Christmas in Wine Country (20 page)

Lila gave a grunt in response. Annie studied her with a quizzical smile. “What’s he doing here anyway?” Lila asked, letting her curls tumble down. “Why’s he slumming it in the locals’ bar?” 

“Not to stick up for the guy, but he’s more of a local than you are,” Annie pointed out.

             
“You know what I mean,” Lila dismissed her observation with a wave of her hand. Watching Jake chat with some guy as he waited over at the bar, she wondered where Vanessa was. She and Jake probably had a monthly agreement. She could do a girls’ night out at a hot, trendy spot in the city wearing gold lame and drinking $11 Cosmos. In exchange, she’d let him off the leash for a few hours to throw darts and mix it up at Ted’s with the local Riff Raff. Deliberately turning her attention to the pool game
underway, Lila noted that Tom was winning handily with only two balls left on the table to Pete’s five.

             
“He’s got this one,” Annie declared confidently to Lila, prompting Pete to look over and give her a wink. She hopped over to give him a quick kiss on the cheek for luck.

             
Jake returned to his guy friends with his fresh beer. But after not too long, he was back. “Let me ask you this,” he asked as he approached Lila. “How long do you think it’ll be before there’s another video of you up on YouTube?”

             
“Excuse me?” Taken aback, Lila wondered if she’d heard him correctly.

             
“You know, as the Cat Lady,” Jake continued. “It would be a nice follow up to the one from the holiday party.” Rubbing the bridge of her nose, Lila wished she could think of something snappy and light to show how completely comfortable she was with all aspects of herself, past and present. “Someone’s bound to bring their Flip one morning to storytime,” Jake went on, in lieu of that elusive retort. “They could get a good close-up of you doing a hairball with your cat puppet.”

             
“That goes over big with the boys,” Lila responded, wishing her voice didn’t have a defensive edge to it.

             
“It goes over big with Emma, too,” Jake agreed. With a laugh he added, “I wish you could have seen her mom’s face the other day. Emma asked her to make her teddy bear spit out a hairball.”

             
“Really?” Lila smiled in spite of herself.

             
“Emma.” Jake shook his head and laughed again. “My favorite niece.” Looking back up at Lila with a charming grin—he should patent that, Lila thought, guard firmly up against such moments—he confided, “Actually, Emma’s my only niece. But don’t tell her that.”

             
“You certainly know how to sweet talk the ladies,” Lila replied. “Speaking of, where’s Vanessa tonight?”

Smile erased, Jake took another swig from his beer and mumbled, “Beats me.”

“Hard to keep track when you have so many ladies?”

“Yeah, that’s it,” Jake answered, not amused.

“It’s hard being a player.” Lila nodded, sympathetically.

“You know,” he said, looking straight in her eyes, “You have crazy written all over you.”

             
“What?” Lila took a step back, feeling as if she’d been slapped. Flushed and mortified, she lashed back, “Well, you have Daddy’s Little Rich Boy written all over you.” 

Jake exhaled sharply and drew back himself, his eyes suddenly narrow and dark. Lila knew her cheeks must be scarlet and her hands were shaking. 

An explosion of cheers over at the pool table turned Lila’s attention toward Pete and Annie hugging. He had, apparently, pulled it out of the bag.

“I told you he had it in him,” Annie exclaimed, rushing over to Lila, grabbing her belt loop and pulling her along into a few victory jumps. Meeting Pete’s raised hand for a high five, Lila glanced back and saw Jake had rejoined his friends by the dart board. 

Back over at their table, Lila tried to put the whole exchange out of her head. No longer in the mood to hang out, however, she wished she had her car with her so she could make an exit. Annie had offered to drive, and, at the time, it had seemed like a great idea. She didn’t want to let Jake ruin the night, but what did he mean she had crazy written all over her? What kind of thing was that to say to someone?

Nearly sputtering to herself like a crazy person, Lila went up to the bar and got herself an ice water. Deliberately not looking over into the corner, she felt like she was back in middle school but she didn’t want to catch Jake’s eye and provoke yet another confrontation.

