Season of Change

“Tell me about the vineyards. I drove by, but you weren’t there. The vines look—”

“Like they need tying off and cutting back. I know, Dad.”

He walked my vineyards?

Her father was one of Northern California’s best vineyard managers. He loved his vines almost as much as he loved his family, as proven by how well he groomed both his vineyards and his children’s careers. Three times Christine had made the leap from one winery to another. Three times it had been because her father proved her wine-making values had been compromised.

There wouldn’t be a fourth.

Too bad she hadn’t told her father that.

No doubt recognizing the warning signs of a long conversation, Nana sank into the massive recliner with an annoyed huff. She was so short and petite, she practically disappeared into the cushions.

There’s still time to cut him off.

Her father only had eyes for Christine. Or rather, Christine’s latest challenge. “You should have some interesting Cab because—”

“The eucalyptus shades the southwestern corner in the afternoon. The grapes from those vines won’t be as tannic.” He stepped on her territory without an invitation. Primal instincts knotted between her shoulder blades, urging her to defend her turf. Instead, Christine patted his sunspotted hand and strove for peace. “That’s perfect for small blocks of wine. I’ve got this, Dad.”

“And I’ve got your back, like always.” He grinned.

With effort, Christine held on to her smile. She had every reason to be happy—overseeing the final phase of a winery construction, producing small lots of high-quality wine. It was every winemaker’s dream. She shoved aside the memory of Slade’s quirking eyebrow. Held back knee-quaking concerns about wine storage. She’d make this place shine. Without her father’s interference.

Nana folded the towel in her lap, patted it, and looked at Christine with raised silver brows.

“It means so much that you came by today,” Christine said at the same time that her dad asked, “What about these bosses of yours? They’re still committed to making the good stuff?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. Slade wanted to make fine wine. He just wanted to make too much too soon. If they’d spent their contingency budget, they were probably anxious for the winery to turn a profit. She just had to make sure they stayed patient. She had at least a year to convince Slade slow growth was the way to go.

“Because if they’re not,” her father said, “you need to keep your eyes open to other possibilities.”

Christine plucked at the hem of her T-shirt. “Dad, it’s my first day.” And as with other first days—the fourth grade, college, an internship, her first full-time job—her dad was being overprotective.

“These boys are different,” Nana said. “They promised this winery will turn things around here.”

Brad rolled his eyes. “I have more experience with winery owners than you do, Agnes. Owners’ principles are easily bent beneath the weight of budgets. You’d be surprised at how quickly the focus turns to case volume and profit margins.”

Christine hoped this was one time her father was wrong. He respected profit goals, just not at the expense of wine quality. If Brad got wind of what he considered mistreatment of his grapes and vines, he was on to a new property quicker than you could say You did what? A phrase her mother had shrieked too often, followed by days of tears and tension.

Her dad knew when someone was cutting corners or expanding too quickly, unable to uphold the promise of quality wine in the bottle. He knew before anything was confirmed, probably because he’d worked at so many different wineries his connections were tremendous. He was the one who’d told Christine that her boss had gone behind her back and disregarded their blending plan. He was the one who told Christine it was time to draw a line in the sand and leave the position as head winemaker at the prestigious Ippolito Cellars.

I knew I never should have hired an Alexander. Spiteful words from Cami Ippolito when Christine gave notice. Your family isn’t known for its loyalty.

But they were known for their high-quality standards. And Christine did have her dad to thank for that, no matter how extreme he was at times.

Blame in the wine industry was like red wine stains on your clothing—impossible to remove. Christine didn’t want to be the scapegoat for a disappointing wine she hadn’t created or approved, even if it meant leaving the employer she’d thought of as her friend in a bind.

Nana waited until Brad left to ask, “Did you burn a bridge with Cami, dear?”

“I blew up the bridge as efficiently as the one over the River Kwai.” Her grandmother would understand the war-movie reference. There was no going back.

