Once Upon a Wine (12 page)

“W
ell? How was skateboarding?” Cammie emerged from the grapevines, brushing dirt from her palms and knees, as Kat returned from her boardwalk rendezvous with Theo the next day.

Kat slammed out of the car and threw her wrist guards to the ground in disgust. “I suck. That's how it was.”

Cammie wiped the sweat off of her forehead, realizing too late that she'd left a smear of dirt across her face. “Oh, Kat, I'm sorry.”

“No, you're not.” Kat was clearly frustrated and looking for any target to unload upon. “You're checking up on me to make sure I didn't get handsy with the twenty-year-old.”

“Kat . . .”

“I told Josh all about him, okay? I told him everything.” Kat's face flushed pink under the blazing midday sun. “And he's fine with it.”

“Great.” Cammie paused. “So, you want to come count the rows with me?”

Kat reached down and retrieved her wrist guards. “Yeah, okay.”

As soon as the phrase “count the rows” left Cammie's lips, Jacques appeared at the farmhouse's porch door. He squashed his already-squashed face against the screen and whined pathetically until Kat climbed the porch steps and let him out. He trotted over to Cammie and waited at her feet, staring up at her impatiently.

Kat trailed behind the French bulldog. “What does he want?”

“He wants to count the rows.” Cammie scratched Jacques behind the ears.

“He knows what ‘count the rows' means?” Kat started petting Jacques, too, and he luxuriated in the attention, wriggling his stocky little body and snuffling.

Cammie led the way to the farthest corner of the vineyard and started to walk, silently counting the rows of vines as she went. Kat fell into step on her right side, Jacques on her left.

“So, why did skateboarding suck?” Cammie asked.

“Because I can't skateboard.” Kat balled up her fists. “I tried to show Theo a basic inward heel flip, and I couldn't do it.”

“It's been months since you've been on a board. And you've had a serious injury. Cut yourself some slack.”

Kat raked her hands through her helmet-matted hair. “My ankles and knees don't work the way they're supposed to anymore.” She pressed a palm to her lower back and grimaced. “And my back hurts. I have lower back pain. Like I'm
old
. I'll need like five ibuprofen and a fifth of vodka just to get through tonight.”

“Hang on.” Cammie stopped to assist Jacques, who was knee-deep in a pile of loose soil.

Kat stopped, too. Her hands fell to her sides, her fierce facade fell away, and she looked helpless under the bright blue sky. “I can't do any of the things I spent my whole life doing. My body has betrayed me.” She sank down to sit in the dirt. Jacques took the opportunity to drape himself over her lap. “What am I going to do?”

Jacques lunged up, bonked his forehead against Kat's, and licked her right on the mouth.

“Ugh.” Kat made a face. “You taste like dirt and desperation.” But she calmed down, snuggling Jacques against her chest. “See, he gets it. Forced to retire at the height of his career because of a little dental snafu.”

Jacques started panting, his tragic broken tooth on full display.

“But you don't see him drowning his sorrows in a fifth of vodka,” Cammie pointed out. “He has a good attitude. He's reinventing himself.”

“Our scrappy little farm dog.” Kat seemed lighter as she got to her feet.

Cammie leaned down to examine the rosebush at the end of a row of vines. “Hmm.” She peered at a cluster of leaves that appeared to be shriveling. “This doesn't look good.”

“What's wrong with it?”

Cammie took out her cell phone and snapped a few pictures. “Hopefully, someone at the garden-supply store will be able to tell me.”

Kat surveyed the rosebushes lining the fields. “Why are we growing roses again?”

“They're our early-warning system for drought, blight, and pests.” Cammie summarized what Ian had told her. “Except for that one over there.” She pointed out the climbing rose. “That one was a mistake, and it won't bloom for two more years.”

“You sound so knowledgeable.”

“Don't I?” Cammie patted her leg, and Jacques scampered back to her side.

When they'd walked the perimeter of the field, they found Ginger waiting for them on the porch. “The first bottle of strawberry wine is officially ready to drink. Come on in!”

The cool, shaded parlor was a welcome refuge after hours in
the scorching heat. Ginger had draped a green-and-white tablecloth atop the tasting bar, and Cammie could smell the oak of the upended wine barrels in the humidity.

“Here's to us.” Ginger distributed three glasses of pink liquid.

“Are we supposed to drink this cold or at room temperature?” Kat peered into her goblet.

Ginger turned to Cammie. “I'm not sure. What's the proper temperature for fruit wine, dear? Do you know?”

“I don't need to know,” Cammie said. “It's our wine, so we can drink it however we want.”

“Then I'm getting ice.” Kat started for the kitchen. “Some for my wine and some for my back.”

“What happened to your back?” Ginger asked.

“Cast your mind back,” Kat said. “Remember a few months ago when I had major surgery and that giant scar?”

“But I thought that was healing well!” Ginger fluttered around Kat, brimming with maternal concern. “The doctors said you were on the mend.”

“It's never going to be the way it was.” Kat opened the freezer and pulled out an old-fashioned tray of ice cubes. “I'll be lucky if I can do fifty percent of what I used to.”

“Knees and backs don't last forever,” Ginger conceded. “But you're still so young and healthy. You have years and years ahead of you.”

“That's the problem. I have all these years and nothing to do with them. I don't even want to think about the future.” Kat distributed ice into everyone's glasses. “He'll never admit it, but I think Josh was kind of excited when I got hurt. He keeps saying that now we can do all the things we were putting off. Travel for fun, watch all the movies I never had time for.” She swallowed hard. “Have kids.”

Ginger squeaked with joy at this prospect, then forced herself to temper her enthusiasm. “Well. Not that it's any of my business—”

“Agreed.”