“Ready to get out of here?” Annie looped her arm around Lila’s shoulder. “Pete wants to quit while he’s ahead.” Agreeing with relief, Lila said a quick goodbye to Zoe and followed Annie and Pete out of the bar. On the way home the parents laughed and chatted in the front seats. Lila felt like their sulky teenager riding in their back next to Charlotte’s Cheerio-covered carseat. Looking out the window, she wished she had her iPod.

“What’s goin’ on back there, Lila?” Pete called into the backseat. “You not impressed with my skills?”

“Oh, no,” Lila dismissed him. “It’s not—“

“She got into it with Jake Endicott at the bar,” Annie explained.

“Yeah?” Pete asked, looking back at Lila. “What’s up?”

“Nothing,” Annie replied for her, “he was just giving her a hard time. But you gave it right back, didn’t you, Lila?” Annie asked, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. “Daddy’s little rich boy,” she repeated.

Feeling sheepish more than proud, Lila smiled wanly. She hadn’t realized Annie had heard that part of their exchange.

“Say what?” Pete asked.

“That’s what Lila called him,” Annie laughed. “Daddy’s little rich boy.”

“Ouch,” Pete shook his head. “That’s harsh.”

“Right?” Annie asked, pleased with it all.

“You know his dad wasn’t even on the scene until he grew up, right?” Pete asked, turning his head back to look at Lila. “When he was a kid it was just him, his brother and his mom. They lived a couple streets down from us.”

“But I thought he grew up at the vineyard?” Lila envisioned the Italianate villa, the expansive grounds, sunlight filtering through the tall, Tuscan pines. She’d pictured him as a child riding his pony through the vineyard to survey the migrant workers, then returning home to beat the nanny with a stick.

“Just his dad,” Pete corrected. “He lived with his mom. She was a hippie. Never had good snacks at his house.”

“That’s a shame,” Annie commiserated.

“She had these tahini bars.” Pete paused and from the back seat Lila could picture the face he was making. “Anyway, I don’t know the full story, but I know he lived near us till high school. Then his mom got sick and his dad sent him off to school back East. And that’s pretty much the last any of us heard of him.”

Pulling up in front of Lila’s apartment, Annie announced, “Your stop, Madame. Thanks for the mojitos earlier, they were killer.” Lila nodded, full of questions and confusion but, more than anything, full of the desire to wash her face, pull on her sweats and climb in under her glorious down comforter for a good night’s sleep.

*
             
*
             
*

The next day, Lila stopped by the chocolate shop after her shift at the bookstore. Set to work at the chopping block with some walnuts, she began her line of questioning. “So, Pete and Jake lived a couple of blocks away from each other when they were kids?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Annie stood on the top of a stepstool, re-arranging things on a shelf against the wall.

“Until he got sent away? I remember Jake told me he’d gone to boarding school. But it happened when his mom got sick?”

“What’s in this thing?” Annie swore as she moved a large tin. Lila looked up at her expectantly. Family history, former friend of her husband’s, handsome guy: this was rich material. Annie and she had passed more than a few hours over the past decade
discussing far less engaging topics. Annie shifted some metal bowls from one end of the shelf to the other in silence. 

“Pete said she had cancer,” Lila tried.

With a sigh, Annie stepped down the stool to the floor. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Pete doesn’t remember much about it. You know guys.” She shrugged. “But he thought he remembered Jake’s mom died of breast cancer. When Jake was about 14.”

“That’s really awful.” A high school classmate of Lila’s had lost her mom to breast cancer; Lila could still remember going to the funeral. Nothing seemed to remain of the sunny, peppy girl she’d known through gymnastics when they were little. In her place had stood a fierce, angry teenager, dry-eyed behind her glasses as if daring anyone to tell her she should feel sad. Lila hadn’t known what to say.

Apparently, though, she’d found her tongue between then and now. ‘Daddy’s little rich boy,’ she remembered she’d called Jake last night. Nice. And classy.

