Chapter Seven MURPHY
Chapter Seven
M URPHY
When I moved to LA nine years ago, just twelve days after my high school graduation, I stayed for a few weeks with a friend of a friend while I searched for a job and an apartment.
I’d been saving every single penny I could manage from my part-time job waitressing at The Carlisle, babysitting, and working for a few hours each Saturday morning at the Trager family’s veggie stand. But I still didn’t have much, and I ended up answering an ad on Craigslist for a roommate.
The place was a one-bedroom, and my “room” for almost two years was a corner of the living room that had shower curtains hung over PVC piping to create a modicum of privacy.
It was a nightmare.
Eventually, I managed to make friends and get connected with three people who had extra space in their two-bedroom apartment. Still, four people in an eight-hundred-square-foot box is tight. I grew accustomed to wearing earplugs because my roommate’s boyfriend spent the night fairly often and they were completely unconcerned with privacy.
And yet, I still think either of those situations would be preferable to returning home. If circumstances were different, if I thought I might have ever been able to figure out how to get things to work out in spite of what happened, I would have stayed. I would have continued waitressing, continued signing up for open-mic nights and trying to make connections to get a different agent.
But I knew—hell, Paul flat-out told me—there was no future for me in LA.
So I left.
The quickness of it was jarring. I went from celebrating my sudden success to grieving my rapid fall within such a short period of time.
It felt like whiplash, the pain of it still reverberating through me months later.
“Hey, sweetheart.”
I look out to the pathway that leads up to the back patio, smiling when I see my aunt approaching. She’s wearing a big hat that shades her from the sharpness of the early-summer sun, but the hard labor of a vineyard worker is still apparent in sweat on her flushed skin.
My aunt Sarah has been a mother figure for as long as I can remember, and when I lived in LA, she called me regularly to ask all about my life and hear how my pursuit of a music career was going.
She never talked about my father, though, and rarely about my brothers. Instead, she shared details about the vineyard in general , about her new quest to use dating apps to find love, and the different hobbies she picked up here and there.
I’m glad I had her to talk to when I was away. She allowed me to feel somewhat connected to my home without guilting me into returning. And for that, I’ll be eternally grateful.
I haven’t told her why I’m home, though. The only people who know are my friend Vivian and my brother Micah, and outside of them, I have no plans to share.
“I’m heading into town to run some errands. Wanna come?” she asks, dropping down into one of the other patio chairs and taking a long swig from her water bottle. “I’ve missed our shopping trips since you’ve been gone.”
I think back to all the times she did this while I was growing up. She’d take me into town to do whatever she needed to do, then we’d stop at Rosewood Café and get coffees or ice cream or something. There, she’d get me to open up about whatever was going on in my life at the time.
I have a feeling today she’ll try to get me to share why I moved home, and I’m not sure I have the strength to keep everything bottled inside.
So I shake my head.
“No thanks, but maybe another time.”
She twists her lips, my answer clearly disappointing her.
“You know I’m here whenever you need to talk, right?”
I nod, and my voice comes out as a whisper. “I know.”
I feel bad for turning her down, but I don’t change my mind. I’ve been a people pleaser for most of my life. Most middle children are. It’s something to do with the fact that we don’t get enough attention, and my life is nothing if not a cliché example of a middle child wishing she felt more loved.
There have been only a few times I can remember doing things that intentionally went against others’ desires.
One is when I left Rosewood.
Another is the reason I came back.
“See you at dinner,” she tells me, that same soft smile on her face as she pushes up from her seat and goes inside.
I look back to the property spread out before me, the long rows of vines that stretch farther than I can see.
As beautiful as this vineyard is, I can’t help but hate being back here.
I hate the interactions I’ve had with my brother and father.
And I hate that I have to add this whole mess with Wes into the mix.
It would have been so nice to keep that sweet memory of the kind, attractive guy who helped fix my flat and made my pulse race. Instead, that guy has been claiming my bench late at night, invading my space and my home and my life.
My heart nearly shoots out of my chest when my cell phone rings on the table in front of me. I take a second, my hand to my chest, to catch my breath.
Then I pick it up and look at the screen, my lips tilting up even with my sour mood.
“Hey, V.”
“Don’t hey, V me,” I hear from the other end of the phone. “It’s been five days since you left, and I’ve heard nothing from you. You could have died!”
