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“And what’s the donkey for?” Duncan asked.
CHAPTER TEN
Harry
Harry had an excellent view of the central vineyard block from the deck of the main house. The first week of Rowan’s tenure with his family, he caught glimpses of her out there for hours at a time, her nose pressed into field guides to identify grapes and diagnose potential problems. She later cross-referenced her discoveries with old purchase orders she’d obtained from the Everetts at Three Birds Winery down the road. Soon, the Bradys knew their grapes: a three-acre block each, of Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, and Chambourcin.
Ma spent several afternoons strolling the grounds with Rowan, notepad in hand. They often pointed and crouched to examine things, but by the end of the third day, Harry noticed Ma did very little jotting in her notebook, and a lot of smiling and laughing with Rowan.
Every autumn day was a crusade to exhaust himself by sunset. Dad welcomed his help with ongoing carpentry work in the house. Duncan always had some laborious task he needed a hand with—most recently, knocking out walls inside the decrepit pool house to open the place up. Swinging the long-handled sledgehammer had been hell on Harry’s shoulders, but the catharsis that came with the sanctioned destruction made it all worth it. He sought anything that would induce the kind offatigue that would zap his brain and his body into submission by nightfall. It was the only way he could sleep.
From the deck, he’d watched Rowan spend a week training their new flock of Katahdin sheep in the west pasture. Since they didn’t have a herd dog, the sheep needed to be conditioned to return to their barn with the rattle of an empty coffee tin filled with treats. By week three, they were reliably responding to Rowan’s cooing calls, and they nibbled “crunchies”—that’s what she called the grain treats—right from her hand.
The donkey—a two-year-old jennet from a local rescue organization—would live with the flock as their protector. At first, nobodyreallybelieved Rowan, but the jennet soon proved her credibility as a guard animal by thwarting a pair of plump wild turkeys who’d wandered into the field where the sheep grazed. During dinner that evening, they’d heard the donkey’s trombone-like alarm bray from all the way inside the house. Later, a macabre Internet search by Maren confirmed that donkeys were known to trample marauding coyotes to death.
The donkey also had an inexplicable and instantaneous hatred for Duncan, giving chase whenever he strayed too close. Harry had never seen Duncan run so fast. The comedy of that alone made the donkey’s existence there worth it.
Harry was running again, too. Back in California, he ran a few miles any day he could fit it in. But the previous months of hiding from the world had left him so desperately out of shape that even a mile was agony. He’d been ready to give it up forever until the day he ran into Rowan working in the vineyard, surrounded by morning mist up to her knees. She’d looked like the manifestation of autumn itself in denim overalls over a crimson and gold flannel, and a sun-bleached khaki hat with a filthy, sagging brim.
She’d been hard at work digging soil samples. Nutrient analysis, she’d said. There had been a streak of dirt from her chin toher throat, and a handprint-shaped smear of dirt across the belly of her overalls. Smiling, she’d tipped her hat back to greet him. Her eyes glowed the same bright hue as her whisky-colored hair.He’d never been so close to her, close enough to notice a single dark fleck—a freckle?—in the iris of her left eye, and even a few on her generous bottom lip.
The next day, he came upon her sitting cross-legged alone in the grass, eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich she’d brought in her little backpack. He invited her to have lunch with the family from then on, but she politely declined.
After that, Harry jogged every day, struggling lungs be damned. Now, three weeks later, he’d reconditioned himself enough that a few miles were easy, but his motivation wasn’t about getting back in shape.
It was Rowan. Those few minutes of conversation each day. The shared space. The excuse to get a glimpse of her up close in that hideous sweat-stained hat, working like a force of nature in the vineyard.
Yesterday, he’d impulsively handed her a picked wildflower, like a kid with a crush. In retrospect, the damned thing had probably been a weed—though he was trying to get out of the habit of calling them that—but she’d taken it from him with a delicate flush in her cheeks and a subtle smile, and Harry knew.
He was more than a little gone.
