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Even though they’d only exchanged letters, he couldn’t help feeling a sort of kinship with this person who was capable of identifying the worries he’d never been able to speak aloud.
Except with Hallie.
Maybe rather than writing back, he should go talk to her, instead.
Anticipation swelled so rapidly at the thought of seeing her, hearing her voice, that he dropped the letter. From a person he’d now willingly corresponded with. A person who was not Hallie. What the hell had he gotten himself into?
* * *
“I’m sorry to drag you away from your fan club,” Hallie teased Lorna, smiling at her grandmother’s best friend across the console of her truck. They drove through town Sunday afternoon, yielding for buzzed pedestrians every fifty yards or so, Phoebe Bridgers playing gently on the radio. “Are you sure about taking a lunch break?”
“Of course I am, dear. These old feet need a rest.” Lorna smoothed the silk patterned scarf around her neck. “Besides, Nina has it under control.” Before she even finished her sentence, she’d started laughing. “Can you believe I have an employee now? A couple of weeks ago, I barely had customers. Now I’ve hired part-time help just to keep up with them all!”
Hallie’s chest expanded with relief. With gratitude. When she’d pulled up outside of Corked, patrons were gathered around her grandmother’s white wrought-iron table with glasses of wine in hand, bringing it to life. Giving it purpose again. Keeping Rebecca’s memory alive, at least for Hallie. And she owed most of this to Julian.
His name in her head was a simultaneous shot of adrenaline and a punch to the gut.
Was he writing back to his admirer again at that very moment?
I propose that we both do something that scares us this week.
Was he in the process of figuring out what scared him? At the very least, Hallie was in the process of checking that box today. Doing something uncomfortable. Fulfilling the challenge she’d laid down for herself and Julian by moving forward. She’d called Lorna about her trip to the library this morning and the wineshop owner had insisted upon coming along for moral support, despite the crowds that were now descending on Corked with Vos Vineyard discount cards and unquenchable thirsts.
“Lorna, I couldn’t be happier for you.” One of Hallie’s hands left the wheel to rub at the euphoric pressure in her chest. “I could just burst.”
“I didn’t see it coming,” breathed the older woman, staring unseeing out the windshield of the truck. “Then again, some of the best things in life happen when you least expect them.”
Sort of like Julian suddenly showing back up in St. Helena to write a book? Or the professor somehow being the chivalrous hero that lived rent free in her memory, while also being completely different than she’d imagined for the last fifteen years? Yes, he might be the quietly studious man of her imagination, but he was also intense. A keeper of painful secrets. Funny and quick to find solutions. Protective. A million times more engrossing than the person she’d crafted in her mind, and she had no choice but to leave him with some final food for thought and move on. Which is what she should have done in the beginning, before getting in too deep. “What if you spend your whole life expecting one thing . . . and get another entirely?”
“I’d say the one thing you can expect in life are thwarted plans,” said Lorna. “Fate keeps its own schedule. But sometimes fate drops a present in our lap, and we realize that if everything we’d arranged ourselves had gone according to plan, the gift from fate never would have arrived. Like you coming to live with Rebecca in St. Helena. All those attempts to get your mother on the right path didn’t work out, but in the end, those struggles are what brought you here. Rebecca was always saying that. ‘Lorna, what’s meant to be will always find a way.’”
“She loved a good saying.”
“That she did.”
Hallie shifted in the driver’s seat but couldn’t get comfortable. “What if I only belonged here in St. Helena while Rebecca was alive? That’s how it feels. Like I don’t . . . know how to be in this place anymore. As just myself.”
Lorna was quiet for a moment. Hallie could feel the shop owner gathering herself before she eventually reached out and laid a hand on Hallie’s shoulder. “When you came here, this place changed, along with Rebecca. It rearranged itself to fit you, and now . . . Hallie, you are part of the landscape. A beautiful part of it. St. Helena will always be better for having you here.”
When Hallie shook her head, a tear came loose and she swiped it away. “I’m a disaster. I’m flighty and disorganized and I don’t know how to control my impulses. She was always around to help me do that. To know who I am. I was Rebecca’s granddaughter.”
