“What’s the big plan, Dan?” Brian Queen called out. “Second honey-moon?”
Louise laughed. “You should be asking Jen that.”
My mother stared anxiously at my father, asking him silently how to answer. No one knew that when they left here, they wouldn’t be leaving together.
She pulled herself together and held her wineglass up, tipping it in my father’s direction.
“Whatever Dan wants!” she said.
The Dorks cheered as my father awkwardly put his arm around my mother.
Bobby headed to the front of the room, Finn staying by the back door.
My father took my mother in, forcing a smile. I watched as he struggled. It was too much. I grabbed for another glass of wine, downing it as my father held up a bottle of unlabeled wine, faced his friends.
“I don’t know if any of you all remember, but at one of the very first Cork Dork meetings, we sat around talking about it, doing the math on it, how much work a single grape requires. From vine to finish. A single grape the start of it, this unlabeled bottle right here in my hand the end of it, the eight hundred grapes inside.”
He looked out at his group of colleagues and friends.
“We know the secret, right? It’s not just eight hundred grapes in this bottle. It’s everything else that makes it heavy. Patience and focus and sacrifice and . . . fucking boredom.”
The Dorks laughed.
“Let’s just call it time. This bottle holds the endless time that I was lucky to spend with all of you.” My father nodded. “Thank you, guys,” he said. “Thank you all, for today, and for everything. It has been a really good run.”
Then, as was tradition, he uncorked the bottle and took a sip right from it. The Cork Dorks cheered.
My father didn’t look sad. He looked happy, maybe for the first time since I’d been home. My father looked truly and seriously happy. He took a sip of his wine, nodding, appreciating what he had accomplished with this wine, with all of his wines. Lost in it. My mother looked up at him, their eyes meeting, sharing that moment, both of them having the same experience of the wine.
In spite of Henry.
In spite of what was happening between them.
Bobby was standing near my parents, smiling. Finn was by the back door, smiling.
I, on the other hand, chose this moment to drop my wine, the glass shattering on the ground.
Everyone turned toward me, just in time to see the tears streaming down my face. The winemakers froze, drinks midair. Bobby and Finn looked at me with mouths agape. My father’s smile, disappearing. My mother’s eyes going wide.
As I moved as fast as I could. Toward the exit.
The Ride Home I ran out of The Tasting Room, needing air. I knew someone would head out after me, so I went directly to Finn’s truck, opening the unlocked front door, searching for the spare key where he kept it under the driver’s-side visor. I planned to drive myself out of there. I planned to keep driving until my father’s last tasting was far behind me, until I could pretend it wasn’t happening.
“I don’t think it’s there.”
I looked up to see Jacob standing by the driver’s-side door, holding a cup of water.
I wiped at my tears. “I don’t want to talk to you,” I said.
“I don’t want to talk to you either,” he said.
Then I took the cup out of his hands, drank it down.
“Uh . . . I brought that out here for myself.”
I handed him the empty cup.
He looked down at it. Then he turned it over, no drops coming out.
“I was thirsty,” he said.
I tried to focus on taking deep breaths. I couldn’t calm down, though. Apparently when your parents split up, it didn’t matter if you were a grown-up, it turned you into a five-year-old again: wanting them to promise you that everything was going to be okay. And wanting to make everything okay for them, the way you could when you were five, just by saying you loved them.
Jacob tossed the cup into a trash can. “You seem like you need to get out of here.”
“I do, but I don’t have a car.”
“You want a ride?”
I laughed, shaking my head.
“The proper response is thank you. Or, thank you anyway. Only two options.”
He wasn’t wrong, even if I couldn’t stand him.
I turned back toward The Tasting Room. My mother was walking outside to make sure I was okay. She caught my eye and started walking toward me.
Which was when I saw Henry. He was standing in the parking lot across the street, waiting for my mother, for wherever he was planning on taking her.