At the sound of Vivian’s theatrics, I break into a real smile.
“I only drove to the other end of the state, not Mars,” I reply. “I wasn’t going to die.”
“Look, weird shit happens at gas stations in the middle of nowhere, okay? Trust me, I know.”
I laugh at the accuracy of her words, thankful for her distraction from the bullshit going on in my life.
“So how is it being back at Hawthorne House?” she asks me, and I can just picture her sitting on her patio, overlooking the water, sipping from a glass of wine like we did on so many evenings together.
“It’s ... still here,” I answer, not really sure what else to say.
“Yeesh, that bad, huh?”
I sigh. “I think I made a mistake coming home, V.”
“My couch is always available if you want to bring your cute little butt back to LA.”
“I couldn’t do that to you two. Besides, you know Roger hates me and would never be able to get over me invading his space.”
“Roger is a little shit who can suck it up,” she replies, and I smile at the image of her aging cat’s narrowed eyes every time I visited Vivian at the apartment she shares with her boyfriend in Santa Monica. “But really, M, if you want to be here, I can make it work.”
My heart twists, because I know she’s being serious. And if circumstances were different, I might have taken her up on the offer.
But Paul made it clear the last time we talked. There is no future for me in LA, and it doesn’t matter that V is on the ladder to success. There’s nothing she can do about it.
So ... her couch isn’t really an option. Staying in LA wasn’t an option.
The only real option for me was returning home and giving myself a chance to figure out what’s next.
“I appreciate it,” I tell her. “I really do. But we talked about this, V. You know that—”
“I know, I know,” she cuts me off. “I just wish things were different.”
“Me, too.”
We sit in silence for a long moment, neither of us saying anything, just enjoying the closeness, even though we’re so far from each other.
“So show me the vineyard,” she eventually says, breaking through the quiet. “You’ve been talking about this place for years. I’m gonna call you back on FaceTime because I want to see everything.”
I laugh as the phone goes black and then lights up again, then I’m grinning from ear to ear when I see Vivian’s beautiful face on my screen.
“All right! Show me everything. And I mean everything .”
I flip the camera around and show her the view from where I’m sitting.
“Daaaaaaang, girl. I need to plan a trip up to wine country.”
I take her on a phone tour of the area fairly close to the house, showing her the vines and the house and then walking her out to the bench so she can see an even more killer view overlooking not only our vineyard, but most of Rosewood.
The entire time, she oohs and aahs and makes comments about how amazing everything is.
It’s a relief, talking to V.
She was the one true friend I made during the years I lived in LA. The one honest, good soul who I’m going to miss.
As much as I enjoy talking to her, there’s something bittersweet about it. Because it’s a reminder that I don’t have anyone here to talk with. To tell my secrets to.
When I finally make it back to the porch and we say our goodbyes, I stare at my phone for a long moment, wishing not for the first time that I could change ... well, anything. I wish I could change anything.
But that’s not how life works.
“Who were you talking to?”
I startle at the sound of Memphis’s voice.
“God, you scared me,” I reply, my hand coming to my chest again.
I didn’t realize I could be so easily startled. First Vivian’s call, now Memphis?
“Who were you talking to?” he asks again, leaning against a post and crossing his arms.
I roll my eyes, wishing he’d learn how to not be such a stern stick-in-the-mud from time to time. “A friend,” I answer. “Why?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Just wondering.”
And then he walks off back into the house where I assume he came from.
I make a face after he’s gone, though it immediately makes me feel like I’m ten years old. I’ve never understood why Memphis is so ... inflexible. He’s like a brick wall sometimes, and I wish he’d be like a tree instead. Still strong and firm, but able to bend and move with the wind.
When my eyes fall to the papers I have stacked on the patio table, I’m reminded of what I was working on before my aunt Sarah sat down a little while ago.
And the fact that I actually need to talk to my brother.
So I snatch everything up and go racing into the house, finding him just as he’s settling into his desk chair in his office.
“Do you have a minute?” I walk in and sit in the chair across from him. “I wanted to talk to you about the staffing rotation.”
“Look, if it’s too much work you can probably ask Wes to—”
“Memphis.”
My brother stops speaking at my interruption.
Seriously, the guy needs to learn how to not make assumptions.
