Everyone applauded, my father moving to the center of the stage, a small podium to speak behind.
The entire party was semicircled around him. My family stood together behind him but we weren’t together. My mother stood by me, Finn next to him, trying not to look at Margaret, Bobby off to the side. The twins held on to their parents’ legs. Exhausted. Exhausted from the party and maybe from taking care of their parents.
Henry stood on the edge of the tent, his eyes focused on my mother.
Ben was near him, Michelle and Maddie a few steps behind. He met my eyes and tried to give me a smile. I looked away.
Then I saw Jacob, Lee standing by his side. He was looking at my father, my father, who was staring at this party of two hundred people, my father, who was the reason so many of them were standing there. And tonight, because he could, my father put on his baseball cap, Cork Dork embroidered on the lid.
They laughed. My father turned the cap around, backward, and then he picked up the bottle of wine. “Jen is going to cork this, but I bet you guys are expecting a speech from me first.”
“We are!” Gary called out.
“You ain’t getting one,” he said. “I have nothing to say to any of you.”
Then he turned to my mother again.
“Except you.”
He motioned for her to join him by the podium, which she did.
My father turned the microphone off. Then he whispered to my mother what she most needed to hear.
“What the hell are you saying, Dan?” Louise said. “Speak the fuck up, people.”
But my father was looking only at my mother, waiting for her response.
My mother reached for my father, the way she had done a thousand times before, the way I’d taken for granted that she would do a thousand times more. My mother reached for my father and held him to her, everyone applauding. It took just a minute to realize what they were doing, which at first looked like huddling. My father’s tapping foot giving it away, my mother’s shoulders swaying. They were dancing. Terribly and wonderfully. And together.
Then Henry screamed from his place on the edge of the tent. Henry screamed loudly.
“Fire,” he said.
Over the applause, it sounded like liar. So we didn’t see it for a second, what was happening, where Henry was pointing.
He pointed toward a blast of smoke. It was coming from the winemaker’s cottage, smoke and rising flames. A fire.
“Oh, shit,” Bobby said.
We all started moving as fast as we could down the hill, toward the cottage. I was up front with Finn and Bobby and my parents, sheer terror driving us. Ben and Jacob were close behind, Jacob dialing 911 as he ran. The rest of the party—all two hundred of them—making their way down the hill to try and help. Lee and Henry, Margaret carrying the twins, Michelle holding Maddie.
“The fire department is on its way!” Jacob called out just as we reached the wine cottage, the smoke and heat from the fire hitting us, pushing us all back.
Ben put his arm in front of me, put his body in front.
“Jesus!” my mother called out, my father holding her back. She turned and saw Margaret and the twins, Michelle and Maddie, higher on the hill. It wasn’t high enough for her.
“Get the kids out of here!” she said.
There was no arguing with that voice. They didn’t want to argue. Margaret and Michelle were already steering the children away.
“Stand back,” Finn said.
Bobby and Finn each triggered a fire extinguisher. Ben ran forward to stand by their sides.
My heart threatened to pound right out of my chest. In weather this dry, the cottage was like kindling—the wind blowing strong, the fire threatening to spread to the vineyard around it, if we didn’t do something. Fast.
Finn aimed the fire extinguisher, high, getting as close to the porch as possible. But the fire extinguisher looked like it wasn’t going to be able to take the fire down. It looked like it was flaming it.
Finn started coughing, still pushing forward.
My father moved forward. “It’s enough.”
I could hear the sirens, still far away.
Bobby stepped forward. “Get back, Dad,” he said.
Then he aimed the fire extinguisher even higher, the wind catching the fire, pulling it toward the vineyard.
The wine cottage porch started to collapse.
“Let it go,” my father called out.
Ben turned and looked at me, deep sorrow in his eyes.
I looked straight ahead at the wine cottage, the smoke wafting over it, moving toward the vineyard. I started to move forward, toward the fire, as if I could do what no one else had been able to do. As if I could stop it before it got to the vineyard.
I could feel a hand on my arm, stopping me. Jacob. I met his eyes.
“No,” he said.
Then a bolt of thunder exploded in the sky. It came quickly: the rain following, splashing down, a waterfall. The thunder crashing onto the edge of the vineyard.
I looked up at the pouring rain, hard, deep pellets hitting my skin.
The rain heaped down, pushing through the cottage, the fire engines’ sirens getting closer.
The water was taking care of the fire, the flames receding beneath the downpour. Relief seeped through me.
Synchronization. Wasn’t this the definition? A fire hits a vineyard. And then, like a miracle, it starts to pour. It was overdue to pour but it starts then, pressing down at the fire.
And then I looked toward the vineyard and I realized. The rain. The rain that was saving the vineyard. It would ruin the grapes that were still on the vine—Block 14, my father’s most valuable grapes. We had to get to them first. All of us realized it at once.
“Move!” Bobby said. “Move.”
We took flight, me and Finn and Bobby, Jacob and Ben not far behind us, my mother and father not far behind them. The entire family ran through the vineyard to get to the rest of the grapes. The messy, wonderful business of getting the job done for each other when you most needed to.
We arrived at Block 14 and started pulling at the soaking grapes. We pulled at the clusters even without clippers, grabbing the available buckets from beneath the vines.
The fire trucks’ sirens were loud and close, the firemen arriving to help with the fight.
It was why I didn’t hear it at first, none of us heard it, through the rain, through the running.
My father was down on the ground.
Holding on to my mother.
Limp, listless. In her arms.
Part 4
The Last Harvest
The Waiting Room There was a moment before we were in the car racing to the hospital. There was a moment before we all stopped what we were doing and started moving toward our father. But that moment was blurred. By the rain, by the sound of my mother. What was clear was what came next. We were racing to the hospital, almost as soon as we saw my father there. Finn driving, me in the passenger seat, my mother holding my father in the back, Bobby and Margaret and Ben in the car behind. All of us were too scared to wait for the ambulance, needing to do something, leaving the kids behind with Michelle, all the kids staying with the movie star.