Marie didn’t want to follow the chef. Not anymore. She wanted Dan. He wanted her too, though not in the same way. He wasn’t harboring the illusions she was, that he could leave everything and stay here with her. People did such things for love, or what they named as love so they could justify doing what they wanted regardless of the people who needed them.
But their closeness was weighing on him, like a drum in his ear, in his heart. It was starting to feel like an answer to a question he didn’t know he had been asking. He hoped she didn’t notice. He brought up Jen twice to avoid her noticing. She nodded and smiled. Because it didn’t matter to her. This wife that lived on the other side of an ocean was as irrelevant as the chef. Marie was young. What mattered to her was what she wanted.
They were eating dinner, the way they did many nights together, no one else within twenty miles of this place, a fire in the fireplace, music, her bad French music, on the stereo.
Marie couldn’t cook like Jen could. Marie was an amazing winemaker, but in the kitchen she made two things well. She made a green garlic soup and toasted bread. They had that most nights. Tonight was no different.
Except for this. When Marie disappeared from the table, he cleaned the dishes. He cleaned the dishes and got ready to retire for the evening. Turning down the music, wiping off the table. Then she walked back in. Naked.
“Come here,” she said.
He smiled. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. What are you doing?”
They had spent days walking in the vineyard together. They had taken bike rides down the coast and slept on the beach. They had drunk too much wine one night and fallen asleep on the couch head to feet. When he woke up, he hadn’t moved. He had gone back to sleep.
He shouldn’t have done those things, but they were on one side of a line that kept him with his wife. She was starting to feel imaginary so far away. But he knew she wasn’t. Just like he knew that wasn’t what Marie was asking for now.
He had drunk an extra glass of wine. She had encouraged it. It was making it hard to walk out the door. It was making him think that he shouldn’t walk out the door. Maybe he should walk toward her instead. No one would know. He would barely even know. When he went back to Northern California, wouldn’t Marie feel as far away as his family felt from him now? She would.
She was beautiful. She was naked.
And she wanted him.
What he did next would determine everything.
The Last Family Dinner (Part 2) When my parents decided to build the barrel room, Finn nicknamed it the Great Barrel Room, mostly because it ended up costing them more than my parents had spent on their actual house, red door included. The Great Barrel Room, slightly off the wine cave. It was an inviting room, with its wooden rafters and a stone fireplace, white lights wrapped around the oak beams.
My father had built the room for Bobby and Margaret’s wedding so they would have a place in which to get married.
It housed some of my father’s most valued wine barrels and was home to the few tastings my father did on the property. It was also where, in recent years, we’d started having our family dinner during the last weekend of the harvest.
Family dinner. The most intimate celebration with the people for whom the harvest meant the most.
But first, it had been for their wedding. Their gorgeous, intimate wedding, the happiest bride and groom. Bobby was truly joyous his entire wedding day, not leaving Margaret once the entire evening.
Which made it ironic to be sitting in there tonight: the room where we got to witness that kind of love, while Margaret and Bobby were standing outside of it, fighting.
My mother had set a gorgeous table, covered with daisies and baskets of fresh raisin bread, homemade herb butter. She refused to bring out the meal, though, until everyone was there. But everyone wasn’t there. Ben sat between Maddie and the twins, all three kids stuffing their faces with the homemade bread (the twins picking out the raisins). My parents were at either end of the table. Then there was only me, surrounded by empty seats, where Finn should have been seated, where Bobby and Margaret should have been seated.
Finn was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t even arrived home yet. And Bobby and Margaret stood out in the cave, arguing loudly, in the way you did when you were yelling, but keeping your voices down at the same time. The rest of us pretended we didn’t hear them—my mother focused entirely on the twins, on giving them more buttered bread, on ignoring my father’s gaze.
My father, meanwhile, was the one closest to the doorway. He gripped the edge of the table, trying to decide whether to go outside and interrupt them.
“You can’t seriously be saying that!” Margaret yelled.
My father caught my eyes and shook his head, looking down at the bread baskets in the middle of the table, the drooping daisies. He wanted to do something to turn this meal around—this meal that he looked forward to all year. His kids back in one place, the new family members along with them. All celebrating another harvest, another job well done.
My father banged on the table. “You know? Let’s just eat.”
This was directed at my mother, but I jumped up ready to do it, so there was activity. “Good idea,” I said.
I headed for the serving bench, past my mother, before she could argue that she was going to do it, past Ben, before he could get up and help. I kept moving toward the pot roast, like it was going to save the evening. Maybe it would. My mother’s pot roast, with its plump tomatoes and roasted onions, too much brandy.
I put on her oven mitts and gingerly picked up the pan, the roast rich and robust, not suffering from its extra time waiting for us.
I put the roast down in the middle of the table.
“That looks wonderful!”
We looked up to see Margaret entering the barrel room, Bobby behind her. They had smiles painted on their faces, Margaret’s aimed at the pot roast, Bobby’s aimed at the twins.
Bobby took the seat next to mine, Margaret sitting on his other side, looking like she’d rather take the seat on my other side, the one between me and my mother. Finn’s seat. But she sat where she always did between Bobby and my father.
Margaret scooted the chair over so she was near my father, as near as she could get, like he was going to protect her if Bobby threw the succulent roast at her. She was smart. Beneath his smile, he looked like he wanted to do that.
I reached over, tentatively tapping Bobby on the back, trying to be comforting to him. It was a mistake. Bobby looked like he was about to explode, and my touch only tightened him up.
Bobby looked across the table, nodding in Ben’s direction, their first and only hello. Ben gave him a nod back, giving me a supportive smile.
Then Bobby reached immediately, and deliberately, for the wine.
At another moment, Bobby would have wondered what had changed with Ben and me that had Ben sitting at this table. But Bobby wasn’t thinking about that. He wasn’t thinking about anything except what he’d overheard in the bathroom.
Luckily, Josh called out to Bobby, distracting him. “Daddy . . .”
He looked across the table at his son. He gave him a genuine smile. “Yes, what?”
“Where’s Uncle Finn?”