“Thank you. What I was going to say is that I’ve finished putting together a preliminary concept for staffing, as well as a potential training schedule. Of course, this is dependent upon being able to hire for several different positions in the next week.”
I pass over the itinerary I spent most of yesterday and today working on, as well as the staffing structure and completed position descriptions.
“I figured the best bet for training would be to move everyone through phases, so if you look at”—I tug out one of the sheets at the back of the stack in Memphis’s hand—“this page, you’ll notice there are knowledge areas that everyone has to complete before they can finish the training. There’s a front-of-house section that includes things like wines, the physical menu, supplies, and serving basics. Then there’s the back-of-house section that includes health and safety, ingredients and food, supplies, and kitchen basics.”
Memphis looks over the documents I’ve shared with him for a few minutes, his eyes narrowed as he scans over everything.
Then he looks at me.
“You created these?”
My shoulders drop, and something in my face must fall as well because Memphis speaks again.
“I’m just asking because it’s an incredible amount of work to get done in two days, Murphy.”
“No, you’re asking because you don’t think I’m capable of creating things like this.”
At my brother’s silence, I know I’ve hit the nail on the head.
“Look, Murphy, I don’t know what you expect from me, okay? I haven’t seen you in nine years, and we’ve only talked a handful of times.” He sets the paperwork down between us. “How am I supposed to know what you can and can’t do?”
I lick my lips, tears beginning to prickle at the backs of my eyes and sting my nose.
“Nine years is a long time, isn’t it?” I take in a steeling breath. “Did it ever occur to you ... ever ... to come visit me in LA?”
Memphis shifts in his seat but doesn’t say anything.
“In all those nine years, in the handful of times we spoke ... who called who?” I continue. “Did you ever think to reach out to me? To ask how I was doing? To see ... fuck, if I was even still alive?”
At that, one of my tears falls, but I bat it away, unwilling to let crying derail this conversation—one that Memphis and I have needed to have for quite some time.
“I have been working my ass off for years, sometimes two and three jobs at a time, basically just sleeping and working, and fitting in performing my music where I could. And in all the years I was pushing for my dream, Micah was the only one to come visit me.”
“I was working my ass off, too.” Memphis shoves out of his chair and begins to pace around the room. “While you were off having fun and doing whatever the hell, I was here, taking care of our family and making sure the vineyard didn’t go into bankruptcy.”
I’m gearing up to respond to the off having fun remark when I hear the second half of his sentence, and my head jerks back in surprise.
“What?”
He looks out the window, the vines in the distance barely visible at this late hour, but we both know they’re there.
“Memphis, what did you mean by that?” I ask again when he hasn’t said anything a few minutes later. “Dad always said business was booming when we were growing up. Did something change?”
My brother is quiet for another moment before he speaks again.
“Dad doesn’t always know what he’s talking about.”
He doesn’t turn around and look at me, but he doesn’t have to. Even with close to a decade of time having passed since we last saw each other, I still know him like nobody else.
Even though his shoulders are tight and his voice has grown loud, even though he was pacing this office and now he’s staring out into the darkness, I still know my brother. I give it less than three minutes before he finally spins around and pretends like nothing is wrong.
“You can talk to me, you know?” I keep trying even though I know the outcome.
Because that’s what family does. They keep trying.
Or at least, it’s what you’re supposed to do.
Sure enough, about two minutes later, he turns around and heads back to his desk, his face returning to that infuriatingly neutral expression that I’ve seen far too many times. Once he’s seated again, he collects all the paperwork we’d been talking about, shuffles it into a neat stack, and then hands it back to me.
“This looks great, Murphy. Just run it all by Wes so you’re both on the same page since it looks like he’ll need to be running part of the training.”
I sit across from my brother for a long moment, just looking at him, and wondering how big the burden is that he’s trying to carry all by himself.
As irritating as my brother can be, he’s also one of those people who will bend over backward for just about anyone.
Maybe he’s more like a tree than I realized.
“You’re not alone in whatever it is, Memphis,” I tell him, my voice just loud enough for him to hear me.
His lips tilt up in a barely visible smile then. But it’s one that has something sad, almost heartbreaking about it.
“Yes, I am, Murph.”
We sit like that, in silence for a long time, before he turns around, facing his computer again, effectively dismissing me.
So I stand and make my way to the door, hoping that, eventually, he’ll let me in.
Even just a little bit.