“You don’t have to change a career every time your father says so.” Nana began pulling out chicken and vegetables for dinner, setting ingredients on the kitchen’s pink Formica countertop. The kitchen also boasted a pink tile backsplash and whitewashed cabinets with a tinge of pink. Being in Nana’s kitchen was like being in a young girl’s dream house, polar opposite of the modern, masculine living room her grandfather had loved. “I don’t know how many times your mother and I have told you and your brother, but you don’t seem to want to listen. This is your life, not your father’s.”

“I wouldn’t make a career move just because Dad wants me to.” No, Christine took lots of convincing, collected her facts, and corroborated Dad’s theories. And then she leaped. “His career has been stellar. His reputation for quality unparalleled.” She could only dream of such greatness. She’d chosen to dream big here while saving the majority of her salary so that her next move would be to her own winery.

“Have you ever thought that for all his high-and-mighty principles that just once your father may have done something wrong? Or perhaps he could have stayed and made it right?” Nana pulled a big knife out of a butcher block. “Most people don’t run at the first sign of trouble. There’s your personal honor and then there’s loyalty. Honorable people stand by when things go haywire. Relationships are what make this life worth living, not your reputation.”

“He never ran from Mom.” Christine washed her hands, intending to help make dinner.

Nana shook her head. “Did you ever think that it was your mother who didn’t run?”

Christine had. But she didn’t like to.

Because what was she supposed to think of her dad if she did?

* * *

SLADE LOOKED AT the Death and Divorce House, trying to see it the way his girls did.

White peeling paint. Drapes closed across all the windows except the two upstairs. Lopsided green mailbox hanging by the front door. He watered the lawn, but it wasn’t the green gem of Old Man Takata’s next door.

“It’s not Park Avenue.” Inside or out. He led the girls up the front steps, opened the unlocked door, and turned on the light above the foyer. There was nothing charming about the place. It was hot and shadowy. Tomblike.

In three steps from the front door, you could be on the stairs, be in the hallway leading to the kitchen, or be in the living room, with its tan velour couch, the scarred coffee tables, an old television, and his father’s brown leather wing chair. The best that could be said about the house was that it had dark planked wood floors.

“I’ve kept everything the way it was when your grandfather...left.” Slade flipped on the oscillating fan in the living room and then pointed toward the television. “Don’t count on anything other than basic cable.”

He headed toward the kitchen, hesitating in the narrow doorway when he realized they’d paused at the stairwell. Both girls stared upstairs, trepidation in their gaze. Grace reached for Faith’s hand as if they knew...

Impossible.

“You can eat anything you want in the kitchen. I warn you, I eat healthy.” Not that his body was a temple, but he disliked stripping down to a tank top to work out, so he watched what he ate instead.

His brain registered what it hadn’t wanted to for months—the kitchen was outdated and in need of some serious repair. A drawer had come off its glider. Cabinet hinges were loose, leaving cabinet doors lopsided. And the linoleum... Goldenrod polka dots had been fashionable during the swinging seventies.

Slade turned around. “We’ll need to make a run into Cloverdale for groceries.” He often ate at Flynn’s. He supposed that would have to change while his daughters were here.

His daughters were here.

He’d tried for years to obtain unsupervised visitation. They were here and he was happy, wasn’t he? Or he would’ve been happy if he could’ve arranged for the three of them to stay somewhere else. Somewhere without the memory of death and horrendous mistakes. He could still take them elsewhere.

But then he imagined Evy’s smirk when he told her they hadn’t stayed in the house. Where they slept shouldn’t matter to the girls. They didn’t know the house had a past. Or that he shared in it. Taking them to a hotel would mean Evy won.

Sticking with his decision, he led them upstairs, unable to shut out the memory of the last time the girls had been here when they were two years old. Evy’s screams. The horror on her face. Her accusations that everything was his fault. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again.

“You’ll be staying in the guest bedroom,” he said. It had two single beds his mother had set up for when her twin sisters visited. He pointed out his room and the bathroom, ignoring the door to the master bedroom completely.

* * *

SILENCE WASN’T GOLDEN.

The girls were mute as he carried their possessions upstairs. The girls sat wordlessly in the truck’s backseat during the thirty-minute drive to and from Cloverdale to shop for groceries and pick up pizza. They played on a tablet after dinner without speaking while he sat in his father’s chair, which always made him feel as if he didn’t belong in the house. The back was too stiff. His legs were too long.

