to get disease. But if you pull too much, there’s no canopy and you need some leaves because photosynthesis helps create the sugar in the fruit. So you just cut like this.” He lopped off a bunch, and it dropped to the ground.

“And then you just leave all these grapes on the ground? Isn’t that a waste of food?”

“They aren’t ripe. They’re inedible. Here—squeeze this.” It was hard, like a plastic grape. “If we had pigs around, maybe we could use them. But it’s fine—they’ll fertilize the field.”

They worked methodically, side by side. Sadie consulted with Mateo whenever she felt uncertain whether to cut. Mateo had a laser-like focus. He worked quickly and made a point of telling Sadie not to rush to keep up with him. He talked and talked, casually explaining the life of the vines.

“The plants will stop producing next month. At that point, we just have to let the sugars accumulate.” There was something immensely satisfying about the crunch of the metal against the plant, the sound of the fruit hitting the grass. The results were so tangible compared to writing.

After a while, Mateo became quiet. He pointed to indicate where Sadie should work. Sadie admired his intensity, the way he seemed impervious to the heat and the insects and the dirt. She wondered what Mateo thought of Susan Sontag. The answer was: he didn’t.

She wondered what Mateo would be like in bed. The answer was: hot.

“Is something wrong?” Mateo said.

She had stopped clipping. She was staring at him.

“No,” she said.

After a moment—a long moment, a moment in which Sadie felt she barely breathed—Mateo said, “This can’t happen. You know that, right?”