Kiss My Glass (Flora Valley #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

FRANKIE

I ’m a practical gal, but there’s one hill of superstition that I will die on. And that is: never challenge Worse.

You know what I mean. Shit happens and you say, “Well, at least things can’t get worse.” Big mistake. Huge. Because Worse is always listening.

Case in point: my day. This morning, I got into my car to go to work, and the battery was dead. My fault. Last night, I dropped a Snickers bar into the void under the driver’s seat and switched on the interior light so I could see better. Found the candy. Forgot to switch off the light. My neighbor has jumper leads but she was at the dog park with Murray. (Yes, Murray is the name of her dog; she also has a cat called Phillip.) Was therefore forced to Uber and pay an extortionate surge pricing fee.

Got to work and was greeted by my manager with her “this will hurt me more than it’ll hurt you” face on. I’ll spare you the details but in short, I work for a big multi-state divorce and family law firm, and they want to shift me to an office in another state. And not just any state! Minnesota! I have nothing against Minnesota, except that I currently live in San Diego, California, lowest temperature around 50 o F. Okay, so I grew up in a part of Northern California where it can get a bit chilly in winter, but it does not get so cold that your eyeballs freeze. I don’t do winter sports. I play pickleball, and I go dancing – indoors. The only ice I’m fond of is in my beer cooler.

Technically, I can decline the offer, but law firms are big on hierarchy and working your way up the ladder. I’ve just been made an Associate Attorney. One step up from a Junior Associate Attorney, and approximately a million parsecs away from the top level of Partner. I chose family law not because I’m ambitious but because I wanted to make a difference. I want cases I can get my teeth into, and if I refuse to shift to Frozen Eyeball, Minnesota, I’ll be handed the files no one wants to touch.

I have a week to think about it.

So that was my working day. I hemorrhaged more money on an Uber home and had just eased the cap off a cold beer when I heard a sound like a champagne cork popping, followed by an ominous gurgling. I own a two-bedroom cottage, and my home-brew set-up is in the laundry. I peered around the door to see my five-gallon carboy (for those who aren’t into this stuff, it’s the container that holds the beer) shooting a geyser of amber liquid up so high it was splashing off the ceiling. My guess is that the blow-off tube got something stuck in it and the pressure built until the stopper couldn’t handle it. Nothing I could do but watch until it finally stopped gushing. My laundry was awash in beer, but I decided the clean-up could wait until after I’d eaten. I mean, it was hardly going to get any worse between now and then, was it?

Never. Challenge. Worse.

Thirty minutes later, I’ve got dinner in front of me, but I’ve barely stuck a fork in my mac ’n’ cheese when my phone rings. Screen says “Shelby”. My older sister by three years, who still lives in the Armstrong family home and manages our family vineyard in Flora Valley. Whereas I moved away to go to law school and stayed away. I never wanted to see a grape again in my life.

My sister and I are very different people. I’m direct, no nonsense, and I inherited our late father’s pale blond hair and, let’s say, full-bodied physique. Shelby’s more like our mom to look at, a slender strawberry-blonde, full of bouncy perky optimism mixed (and I say this with affection) with a streak of super random weirdness. Occasionally reminds me of Dee Dee in Dexter’s Laboratory , except that Shelby doesn’t have a malicious bone in her body. Last year, my sis married Nate Durant, a Harvard boy who’s basically been forced to become less uptight because there’s no such option living with Shelby. I went to their wedding last November. Met Nate’s four siblings, who seem pretty cool. Except for one brother. He is a sexist arrogant douche.

I set down my fork and pick up the call.

“Shel, what’s up?”

“Frankeeeeee!”

Uh oh. Wailing is never good.

“I’m PREGNANT!”

“Wow.”

That’s … good, I guess? I’m only twenty-six, so I haven’t spent much time thinking about it.

“I’m due in AUGUST!”

Quick math tells me it probably happened on the wedding night. Fair enough.

“Okay, so?—”

“That’s the CRUSH!”

Right. The famous Flora Valley Wines crush. When the grapes are foot-stomped in big bins and the whole community is invited to help out. It’s a big event, full of party spirit, and the only fond memory I have of the family wine business.

“I’m sure you can bow out,” I say. “I mean, no one would want your waters breaking in the grape bin.”