“How was school this year?”

Silence.

“Do you belong to any clubs? Girl Scouts? Sports teams?”

Silence.

“What’s school going to be like next year?”

Silence.

And they moved like ninjas over the normally creaky floorboards.

The house was used to the quiet. Slade was used to the quiet. But he’d expected the girls to be chatty or fidgety or sighing with boredom, breaking the stillness, not adding to the taciturn hush.

He took out the kitchen trash, listening to the sounds of the night—crickets, the rustle of leaves in the poplar in back, a distant bullfrog by the river. Some nights he sat in an old chaise longue in the backyard until the stars faded, preferring to be where there was noise than in a stagnant house full of soured memories. He hoped he wouldn’t add the twins’ visit to his the list of disappointing recollections.

“That you, Jennings?” It was Old Man Takata sitting on his front porch.

There was just enough light from a streetlamp hidden behind a tree across the street to see smoke rising from Takata’s porch. The man loved his cigars.

Slade crossed their parallel driveways, stopping on the edge of Takata’s perfectly bladed weed-free lawn, because no one walked across that golf-course-worthy green without risking a tirade. “Enjoying the cool breeze?”

Takata scoffed and resumed puffing on his cigar.

Slade waited. He knew his neighbor was building up to something. He’d had enough dealings with the former undertaker to know when the old man had something on his mind.

Takata didn’t disappoint. “It’s not so bad out here, is it? Inside it’s always too quiet, like I’m waiting for Nancy to say something...” Nancy being his deceased wife. “Only she never does.”

Air left Slade’s lungs in a rush. The older man nailed it. Slade always felt as if he was listening for his father’s voice, waiting for him to say everything was going to be okay.

Before he could formulate a response, Takata dismissed him. “Best get inside to your girls. Old houses can be intimidating at night.”

Later, as Slade lay in the twin bed of his youth, contemplating the ceiling and listening to his daughters’ unintelligible whispers through the shared bedroom wall, he thought about Takata’s words.

And tried not to listen.

CHAPTER THREE

SLADE MADE BREAKFAST early the next morning. Turkey bacon, scrambled eggs, whole-wheat toast. After breakfast he planned to update Flynn and Will on their need of a wine cave and recommend a course of action. His palms grew sweaty at the thought of admitting they needed more capital or a larger operating budget. The omission didn’t rest completely on his shoulders, but it felt as if it did.

He was piling the eggs into a serving bowl when the back of his neck prickled. A glance over his shoulder revealed it was the girls, standing shoulder to shoulder in the doorway. Evangeline was right. Today the Goth was gone. Matching embroidered turquoise peasant blouses. Matching skinny jeans. Matching black cloth loafers. Their hair fell in single black braids down their backs.

“I can see your pretty eyes.” Yesterday, he’d been happy to note beneath those blond bangs they were still green—no colored contacts. Today, he was relieved their hair was still black. He’d been afraid they’d hid hot-pink hair under their wigs. “You got your eye color from your grandmother Jennings.”

They remained mute.

“What would you like to do after I get a little work done this morning?” He pretended they were as excited to be here as he was to be with them. “Go shopping? See a movie?”

The girls exchanged glances.

He’d read about twin speak, but he’d never seen his girls employ it before this visit.

It was as if Faith blinked and said, Dad’s such a loser.

And Grace twitched her nose and said, Tell me about it.

Slade’s cell phone rang. He answered, putting it on speaker while he ate. “What’s up, Flynn?”

“Our new sheriff rolled into town last night.” Slade could hear the smile in Flynn’s voice. “I guess the mayor handed him the keys to the jail without checking it out first. A pipe must have busted during a winter freeze. The floors are ruined upstairs. The walls and ceiling are ruined downstairs. And the jail-cell bars are rusted.”

“Sounds like the sheriff’s in need of a plumber.” Slade buttered his toast, feeling the stirrings of interest.

A few months back, Flynn had started doing small repairs for some of the elderly town residents. After the requests morphed into a regular weekly to-do list, Flynn had recruited Slade and Will, and sometimes Flynn’s father, who was a skilled construction worker, to help. As much as Slade wanted to leave town, fixing it up made it easier to stay.

