Page 54 of While You Were Trending

I follow the ladies down a half flight of steps into the dimly lit hideaway, taking in the rows of wine bottles lining two of the stone walls in diagonal wooden racks, a sideboard with a bottle chiller and an array of upside-down wine glasses in a variety of sizes and shapes, the iron light fixtures dangling from the ceiling, the spiral staircase leading up to a small loft, and the mahogany desk that has what looks like an old ledger open on top of it, and a full-size wooden statue of a guy in a bowler cap in the corner.

“This place is epic.” Dori heads to the spiral staircase. She’s in her mid-twenties, with short purple hair, round cheeks, wide brown eyes, and a mischievous grin, wearing ripped jeans and a faded Bon Jovi T-shirt. “How did you find it?”

Mabel adjusts her glasses. “I was in my Nancy Drew phase the first time my parents brought me here to meet Aunt Pip.”

Cricket glances at her. “You were a kid?”

“Everyone was a kid at one point. Even me.”

“When you found this room,” Cricket says.

Mabel smiles. “Yes, I was a kid when I found this room.”

“If I’d found something like this when I was a kid, I never would’ve left.”

“Seriously,” Dori agrees from above. “You never told anyone?”

“Do you know any thirteen-year-olds who don’t need a secret place to hide?” Mabel replies.

“You didn’t meet Pip until you were thirteen?” I ask. I’m treading as lightly as I can with the questions—I’m either being played right now, or I’m being let in deeper, which seems so incredibly unlikely after this morning. I don’t want to push anything that will trigger a real order to get away.

“My dad married her niece when I was young,” Mabel tells me.

“She didn’t come to the wedding?”

“Aunt Pip was the black sheep of her family, and she preferred not to attend family functions. She did send a set of flamingo yard ornaments as a wedding gift though.”

I smile. “Did your dad and stepmom like flamingos?”

“While they didn’t dislike flamingos, they also didn’t have any particular affinity for wanting to decorate with them.”

Cricket giggles.

“Sounds like Pip,” Dori says.

Even Mabel smiles a little, which I’ve realized is relatively rare. “Aunt Pip ran away from home to be a Vegas showgirl the minute she turned eighteen.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

“Yes. It’s nothing she wouldn’t tell you herself—she did it to piss off her parents, and it worked. Then she met Dean, and they hated him too, so she married him.”

“Hell of a reason to get married.”

“I suspect there were other reasons too.”

“The nice home?”

She rolls her eyes. “No. The sex. Living at a winery in a princess house was a bonus. Living with Dean when they weren’t in the sack was the trade-off to both.” She glances at Shade. “That’s not going in your documentary.”

“It’s relatable,” he replies dryly.

Cricket pulls a bottle of wine from the rack, her eyes going round. “Is this really a bottle of pinot noir from 1983?”

Mabel glances at her. “Yes.”

“And—oh my god. This one’s labeled 1962. Areallof these super old?”

“Yes. I haven’t taken full inventory, but I believe there’s one of every vintage that Makepeace made from the time Dean’s grandfather opened the winery until the year Dean’s father died.”