CHAPTER NINE
“Mwreah?” I flop up in bed, flailing about for the ringing thing that woke me from averygood, if problematic, dream where I was inexplicably a 1950s secretary taking dictation from a suited Laine on a loud, clicking typewriter. Only, her mouth was on my ear, breathing the words into me from behind while she grabbed my breast with one hand and fingered me hard in time with the clicking of the keys with the other. I groan, wishing for the secretary dream to come back, but somebody’s shouting at me.
Oh, right. My phone. I find it on the nightstand and yank the charging cord out. The ringing finally stops.Bliss.
“Zoe! You there?” A voice that sounds both far away and too close makes me snuffle awake again. I grab the phone and put it against my head.
“What.”
“Zoe? This is Jamal. Don’t tell me I woke your ass up.”
“Jamal?” I pull the phone back and squint at it before resting it haphazardly on my face. “It’s two a.m. What the hell?”
“This is your friendly neighborhood frost warning. You’ve got approximately twenty minutes to get your smudge pots going before your buds are killed! Now go get Laine—she isn’t answering her phone!”
That wakes meallthe way up. A late spring frost is the worst-case scenario. The low temperature kills the buds and can wipe out entire crops, which would devastate a vineyard the size of ours. We can’t afford to buy replacement grapes like the richer vineyards can, nor can we go all out andhire helicopters to fly over our vines all night, keeping the air moving and preventing the frost from forming like Into the Woods does.
No, us poor outfits do smudge pots.
I leap out of bed, chilling my bare feet as I race around my cold bedroom, throwing on my warmest pair of jeans, boots, and a thick sweater. I grab my coat and scarf, and for the second time today, race down the rows of my vineyard, this time heading for the Treebnb. I haven’t seen Laine since she left Into the Woods on foot with our new foster goat, and I pray she’s home. The cold air assaults the few inches of my exposed skin, slicing through my layers until I shiver. Ironically, these icy winds streaming down the mountains will protect our higher-placed crops from frost forming on their baby buds and tendrils, but they can’t reach the vines located lower on our property.
I take the steps up the spiral staircase to our Treebnb two at a time, clutching the rail. “Laine?” I beat at her door. “Wake up!” Running smudge pots requires all hands on deck, and right now, there are only two sets of hands: mine and Laine’s. Josiah, our vineyard hand, would normally handle these with Dad, but he’s out of town. Not only do you have to haul out your propane-fueled smudge pots—metal chimneys speckled with holes that emit heat from the fire raging inside—you’ve gotta get the fires started, too, then stand guard over them until the frost passes. We only have about five working smudge pots, which means Dad and Josiah end up lighting fires in big steel drums strategically placed around the property to cover the rest.
It’s a lot of work, and with less than twenty minutes? We’ll be lucky to protect half the crops. Damn, this frost came out ofnowhere.
“LAINE!” I bellow, briefly considering using my master key to break in and haul her out of bed when shuffling steps approach the doorway, followed by a string of cursing. She’s at the door a minute later.
“What is it?” she garbles, eyes barely open. There’s something wrong with her face, like her teeth are too big for it.
“Frost!” I exclaim, then realize what’s so weird. “Are you … wearing a retainer?”
“What?” Laine’s eyes widen and she ducks out of sight, spitting hard. “No!”
I literally hear the bulky dental device clatter against the floor, and despite the dire situation, a smirk tugs my upper lip. “Youwere.”
“No, I wasn’t!” Laine snaps over her shoulder, leaving the door open for me. She’s wearing a sports bra and thermal jammy pants that hug the muscular curvature of her body, but all I can think about is the fact that Laine Woods is embarrassed about something.
My smirk grows into a full grin. Laine narrows her eyes at me as she yanks on a sweatshirt, then grabs her jeans from the floor. “What are you looking at?”
“Your beautiful teeth.”
Laine groans, then shoves past me. “Let’s go!”
Two minutes later, we’re running to the barn, stepping lightly past the devil goat all nestled in his stupid hay to get to the smudge pots.
“Have you ever used a smudge pot?” We heave it onto the hand truck, the propane sloshing in its tank below. Thank God Dad preloaded them with fuel for the season.
Laine grimaces. “Nope.”
I exhale a sigh. “Right. Napa. Okay, just follow my lead.”
Together we manage to get the smudge pots in place, setting each one ablaze, but as the temperature continues to drop, it’s woefully clear that we need way more fires across the property to save the buds. I’m drenched in cold sweat beneath my clothes from the labor, but we don’t stop until the steel drums are positioned in all the low-lying areas of our property. The fires in those are harder to light, but we split up, and an hour later, Bluebell Vineyards is a dark sky with a constellation of fiery stars flickering merrily. I finish lighting the last one and find Laine whereshe’s collapsed beneath a big tree, her back against its trunk and legs sprawled out.
The image twists beneath my skin, squeezing my heart. It’s Mom’s favorite tree, where I sit vigil on her birthdays to this day. Not from dawn until dusk like I used to, but I spend at least an hour at twilight there every year, telling myself my favorite stories about her and holding them close. I do it in part because it’s tradition, but also because I’m terrified of forgetting them. I haven’t sat here for any other purpose since Mom died, but I ease down onto the ground next to Laine, my body singing a symphony of aches and pains.
It’s quiet for a long minute as we stare out onto the vineyard lit by fire below. I get why Laine picked this tree to sit under—there’s a sweeping view of our entire property from up here. That’s why it was Mom’s favorite, too.
“I’m sorry,” Laine says, so quiet it’s almost drowned out by the winds whipping down the mountains.