“I put a call in, but the walls, floor, and ceiling need to be demolished so the plumber can see the damage.” Flynn paused, then joked, “I’ll lock you in the jail cell if you like, Slade, and we’ll see just how rusted those bars are.”

The twins blinked at Slade’s phone.

“I’d rather lock up the mayor. Isn’t that his building?” It was just like Mayor Larry to pinch pennies and lease the building to the county sheriff’s office without checking its condition. Slade spooned some egg and a slice of bacon onto his toast and folded it over like a sandwich. “Where did our new sheriff sleep?”

“Nate was lucky. He spent the night at Mayor Larry’s.” Flynn’s delivery was pitch-perfect deadpan. “Nate sent out his SOS this morning. If it was just Larry’s building, I wouldn’t jump in to help. I can’t help feeling responsible for Nate. Before my grandfather passed away, he recruited him.”

“Someday Mayor Larry will find out payback is indeed a cruel and itchy fleabag.” Slade chuckled. “What else is on the list today?”

The girls ignored their food and looked at each other, as if to say, There’s more?

In Harmony Valley, there was always more to do. The elderly population couldn’t keep up on the maintenance of their older homes.

“That wind storm last week blew down a section of Sam’s fence in the back. He said something fell into his Koi pond—”

“Sam has a koi pond? Snarky Sam? Sam who owns the pawnshop?” Slade couldn’t believe it.

“It’s an antiques shop, but business has been slow,” Flynn corrected him, reciting what Sam himself had told them several times. “And Geraldine Durand’s Saint Bernard saw a cat in her backyard and barreled through her screen door.”

The girls’ mouths hung open.

“It was one of Felix’s cats, wasn’t it?” Felix was a retired fireman who rescued felines.

“Yep. Those cats don’t always stay where they’re supposed to.” Flynn yawned. “I’ll meet you in jail in fifteen minutes.”

Slade disconnected and tried not to smile at the girls. “If you want to come help me this morning, you’ll need to eat up. There aren’t any fast-food restaurants or convenience stores in town. What you eat needs to last through jail cells, koi ponds, and large-dog damage.”

They exchanged looks. He couldn’t interpret what they meant. He was just happy he’d found something that might break their silence.

Slade finished his breakfast and rinsed out his dishes before they’d even started theirs. Whatever was going on with the girls, it was intimidating as hell. No wonder Evangeline had dumped them on him. He bet husband number three was spooked.

Slade liked to think he was made of sterner stuff.

* * *

“HAVE A GOOD DAY at work.” Christine’s grandmother waved to her from behind the screen door.

“Thanks.” Christine reached the sidewalk in time to see Slade’s truck take the turns in the town square, his daughters in the backseat.

He honked and raised a hand, presumably to Christine, a house away from the corner, but it might have been for the small old man sitting on the bench below the oak tree with a cane. He waved, as well.

“What was that?” Nana asked, still in her violet chenille housecoat.

“Slade. Headed toward the winery.” Drat. With the size of her to-do list and Slade’s objectives, she’d need to stay one step ahead of him. She’d wanted to get to work before he did.

“Down Main?” her grandmother asked.

“Yes.” Christine hefted her laptop bag higher on her shoulder and hurried off.

“He’s going to jail.”

Christine spun around. “What?”

“We have a new sheriff—well, not officially until the population tops eighty—but he arrived last night and found all kinds of water damage in the jail and the apartment above it.”

It was a relief to know her boss wasn’t being arrested or turning himself in for some heinous crime. “What’s he going to do there? And how did you know about it?”

“Slade’s partnership does minor repairs around town. I suppose they’re going to see what they can do.” Nana cinched her housecoat, looking slightly embarrassed. “As for how I heard, Rose called me this morning. Her granddaughter is engaged to Will, you know.”

Oh, Christine knew, all right. It was one of the consistently repeated mantras in her grandmother’s house: Rose’s granddaughter is marrying a millionaire. As if Christine needed to realize a similar catch was at her fingertips.

