Chapter Sixteen. Temperance
Temperance woke up feeling unhitched from reality.
She rolled over and stared at the ceiling to get her bearings. She was in Duncan’s cabin. In his bed. She ran her hands over her face, her arms, the tangle of her hair. The clock on the bedside table read 7:10 A.M. She hadn’t slept this late in years.
Long ago, in one of her earliest conversations with Rowan, Rowan had mused about how a caterpillar had no idea why it made a chrysalis, let alone that it would become a butterfly inside it. At the time, Temperance had found this to be both very weird and very earnest, while Frankie had countered by wondering whether caterpillars and butterflies actually had any ideas at all.
In that moment, splayed out on Duncan Brady’s bed in a ripped bra and a still-damp pair of panties, Temperance imagined she knew exactly how one of those emerging butterflies felt. A little bewildered, sore in confusing parts of her anatomy, and desperately, desperately hungry.
She sat up. “Duncan?”
Silence.
They’d managed to get the truck back onto the road just after midnight. When they’d approached Cloud Tide, the property was entirely dark—not even the ever-burning standing lamplights at the base of the drive were lit. The bottom of the hill was a fluid slide of mud and debris that not even the truck could navigate. It had slid backward and sideways as Duncan revved the engine—he’d tried three times before he’d slammed it into reverse and diverted down the lake access road to the cabin, fishtailing and cursing the whole way.
Once they made it to the cabin, Duncan had showered off the mud from pushing the truck off the shoulder. There wasn’t a door between the bedroom and the bathroom, so Temperance had sat in the tiny den in the dark, waiting for him to finish. He’d insisted she sleep in his bed.
She had no idea where he’d slept, but it hadn’t been with her.
At the foot of the bed sat her overnight bag from up at the house. His keys were on the bedside table beside a note.
Duncan’s writing was as perfect as a digital font, with minimalist letters and uniformly spaced words. Each s had a slight inward curl on the upstroke, and each i was capped with a short slash instead of a dot. The note read:
T—
It’s 6:00, don’t want to wake you. Headed up the híll.
The access road ís safe now. Take my truck.
—D
Temperance lay flat on her back and held the keys above her, dangling them like a dream catcher. Along with the fob for his truck, there were at least ten keys for the buildings around Cloud Tide, and a handful of smaller keys for miscellaneous padlocks and the Gator. There was a scratched and weathered metal heart that read DARWIN, the tag of the family dog he’d grown up with. Another aluminum disc was stamped brADY, with an off-center heart beneath it. Temperance had a matching one on her own set of keys. Years ago, Alice had made them for everyone using a jewelry-stamping kit she’d gotten for her birthday, and she’d been too young to understand that even though Temperance was her family, she didn’t share the same last name.
She left the bedroom. The cabin was a cozy rectangular space, smelling of sweet pipe tobacco and the faintest whiff of dry dust that was characteristic of old places, though every surface was tidy and clean. The ceiling and walls were exposed cedar, and a springy but faded rug covered the wide-plank wood floor. Temperance recognized the couch and a few other pieces of furniture from the carriage house where Rowan and Harry lived. To the left was the narrow galley kitchen behind two swinging saloon-style doors. They squeaked rhythmically on their hinges when she passed through.
The vertical molding around the kitchen entryway had horizontal lines etched into the wood. Beside each were names and dates. The handwriting was mostly the same on all of them, with a few exceptions. She ran her fingertip along them and whispered the names aloud. There were a few recurring names starting very low, reaching to about a foot taller than Temperance. This place had probably belonged to the same family until Duncan bought it earlier that year.
A long countertop and sink sat along the front-facing wall in the kitchen. Above the sink, filmy white curtains fluttered at the open windows. Hung from a small hook was a kitchen towel printed with faded vintage roosters and repetitions of the word “cocky” all over it.
There was something viscerally lonesome about the solitary coffee mug and single plate and fork that sat on the small drying rack on the countertop.