“—but this
would
be a good time to have children. The clock is ticking, you know.”

Cammie expected her cousin to bristle, but Kat looked contemplative. “I know you're right. But I don't want to do anything. When I think about having kids, I just feel . . . flat.”

“But you'll do it, anyway.” Ginger said firmly. “Right?”

Cammie curtailed the conversation by raising her glass. “Let's drink. To my mother.”

They all clinked glasses and sipped. “Hmmm,” Cammie said.

“Hmmm,” Kat said.

“And by ‘hmmm,' you mean ‘delectable.'” This was a statement, not a question. Ginger took a second sip.

“Tastes like summer,” Kat said.

“I don't think I've ever had fruit wine before,” Cammie said between sips. Clean and bright and subtly sweet, the wine did indeed taste like summer. “Where has this been all my life?”

“It's classy,” Ginger informed them. “Ladylike.”

“I don't know about ‘ladylike.'” Kat threw back the rest of her wine in one gulp. “I like it, and I'm no lady.”

“And you never get tired of proving that to me.” Ginger put her glass down on the counter. “Well, there's more where this came from. I've got bottles and bottles in the basement. I'm refining my technique.”

“How much do you think we're going to drink, Mom? We do have to work sometimes.”

“It's not for you, you goose.” Ginger waved this away. “It's for the tastings. I'll make strawberry wine all summer while we wait for the grapes to grow.” She appealed to Cammie. “Do you think people will buy it?”

Cammie appealed to Kat. “You're the marketing guru, right? Can you whip up a pretty little label?”

Kat snickered. “Have you ever seen me draw?”

“No, now that you mention it.”

“There's a reason I went into extreme sports instead of the visual arts.”

“But what about your gear?” Cammie asked. “The boards you designed? All those T-shirts?”

“I told a design team what I liked and they took care of the details.” Kat reached for the bottle and poured a second helping. “Oh, and we had focus groups tell us what they thought of the products before we finalized production. That, I remember. We should round up a focus group.”

“I hate to be a killjoy, but we're in Black Dog Bay,” Ginger said. “Where are we going to find a focus group?”

Cammie put down her still-full glass of wine and snagged Ginger's car keys from the little brass hook on the cabinet. “I think I know just the place.”

•   •   •

“Refreshing,” Jenna, the Whinery's owner, decreed.

“Sweet.” Hollis, who owned Black Dog Books, took another sip. “But not
offensively
sweet.”

“Makes me want to get a tattoo,” Summer Benson said.

Cammie turned to Summer, her pen poised above her yellow legal pad. “Is that a good thing?”

“I only get tattoos when I'm in a really good mood,” Summer assured her.

Cammie wrote down the feedback. “So, you would buy a bottle of this if you got a sample at a tasting?”

“I would,” Jenna said.

“That's very encouraging.” Ginger saw her opening and took it. “Any chance you'd be willing to stock it here? I have a bunch more bottles brewing in the basement.”

“That's a lot of
b
's,” Hollis marveled.

Cammie addressed Jenna, wine slinger to wine slinger. “Please excuse her. She doesn't understand how this works.”

“Don't patronize me,” Ginger said.

“I'm not, but it's not that easy to add a new menu item.” Cammie tried to explain. “You've got to reprint the wine list, rearrange existing inventory, figure out your price point. . . . It's a lot.”

“Well, you can come in here one morning and take care of all that for her, since you know so much.” Ginger put her arm around Cammie's shoulder and told Jenna, “I volunteer her.”

Jenna tilted her head, considering.

“It's local, it's seasonal, it's pink,” Kat the marketing guru threw in.

“It'd fit right in with our house specialties.” Jenna pointed to the chalkboard overhead, which described a cocktail called the Cure for the Common Breakup.

Cammie glanced around, taking in the bar, the tables, the candy dishes with a pang of longing and envy. “This place is amazing. You've really built something special.”

Jenna's smile tightened. “Eh.”

“No, really. You've got ambience and a distinct customer base. This place stands apart from all the driftwood-and-life-preserver beach bars up and down the coast.”

“Plus, you give us M&M's,” Summer pointed out. “You win. Everything. Forever.”

“This is exactly what so many people want to create when they go into the restaurant business,” Cammie said. “I wish I could've done what you've done.”

Jenna stood up straighter. “You want it?”

Cammie blinked. “What?”

“Make me an offer. I'm serious.”

This sparked a small riot among the clientele:

“Don't even joke about that!”

“You can't sell this place. We need you, Jenna.”

“You don't need me.” Jenna rubbed her palm against her forehead. “You need the bar. The community. The candy. You guys could get along just fine without me.” She turned to grab a pink dishtowel.

“We could not,” Hollis insisted. “We would wither away and die.”

“Why would you walk away from all this?” Cammie asked.

“You mean the late nights? The working weekends? The constant stream of people on their worst behavior after a breakup?”

“But . . . but the
ambience
,” Cammie countered. “The location. You have my dream job.”

Jenna kept smiling, and Cammie thought about how the impromptu wine tasters had said those very same words to her and Ginger and Kat, while they dealt with leaky irrigation systems, crack-of-dawn fungicide application, and dwindling cash reserves.

“You want my job?” Jenna asked. “Dream no more. Write up a halfway decent offer, and your wish is granted.”

Cammie allowed herself to imagine it for a moment, then faced reality. “I can't.”

“That's right.” Ginger patted her hand. “She's already working on
my
dream job.”

“Plus, I have no money,” Cammie admitted.

“Well, if you know anyone else who'd like to buy a bar full of M&M's and pink toile . . .”