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Annie agreed. “Jake’s mom died and his dad sent him off to school so he didn’t have to deal with him. The only reason he didn’t send Oliver away was because he was only 10.” Seeing Lila’s sympathetic face, Annie held up her hand and continued, “But just because he and his brother had some trauma growing up doesn’t mean it’s OK for them to walk around here like they own the place. Some of these ‘vintners’—” Annie infused the word with pomposity—“seem to have forgotten they’re nothing more than farmers. Just because people pay insane amounts of money for what they grow doesn’t make them better than us.”

Lila recalled Oliver’s starched white, collar up, Lord of the Manor bearing. And last night Annie had reminded her how much of a hard time he’d been giving Pete, changing his mind all the time on house renovations. “Do you think Jake is as bad as his brother?”

Annie shrugged. “I haven’t seen much of him. But rumor has it Big Bob wants him to take over the whole operation. So he’s probably worse.”   

“Is Oliver still being a huge jerk to Pete?”

“He fired Pete a couple of weeks ago. Replaced him with some contractor from Napa who charges three times as much.”

Lila winced. “I’m sorry. That sucks.” Annie shrugged but said nothing, which communicated clearly how much it bothered her. “How are Pete’s other projects going?”

The question let loose a stream of concern and Annie vented for the next half hour about the vicissitudes of the project-dependent contracting business. Some months Pete had more than he could handle, others too much time on his hands. Shelving her own concerns, Lila chopped and listened alongside her friend, struck by the magnitude of Annie’s worries. Mortgage payments, childcare schedules,
the
risk—if all went well with the coffee shop—of both she and Pete being self-
employed
. Struck for a moment with the insignificance of her own worries, Lila offered her friend reassurance. Annie’s talents and competencies were so formidable Lila never doubted them for a moment. 

Later that day back in her apartment, Lila’s thoughts returned once again to last night’s exchange with Jake. She had crazy written all over her? Memories returned unbidden. Kicking her stiletto heel into the forehead of a valued client. Screaming about the need for a tarp over the cobblestone courtyard. Trying to break into her car with a credit card while shoving red licorice into her mouth. Wearing furry ears and developing the split personality of a sassy cat. Was this the stuff of sanity?

Gram’s weekly Sunday call, as it had frequently done in the past, helped her avoid a self-loathing tail spin.

“You’re figuring everything out, dear,” her Gram reassured her. “Just try to remember, no one’s got it all figured out.”

The observation prompted more guilt over her harsh words to Jake. “Just apologize the next time you see him,” Gram counseled. “I’m sure he won’t even remember what you said.”

Just a few days later she did see Jake again, at the town’s Fourth of July parade. A hodge podge affair, the celebration provided a vehicle for preschoolers in wagons, cheerleaders on flatbed trucks, local politicians in antiques and, yes, Shriners in mini cars, to wave and throw candy to spectators along the one-mile circumference of Redwood Cove’s downtown. Truth be told, the preschoolers more ate candy then they threw, but a good time was had by all.

A local antique car collector let Marion take one out for the event. She, Lila and Mr. Meows waved to the crowd from a white 1956 Cadillac Eldorado
convertible
with Cover to Cover: Your Bookstore emblazoned on a draped banner. At the last minute,
Charlotte decided she wanted to ride, too, so they’d buckled in her car seat, strapped on her sun hat and brought her along for the ride. ‘
Cantaloupe
, cantaloupe, watermelon’, Lila remembered Zoe’s instructions on proper parade waving, moving her hand in the air as if gliding along the surface of the fruits. Apparently Zoe had grown up in Palm Beach and her mother had entered her in not just a few child pageants. What a surprise Zoe had moved all the way to Redwood Cove as an adult.

Cover to Cover’s car was one of the first in the parade to go, affording them both the early excitement of spectators and the ability to get out and watch the second half of the parade, themselves. Toward the end, Lila spotted Jake driving a pick-up truck. Ashen and clenching his jaw, Jake puttered five miles an hour with Redwood Cove’s hottest middle school band in tow.