On a little breakfast table next to another window sat a closed laptop and a notebook with several dull pencils on top. Each one had its eraser worn down to a nub. Temperance lifted an empty mug to her nose. A faint but familiar hint of clove and spice clung to the tea bag at the bottom. Duncan had looped the string over the top of the handle and tucked the tiny paper label through, so it wouldn’t fall down into the mug.
The box of condoms sat on the table as well.
“Ask Mal sometime what’s in that box.”
Temperance hooked a finger in the lid to lift it open for a peek. A combination of surprise and runaway tenderness made her breath catch in her throat.
A first-aid kit.
It was so very Duncan. Unexpected. A little irreverent. Practical.
She slid the lid back into place and went to the covered porch. The old screen door squealed and rattled as it banged closed behind her.
Outside, she was greeted by the melancholy coo of a mourning dove. Lake Vesper reflected the iridescent pink of a cracked-opal sky. The entire basin was otherworldly in the milky morning light, the air thick with woodsmoke and the luminous fog spilling down the Chardonnay rows to the east. The banks had flooded in the night, submerging the dock and overflowing into the flat grassy area between the shore and the cabin. Where they’d chased each other with water balloons last weekend, a small family of ducks floated by, lazily dabbling for breakfast.
Duncan’s truck was parked under the carport, covered with sprays of dried mud. The tires were caked with the same, and the way the morning sun hit the passenger’s-side window illuminated streaky impressions of her handprint.
This was going to be a long day.
A green tarp rustled in the breeze around the side of the cabin. Barefoot, Temperance went to look.
Beneath the covering, twelve antique barn boards stood propped against the side of the cabin with their long edges roughly aligned. Together, the pieces created a mural of a stylized honeybee with hexagonal honeycomb patterns on each wing. Each cell of the honeycomb appeared three-dimensional—some were deep wells, shadowed with deep purples and blues. Others appeared so convex they seemed to burst forth from the wood. Tiny sweeps of black and brown and burgundy paint on the bee’s body were so finely rendered, the old wood panels might actually be soft and fuzzy to the touch.
Temperance absently rubbed her thumb over the tiny bee tattoo on the inside of her ring finger. She carefully covered the boards again and went back inside.
Amidst the spartan tidiness of the rest of the space, Duncan’s bookcases were a joyfully haphazard collection of titles that ranged from graphic novels and high-fantasy epics to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and several editions of Thoreau’s Walden. A few books on environmentally sustainable design had dozens of tattered Post-it Notes poking out the tops. Malcolm’s hardback thrillers had two entire sections of their own, every one of them still in their shiny dust jackets. Temperance tipped one out to peek inside the title page. The assertive scrawl of Mal’s autograph was there. No doubt Duncan asked him to sign every one of them. In the small space left at the end of the row of Mal’s books was a book about native mid-Atlantic ornamental plants that must have come from Rowan and a spiral-bound book of recipes Will had printed at the office supply store to gift to everyone at Christmas the year before.
Temperance ran her finger along the spines. This man loved his family.
On most of the shelves, notebooks and folders and loose papers were stuffed horizontally over the rows of books. There were several wallet-style folders clustered together near the top. When she stood on tiptoes and slid them down, a wisp of something small fluttered to the ground.
Temperance recognized it immediately.
The photo booth had kicked out two copies that day. They were both eighteen and beautiful in that high-gloss, full-spectrum sort of way. Ripe and impermanent as summer fruit. Duncan’s skin was tanned tawny, hair burnished chestnut at the tips from sun. His full bottom lip was shiny where her strawberry balm had transferred. Temperance barely recognized herself, a young woman well-accustomed to the closeness of the beautiful man who held her.
They’d gotten wasted on each other and assumed time would be a chaser.
She’d thrown her own copy of the photo strip in the trash that same winter. She went back to retrieve it later that day and sobbed for an hour when she learned Frankie had cleaned their room and emptied the bin into the residence hall dumpster.
How often did he look at this? Would he miss it if it disappeared?
Reluctantly, she tucked the photo back where it came from.
