He clearly didn’t want to talk about that anymore, okay.
“So is it my turn now?” she asked.
He shook his head.
“No. I mean, yes, of course, if you want, but when I said that I’ll-go-first thing, I didn’t mean you had to go next. I didn’t mean to say all of that, it was just, being around my mom today made me feel . . . Anyway, sorry about that.”
Margot waved that away.
“No apology necessary. I’m just your neighbor Margot, remember? Neighbors talk about stuff like this.” She paused. “Family stuff is hard sometimes,” she said, in a different, quieter voice.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
* * *
LUKE GLANCED OVER AT Margot, who was looking at him with such an open, caring expression that he had to look away. He really hadn’t meant to say all of that. Especially not the stuff about how he was disappointed in himself, how sometimes he felt like he’d really left because he couldn’t hack it, that he wasn’t good enough. Great, now Margot would think he wasn’t good enough—that was the last thing he wanted. It was far too easy to talk to her, that was the problem.
“Speaking of family,” she said. “You’re probably wondering why I was threatening fratricide earlier.”
He laughed, glad that she’d broken into his thoughts.
“I mean I was, but really, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.”
“I know,” she said. “But I can’t just throw murder out there on the table and then never finish the story. That sounds like the beginning to every murder mystery I’ve ever read, and I don’t want to be cast as the prime suspect.” She hesitated. “But . . . if this is weird for you, for me to talk about my brother, since . . .”
“I can’t imagine how it would be weird,” he cut in. “I don’t even know your brother. I’m just your neighbor Luke.”
She laughed at that.
“Oh, right. I forgot.”
He could tell she needed someone to listen to her. Maybe even that she wanted him to listen to her?
“When I—when we—inherited Noble Family Vineyards from Uncle Stan, it was a shock,” she said. “To me, and I think to everyone else in the family, Elliot included. We all expected it to go to Elliot. Just Elliot. He’d worked for Uncle Stan for years, everyone knew he was destined to be the winemaker here someday. Everyone knew—or, I guess, thought they knew—that the ‘Family’ in Noble Family Vineyards meant Elliot. No one thought it meant me.” She shook her head. “That’s unfair to Uncle Stan—that makes it sound like he never told me it meant me, too, or that I thought he didn’t love me. That couldn’t be further from the truth. He was wonderful to me, we loved each other a lot. I spent a ton of time with him at the winery. But . . . I just assumed—we all did—that the winery would go to Elliot. Uncle Stan had been sick for a while, but he didn’t tell us he was sick until it was pretty close to the end, and the end came faster than he thought it would. He’d said he had something to talk to me about, but by the time I saw him, he wasn’t . . . he couldn’t really talk about anything.”
Luke kept his eyes on the road as she said all of this. He wanted to give Margot her privacy, but he also wanted to know if she was okay. Should he comfort her in some way? Or at least, attempt to? Her voice was steady, but that meant nothing. Margot was good at masking her emotions, he knew that much about her.
He risked a glance over at her, but she was looking away from him, out the passenger-side window, so he couldn’t see what, if anything, her face would tell him.
“How did you find out?” he asked her. “About the winery, I mean.”
She turned back toward him.
“Elliot told me. The day after Uncle Stan died. He thought I already knew—I think he didn’t realize that Uncle Stan hadn’t told me. He said something about what ‘we’ would do with the winery, and I said ‘we?’ He had a stone face about it, like Elliot does about everything, so I thought he was okay with it. But I was stunned.”
She dug down into her bag and pulled out a water bottle and took a sip.
“It wasn’t until I overheard him talking to one of our cousins. Someone on our mom’s side who’s never really liked me. We were all at the winery, after the funeral, and as I was coming out of the bathroom, I overheard Jimmy saying, ‘I can’t believe Stan left this place to you and Margot. Why would he do something like that?’ I probably shouldn’t have listened, but I’m sure there isn’t a person alive who wouldn’t have done the same thing. Elliot said, ‘Margot and Stan were very close. He loved her very much.’ Which would have been fine. But then Jimmy kept pushing. He said, ‘But come on—Margot? You deserve this place, she doesn’t! She’s not actually going to do anything here. She’ll get bored with it in a heartbeat, and then what are you going to do?’?”
Margot paused, but Luke could tell something else was coming.
“And then Elliot said, and I’ll never forget this, ‘Of course she doesn’t deserve it. But when that happens, I’ll figure it out.’?” She let out a long breath. “I didn’t think Elliot would say something like that. But Elliot doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.”
She was silent again. Luke wanted to reach for her hand, but he knew he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry, Margot. And you’ve had to work with him ever since, knowing that? Have you ever talked to him about it?”
She shook her head.
“What would I say? ‘Oh, by the way, I know you don’t think I deserve this place’? What would be the point? It wouldn’t change anything.”
“Have you been trying to prove yourself to him ever since?” he asked. And then immediately regretted it. He shouldn’t have asked her that.
But she just sighed.
“Yeah, probably. Well—at first, definitely. Who knows, if I hadn’t overheard that, maybe I wouldn’t have come to work at the winery at all. Maybe I would have just hired someone, dropped by from time to time. Instead, I quit my job and threw myself into being the CEO of Noble, learning everything I could about the wine business. Now for the most part, I’m focused on my work on the business side, and I’m working hard for the sake of the winery, not Elliot. But sometimes . . . now it’s less that I’m trying to prove myself to Elliot, but more trying to prove to Elliot that I love the winery just as much as he does. Maybe in a different way than he does, but I love it, nonetheless, and everything I do, I’m doing for the good of the winery, even though he has very different ideas on what is for the good of the winery.” She sighed again. “I just wish . . . Elliot and I were close, before. But ever since then, there’s been a barrier between the two of us. Even with something like today—I thought it was going to be a fun, relaxed day together, and it was, and then he got all closed up and stone-faced, yet again, and I was frustrated, and then he hurt my feelings, and I got angry at him, and wow, I shouldn’t have told you a single word of that.”
“Margot. I would never . . . This might be a weird thing to say, but you can trust me. I won’t say anything about this. To anyone.”
She looked at him, for the first time since she’d started this story.
“Thanks. I appreciate that. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t highly unprofessional to spill all of my business and my brother’s business and our business’s business to one of our—”
“To Luke, your neighbor,” he cut in. “And maybe even your friend?”
She gave him a faint smile, but it was a smile, nonetheless.
“To Luke, my neighbor. And my friend,” she said. She looked at him sideways.
“Speaking of friends—you mentioned Avery. You two are close?”
He pushed the next question he was about to ask her away.
“Yeah, she’s one of my best friends,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows at him.
“Your mom seemed to think there was more going on there.”
Oh God, what had his mom said to Margot while he hadn’t been there? He made himself laugh.
“My mom would think that. We dated for something like three weeks back in high school, and then we realized we were much better as friends. But my mom has wanted us to get back together for years. I’ve tried to tell her it’s never going to happen, but she won’t believe either of us.”
Was he just imagining it, or did she relax against her seat when he said that?
“Avery told me she just had a hard breakup? How’s she doing?”
Avery must have mentioned that at their breakfast.
“I think she’s doing okay, but with Avery, you never know. I couldn’t stand that guy, she’s way better off without him, which—”