THREEBIRDSWINERYdown the road had been owned by the Everett family for decades. Now, the head winemaker was the youngest son Colby, who’d been a few grades below Temperance in Linden public schools. Temperance had made introductions, connecting the dots between Colby, Rowan, and the Bradys. Harry overheard Nate telling Ma that Rowan had already worked out a shared staffing plan with Everett, and beginningin December, a crew of ten would float between Three Birds and the Brady place. The arrangement meant plenty of year-round work at a decent wage. A healthy win for everyone.
In early November, Arden came home from college for a visit. By that Saturday morning, she was so restless and bored that she convinced Harry and Duncan to go with her to the only social event in the valley that weekend: the Everetts’ fifth annual Food Truck Festival at Three Birds.
The Everett property seemed immaculate compared to his folks’ new place. Pennants with the Three Birds logo flapped in the wind along the paved drive in. Their tidily groomed vineyard had changed for the fall, a tapestry of canary yellows and deeper golds. Food trucks were arranged in a semicircle in one of the grassy fields. Dozens of picnic tables sat under strings of outdoor bistro lights on high poles. Arden did a little skip when she got out of the car and insisted on a selfie in the gravel parking lot with Harry and Duncan. They had to jog to keep up with her on the way in.
It was a sensory extravaganza. The smell of fresh-cut grass and burning wood mingled with scents from the food trucks. Brisket and falafel, frying doughnuts, onion rings, al pastor. French fries, burgers, innumerable spices, and the yeasty aroma of pizza dough.
They mingled with locals from Linden and Shelby and Greenbriar, and a half a dozen other little townships in the valley. Harry was happy to let his brother and sister do most of the socializing. Duncan already knew people in the county via equipment auctions, construction permitting, and countless other incidental meetings with carpenters, electricians, masons, and handyfolk.
Arden was in extrovert heaven, undaunted by strangers. She had the same gregarious personality Duncan did, plus the enthusiasm of youth and the kind of self-confidence imbued bybeing a youngest daughter with five doting older brothers. They’d only been at the festival twenty minutes when a loudspeaker announced field games for singles in the northern field, and Arden begged Harry and Duncan to go with her. Duncan responded with “I’d rather die” and a loud laugh in her face, which earned him a sharp-fisted punch in the arm. Harry waved her off as well, offering instead to hold the dried-flower crown she’d purchased as soon as they’d arrived. Duncan invited Harry along to chat with a stonemason and a guy who owned a reclamation business to get the wheels turning on the bank barn restoration.
This new world was dizzyingly different from the bustling West Coast city Harry called home. In L.A., the air was heady with salt and sea, blooming jasmine, and pot smoke. With hot pavement, and the sterile, metallic odor of air-conditioning. Here, it was wet tree bark after rain, woodsmoke on the wind, and the sweet, earthy scent of cut grass and amber hay. In L.A., evening skies shouted the last of their daylight with aggressive purples and oranges. But here in Vesper Valley—the wordvesperitself meant “evening” in Latin—sunsets were opalescent whispers. A gentle easing into dusk.
Here, the world was softer.
Harry wove his way through the festival, enjoying the anonymity of the crowd. Near one of the pop-up wine bars, he recognized Frankie Moreau standing with a small group of people. His pulse accelerated. The crowd milled around him, jostling, bumping, pressing. He froze in place.
If Frankie was here, Rowan might be, too.
A man with a back as broad as a cabinet blocked Harry’s view of the others. Then he shifted sideways, and there Rowan was. She was backlit, tipping her head sideways to smile at something the big guy said. Her hair fell over her shoulder, bright as sunrise over the Pacific.
Harry’s body went boneless.
The big guy said something to make the women laugh again, and Rowan’s attention shifted, like she sensed she was being watched. Her gaze collided with Harry’s, and her wide, beautiful smile faltered. She reached up to fiddle with the ends of her hair, and despite the distance, Harry could tell she swallowed hard.
Getting air into his lungs suddenly felt impossible, like his rib cage had ratcheted down several sizes.