In another folder, each page was filled with architectural concept sketches and renderings of noteworthy buildings around the valley. The historic jewel-box-style bank in Linden and the old carhop diner in Shelby. A sketch of the historic Tudor-style library in Chapel Ford was so finely illustrated, it could have been a black-and-white photograph if not for the telltale smudge along the left edge. Scattered amongst the buildings were still-life sketches of everyday objects and a few pieces that looked remarkably similar to some of his tattoos.
One of the buildings was the Cloud Tide bank barn, but it was fanciful and idealized, with a few extra cupolas on the roof, and an all-glass sunroom extension off the tasting room. An exquisitely detailed sketch of the Bradys’ Georgian Colonial included the gnarled old weeping cherry at the western corner of the house, which meant Duncan would have had to have drawn it within the first few months after his parents bought the place. That tree had come down in a storm later that first winter. Another sketch of the house showed snow on the roof and a wreath on the door. There were half a dozen more, and Temperance’s pulse sped up with the later sketches she flipped to. In the more recent ones, the window to her room—the Primrose room—seemed to glow on the paper. How Duncan managed to accomplish it with simple pencil strokes wasn’t a thing she could understand, but there it was.
There it was.
TEMPERANCEparked Duncan’s truck in front of the Brady house and hiked up to the Cabernet Franc. Everything was wet and vibrant, and the air had a clean weightlessness that came only after a storm. Everywhere she walked, downed tree branches and debris from the vineyards cracked like tiny bones under her feet.
She found Rowan at the outer perimeter of the vineyard, tying vines back to the trellises and trimming away what was broken. She wore old denim overalls and a pair of gardening gloves with dirt-blackened fingers, and her hair was swirled into a big ginger bun as tangled as the grapevines.
She gave Temperance a quick once-over and said, “Nice shirt.”
“Yep.” It was an old Death Cab for Cutie concert T-shirt from Duncan’s bottom dresser drawer. In the center of it, a crow was twisted in a red thread. The shirt fit her like a dress, so she’d had to tie it in a knot at the hem.
“Rough night?” Rowan removed her gloves to put her hair back up. Her engagement ring glittered in the sunshine.
“I always look tired.” Temperance fiddled with a thumb-sized bundle of tiny baby grapes.
“Fair.”
To the west, Duncan had his back to them, hurling huge pieces of lumber into a flatbed trailer. Every toss was followed by an explosive grunt of exertion she could hear even a hundred yards away.
Rowan had a thoughtful crease between her brows. She tugged her gloves back on and used the tip of her pruners to point to the vine in front of her. A sad-looking shoot was frayed at the end, and a leaf was shredded in half.
“See these?” Rowan said. “Right now, the priority is to get the damaged parts removed to reduce the chance of disease. I don’t think there was enough damage to destroy the crop this year, but we won’t know for sure until a little later in the summer.”
From Duncan’s direction, more guttural sounds of satisfaction. Temperance couldn’t not look.
“Did you know grapes have secondary buds that only come through if the first ones are lost?” Rowan said. Her expression was entirely without guile. “A second chance.”
Temperance rubbed the middle of her forehead and closed her eyes.
“They have a tertiary bud, too,” Rowan said. “A second second chance. Isn’t nature great?”
Yeah. This was definitely going to be a long day.
Rowan snipped a few frayed shoots with surgical precision. “So how are things between you and Duncan?”
Temperance’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Your armistice. Being friends.”
“Oh. Great. Super. We’re very good at it.”
Harry arrived, streaked with mud and carrying two freshly filled carafes of water. With his hair in a low knobby ponytail, he looked like he belonged in the vineyard with Rowan as much as he belonged at his clinic with patients.
“Hey, T-Bird,” Harry said. “You here to work?”
Temperance nodded. “I bet this is exactly how you’d planned to spend the weekend before Rowan leaves for Spain.”
He chuckled and handed water to Rowan. Their movements mirrored each other’s as they both took a drink. “I knew what I was signing up for.” He picked a piece of grape leaf out of her bun and nudged a few sweaty curls off her forehead.
Temperance’s heart gave an affectionate squeeze. These two were halves of a whole in a way she and Duncan could never be. There might be too much missing from them both to be able to fill each other’s empty spaces.
