Chapter One
Mae didn’t realize she was drunk until she nuzzled the peony.
Her future mother-in-law, Susan, paused mid-sentence to watch Mae across the table.
Tracing a petal down her cheek, luxuriating in how velvety it was, Mae wondered if Susan had lost her train of thought, and Mae was going to say You were talking about —except she couldn’t remember.
It was something to do with the centerpieces, a debate about roses versus peonies, and then Mae had plucked a petal from the peony in front of her and wondered how that surprising softness might feel on her face.
Were peonies good for the skin? If jade rollers were a thing, there had to be a market for face-flowers.
What would she call it? Flower facial? Petal peel?
Floratherapy? The name needed workshopping, but she was onto something.
But now, staring into Susan’s baffled blue eyes, it occurred to Mae that perhaps that look had nothing to do with centerpieces and everything to do with Mae. Mae glanced at Connor, her fiancé. He was watching her, too, except the corner of his lips twitched in the hint of a smile.
In an instant, Mae noticed the warmth in her face, the floating in her head, the flower on her cheek, and realized she might have hit the Cabernets too hard.
They’d all tasted about a dozen wines that afternoon and yet Mae was the only one fondling flowers.
Then again, Connor’s parents owned a winery, and she guessed wine-tasting expertise ran in their blood.
Even Connor had probably swirled and sniffed from a baby bottle before he’d taken his first steps.
Mae, on the other hand, had made it to thirty-one without grasping the basics of wine appreciation.
While they went on about hidden flavors and aromas she never picked up on—apricot, mushroom, tobacco, wet gravel, as if anyone in their right mind would want to drink something with notes of wet gravel —she’d guzzled every glass, just trying to get the acidic taste over with.
If only today had been a pizza tasting. She was great at appreciating pizza.
Mae lowered her hand to her lap and studied the petal, now patchy with grease.
Susan resumed speaking, gushing about the timelessness of peonies, and Mae let the petal flutter to her feet.
Her mind was still drifting past the cloud of conversation, but that was how all wedding planning discussions felt.
For the last year, talk of table settings and color schemes had swirled around her in words she couldn’t quite grasp.
Who cared about irrelevant details when her wedding might be the catalyst that finally brought her estranged family together?
“But you don’t need to worry about the cost,” Susan was saying, her voice faraway.
“I know,” Connor said. “But if Mae and I don’t care about the flowers, then what’s the point of splurging?”
John, Connor’s father, laughed like it was the silliest question he’d ever heard. “Because we can.”
“You prefer the peonies, don’t you, Mae?” Susan said.
Mae snapped to attention. Three expectant faces watched her, waiting for signs of life.
Even the fountain behind them, which normally brought a soothing sound to John and Susan’s patio, seemed to silence its steady trickle.
Mae should say something smart, something relevant at the very least, but her last competent brain cell was busy designing colorful T-shirts stamped with TOWNSEND FAMILY REUNION .
Her gaze darted around the table for a distraction: empty wine glasses, assorted flowers, one of Susan’s three-ring binders. It was open to a glossy page showing leaves running down a white backdrop. “What’s that?” she asked.
Susan perked up. “It’s a vine wall, like the one we’re doing for the wedding.
If we’re agreed on peonies for the centerpieces, I was thinking we could put some on the wall too.
I have a picture of that somewhere.” She licked a finger and flipped through a never-ending fun house of themed walls: sunflowers, balloons, glowing light bulbs.
Of course Susan had a wall binder. This wedding was serious business for John and Susan Rutherford.
It was decreed long ago that their only child’s wedding would be held at their picturesque winery.
With a coveted venue at their disposal, and their many contacts in the wedding industry, the Rutherfords were determined to make this wedding the event of the century. And Mae and Connor would be there, too.
“Wait,” Mae said when she caught a glimpse of food. “What was that one?”
“This?” Susan turned back to a page where colorful donuts hung on wooden pegs. “Oh. This is a donut wall we did for a wedding a few years back.”
“The Harrington-Chambers wedding,” John said. “May 2019.”
Mae always thought it was impressive that John could remember every wedding.
Though he could just be spouting off random names and dates for all she knew.
He could have said, The Crumpet-Trolleybottom wedding, January 1593, and they would have all nodded knowingly.