She waved as she left, determined not to fish in that pond. Someone tall, dark, with the power to sign her paycheck had showed up in an early-morning dream. Sometimes you just had to let the big fish go, especially when you had plans to be a big fish someday.

The jail was on her way to the winery and was housed in a converted store, with the front office visible through a large plate-glass window. Behind the counter in the back of the space was the jail cell. Daylight came through a large hole in the ceiling. Next to it a large water stain bulged the drywall, threatening to burst. The wall near the stairs was in similar disrepair.

Slade’s twins were sitting on a bench in the jail cell, looking SoHo cute and grinning like normal kids, while a smaller boy with ginger hair locked the door and said, “You’re not getting out until you tell me where the bad guys are hiding.”

“Hi.” Christine stepped inside and rested her laptop bag on the floor.

The little boy turned, clutching the key to the door behind his back. “Who’re you?”

She introduced herself, adding that she worked at the winery. “I’m looking for Slade.”

“I’m Truman.” He came forward to shake her hand, his expression suddenly too serious. “Uncle Slade and Uncle Flynn are upstairs with the sheriff. Do you want to be locked up with Grace and Faith and Abby?”

Christine double checked, but only Slade’s daughters were in the jail cell. “Abby?”

“She’s my dog,” the little would-be sheriff said. A small, mostly black Australian shepherd barked from beneath a bench inside the cell.

“I think I’ll pass, Sheriff Truman.” She made her escape before the boy came up with a reason to lock her up, taking the creaky stairs to the second floor.

Upstairs was a studio apartment—kitchen counter, appliances, small bathroom. A small table and chairs rested haphazardly on top of a small bed in one corner.

Flynn knelt in front of the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink, poking his hammer inside as if trying to bust through a wall. A man she didn’t know was next to him, ripping out floorboards with a crowbar. But it was her boss that Christine couldn’t pull her eyes from. A sharply dressed man on his knees, wielding a big tool. Couldn’t fulfill a woman’s fantasies any better unless he brandished a vacuum.

Slade introduced her to Nate, the sheriff-in-waiting. No one spared more than a glance her way.

“Ma’am.” Nate’s nod was executed with military precision that didn’t disturb the flow of his work. He had gentle eyes and a slow smile.

“Don’t get up.” Christine’s gaze slid to the exposed framework beneath the floor. In one spot she could see through to the linoleum on the first floor below. Definitely not safe enough to cross and politely shake the new sheriff’s hand. “I just stopped by to say hello en route to work.”

“Nice shirt.” Slade pried off another board without so much as looking twice at her navy Wilted Red Roses T-shirt.

“Nice tie,” she shot back, smiling to take out the sting, because it was a truly excellent tie—complex geometric patterns amid bold greens with a silky smooth texture she could see from ten feet away. The man wasn’t buying ties at a bargain store. “Just so you know, the T-shirt thing is a family tradition. My father, uncle, brother, and I all work in the wine industry. We get together at the end of harvest and count how many T-shirts we demolished during the year. I’m talking cracked designs, faded fabric, stains, rips, and tears. There’s also a prize for the tackiest collection of T-shirts, although we made a rule a few years ago—T-shirts with nudity or that are politically incorrect don’t count. My uncle favors political T-shirts. My dad and brother are sports fans. I tend to stick to rock bands and cartoon animals.”

There. She’d explained her casual attire. Maybe now she wouldn’t feel so intimidated by his ties. Her confession didn’t get much of a rise from the men. In fact, they were ignoring her the way men did when they wanted to finish up a physically demanding project.

“I’m going to call around to see about hiring my support team.” Since she was doing double duty as a vineyard manager, she’d need help in all aspects of wine growing and wine making.

“I won’t be around the winery today.” Slade wiped his arm across his forehead.

Christine hadn’t known what she’d expected when she stopped by—an offer to chat over coffee, some last-minute instructions before Slade turned her loose in the vineyards and on his budget. What she got was nothing.

It was like being a kid again, when she’d been advanced into the fourth grade and still been ahead of her peers academically. To make friends in spite of her overachieving academic success among her classmates, she’d perfected her smile. A smile no one noticed today. “Well, the vines are calling.”

The men mumbled goodbyes.