“Bacteria can’t survive fermentation.” Shelby flips suddenly into professional wine-maker mode, and then right out again. “But that’s not the PROBLEM!!!!”

“What is the problem, Shel?”

All I can hear is a muffled damp sound. As I said, I haven’t spent any time researching pregnancy and childbirth, so I’m not about to take a guess. But if Shelby’s crying, it must be bad. She’s a weirdo but she doesn’t lack courage.

“I’ve got pre-eclampsia,” Shelby finally hiccups. “I just got a diagnosis today.”

Amazingly, I do know all about that because our mom had it when she was pregnant with me. Her blood pressure got so high, there was a risk I’d be starved of oxygen and nutrients in the womb. She had to be hospitalized during the last month, and I had to be delivered prematurely or we both might have died. I spent my first three weeks of my life in a neonatal unit incubator.

“Shel, I’m so sorry,” I say. And then I utter the fateful words, the ones Worse has been waiting for since I got up this morning. “How can I help?”

“Come and stay with us!” Shelby implores. “Help us out and keep me company! I’m going to have to sit on my patootie for the foreseeable, and Nate will wreck himself looking after me and the vineyard, poor lamb.”

Yes, my sister says “patootie”. Like those people can’t roll their tongues, she’s genetically incapable of swearing.

“Why me? Why not ask Mom? Oh, right…” I remember now. Our hippy mother is about to go to Europe to do some woo-woo walking tour along an ancient pilgrimage path.

“Don’t tell her!” Shelby pleads. “She knows I’m pregnant but thinks everything is fine, so she’s coming back two weeks before my due date. If she knows I’m not well, she’ll cancel her whole trip and I’ll feel terrible . ”

“And none of your friends can help?”

“They have jobs,” says Shelby.

“Shel, I have a job,” I protest. “And before you say it, no, I can’t work remotely. I deal with real people, who need me there in person.”

“ I need you,” says Shelby. “And I thought you said you weren’t that happy at work…?”

My sister doesn’t quite wheedle but it’s close.

Thing is, she’s not wrong. Even before the threat to send me to Corpsicle, Minnesota, I’d not been loving my workplace. Too many people, so many processes. Cases get accepted for how they can boost the firm’s reputation, not on how much the people need our services. I may have moaned about this on one of our irregular Armstrong family zooms. But it’s poor form for my sister to use it against me as emotional blackmail.

“I don’t hate it enough to quit. But I suppose I could always ask for some compassionate leave…”

Too late, I realize that my sister will take this as an iron-clad commitment.

“Thank you!!” says Shelby. “Come for July and however much of August before the baby is born! It’s those last weeks that are the riskiest for me. And that’s when it’s full on in the vineyard, as you know.”

Oh, yeah. I know. I spent eighteen years as unpaid labor until I left home for good. Okay, more like thirteen years; Dad waited until we’d passed toddlerhood at least. All four of us Armstrong kids worked to help Dad make wine, because our profit margins were so low, it was the only way he could keep food on the table. I understand why he did it, but it would have been nice to have a choice. Three of us kids left as soon as we could – me, and my two big brothers. Scattered like quail. Only Shelby stayed. Only Shelby cared enough to try to save the business after Dad died, and Mom didn’t want it. Shelby managed to find one investor who didn’t laugh her out of town, and that guy brought in her future husband, Nate. Between them, with Nate as manager and Shelby as winemaker, they clawed Flora Valley Wines back from the brink and fell in love in the process. I’m glad it worked out for them. And yes, I feel guilty that we abandoned Shelby. But do I feel guilty enough to spend as long as six weeks in the place I couldn’t wait to leave?

“Shel, I have a laundry room that’s become a beer pond, and a dead car. Can I think about this and call you back?”

“You can have your old bedroom,” says my sister. “And you can set up your home-brew in one of the sheds. The pigs will be super stoked to see you.”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” I say. “Goodbye!”

I sit in silence and realize that Worse has won. My sister’s personally asked for my help and that means more than I ever expected it to. Right now, I need a mop and bucket, my neighbor’s jumper cables, and an order to commit me into a lunatic asylum for willingly making my life ridiculously complicated. So help me, it looks like I’m going home.