The thought made her laugh, and John gave her a puzzled look, and she cleared her throat and went back to staring at the donut wall.
“I love donuts.” Mae rested her elbows on the table with a dreamy sigh.
“I love when the glaze hardens and gets a little bit country.” She frowned.
“Crunchy.” Yes, that was it. Her head swimming with glazes and sprinkles, she gasped and turned to Susan.
“Hey, what if we did a donut wall? Instead of the vines?”
Susan did a double take, looking from Mae to the binder. “You…want to do a donut wall?”
Mae couldn’t tell what Susan found more surprising: that Mae was finally expressing a wedding-related opinion after a year of nods and shrugs, or that a wall—and not flowers, or music, or anything else Susan had a dedicated binder for—was the one detail Mae chose to speak on.
But donuts were delicious. Mae could go for a donut right now. And maybe her dad’s side of the family liked donuts too. In fact, maybe this whole, elaborate wedding wasn’t so absurd if the spectacle of it drew them in.
“Yeah,” Mae said. “Is that possible?”
“It is . It’s just…” Susan’s brow pinched. “This was for a morning wedding. Donuts went with the breakfast theme. But your wedding’s in the evening.” She spoke like there was something unspoken in her words.
“I’d eat donuts day or night,” Mae said. She glanced around the table. John was squinting thoughtfully into the distance, the temple tip of his glasses between his lips, like he was trying his hardest to imagine a world with night donuts.
But Connor, smirking at Mae, was already in that world with her. “Let’s do it,” he said. “Donut wall.”
“Donut wall!” Mae echoed, lifting her water glass. Connor clinked his glass against hers, his eyes dancing with mirth.
“Okay.” There was a touch of pain in Susan’s voice. She tucked a blond flyaway into place, surveying the two of them uncertainly. “Let’s have a donut wall…at night.”
“Night donuts!” Mae raised her hand for a high-five.
A range of emotions passed over Susan’s face: confusion, surprise, maybe joy? Susan gave a delighted laugh and slapped her hand neatly against Mae’s in the demurest high-five Mae had ever received.
“I didn’t know you liked donuts so much,” John said. “We could have picked some up for you today.”
Alarm bells sounded in the small part of Mae’s brain that hadn’t succumbed to the wine fog, flashing a bright-yellow caution sign, slow down, yield to oncoming intimacy.
For years, she’d curated the perfect balance of geniality and distance around Connor’s family.
Semi-regular lunches and dinners with Connor and his parents?
Sure. Pedicures with Susan? No, thank you—she was busy that day.
Coming over to admire the Rutherfords’ kitchen remodel?
Certainly, and she’d even gift them some fancy olive oil to mark the occasion.
Being left alone with them when Connor had to step out to take a call?
Oh, actually, she had to use the bathroom for the exact duration of Connor’s call, please excuse her a moment.
There was a logic behind her avoidance. Mae knew that if she let her guard down around his parents, they would do the same around her—and that was when the danger set in.
Yet, John’s donut offer and Susan’s high-five excitement had Mae’s resolve crumbling a little, as it always did when their kindnesses caught her off-guard.
She studied John and Susan, searching for traces of Connor.
With that gray hair lining the sides of John’s bald head, he didn’t much resemble him—but those warm brown eyes were the same.
Susan’s hair was lighter and thinner than Connor’s honey blond, but her crooked smile mirrored his.
Mae could choose to believe in them, accept that John and Susan might be every bit as good as their son.
“That would be great,” Mae said. “We’ll have to get donuts sometime.”
A strangely fuzzy feeling came over her as she took in John and Susan’s pleased expressions. Was this growth? Had she really overcome her fears about Connor’s parents and invented floratherapy (patent pending) in a single afternoon? She should get drunk more often.
While John and Susan debated potential donut vendors for the wedding, the talk of flavors and toppings had Mae’s mouth watering—except someone must have taken the snack platter inside.
The old Mae might have politely toughed it out around the Rutherfords, but she was evolved now.
She was Cabernet Mae. CaberMae, if you will.
“I’m gonna grab a snack,” she announced, standing abruptly. “Can I get anyone anything?” A wave of dizziness washed over her. She gripped her chair to avoid swaying.
“You good?” Connor asked, watching her closely.
“I’m great,” Mae assured him. She even believed it.