“Harry and I have things covered here,” Rowan said. “Why don’t you go see what Duncan needs help with?”
PROTESTINGwould have just made Rowan more curious than she obviously already was, so Temperance went to help Duncan. She approached slowly, partly to delay the inevitable awkward conversation, partly to fully take in what she was seeing.
With a breathy grunt, Duncan lifted a log as big around as his waist onto a low stump, then raised the hem of his shirt to swipe his face. He turned, just enough that she got an eyeful of sweat-damp swirls of hair on a toned belly. A belt was threaded through the loops of his jeans, but it seemed a miracle of physics how they could hang so low on his hips without revealing the full extent of what he was packing beneath the button fly. When he turned away again, the back of his shirt rode up to reveal twin dimples in the columns of muscle along his spine.
He adjusted his ball cap, took a step back, and planted his feet shoulder-width apart. Lifting up on tiptoes for more momentum in the downward swing, he arced a block splitter high over his head. When the splitter made contact, the wood cracked like a starter pistol.
Duncan’s throaty, explosive exhale followed.
The gray T-shirt he wore was parchment thin, clinging to the swell and thrust of his shoulder blades as he worked. Another swift intake of air past clenched teeth. Another swing of the splitter—snap—and another forceful burst of breath at the finish.
For a moment, she paused under the shade of a big maple. Really, she could watch this all day.
Back still to her, he rested the splitter on the ground and called out, “You going to watch me, or you going to come make some polite conversation?”
She had the sudden impulse to inch around the trunk of the tree and hide behind it like a cartoon character.
“Temperance, I know you’re there.” Another powerful windup. The burst of downward motion. The break. Duncan’s deep, gratified growl.
God.
She gave him a wide berth as she came around in front of him. Lightly, she said, “Are you chopping this wood, or are you fucking it?”
Duncan looked up, smiled his canny side-slung smile, and raised the tattered bill of his ball cap to sweep his hair back beneath it.
His beard was gone.
Temperance’s legs turned to warm taffy.
A beard might make a mediocre face more attractive than it actually was, but that wasn’t the case with Duncan Brady. He was startlingly hot with it and without it. Seeing the entire lower half of his face here in the plain light of day felt intensely private, almost verging on obscene. Like walking in on someone naked and getting a glimpse of way more skin than you’d been prepared for. His lips were just—there—with nothing to divert attention from them.
His very bare mouth lifted at one corner. “Enjoy watching me?”
“Enjoy being watched?” she volleyed back.
His crooked smile turned into a full-on grin. “You know my answer to that.”
“How did you know it was me?”
No reply, just an acrobatic lift of a single eyebrow.
“Seriously.” She put her hands on her hips. “I made no noise.”
“I’m very familiar with the sound of your breathing when your heart rate’s up, Temperance.”
She gave him a prim glare and tightened her ponytail. “What are you doing?”
“Oh, this?” He gave the splitter an acrobatic twist, then propped it against the cut wood. “This is all an elaborate thirst trap with absolutely no functional purpose. Just for you. How’d I do?”
Eleven out of ten. Possibly twelve.
He had no business looking as good as he did. His pale blue jeans were shredded at the knees and frayed at the hems. A retro-looking sailboat logo on his T-shirt declared BEST IN THE WET.
“Mmm. I give it a six out of ten. Jeans aren’t tight enough. You lose points for not being shirtless, and you’re barely glistening.”
He breathed out a little laugh.
“Why not use a chain saw?”
“Ah, chain saws lean more menacing than sexy, don’t you think?” He cupped a hand over the back of his neck, and the muscles in his upper arm flexed.
Temperance waved a finger at his bulging arm. “You do that on purpose.”
“Do what?”
“That—thing.” She pushed up her glasses and pointed again. “The thing where you lift your arm and flex. You’ve always done it.”
“What, this?” He passed his hand over his hair. The movement made his biceps pulse like a heartbeat. The sleeve of his T-shirt rode up, revealing a dark, damp tuft beneath his arm.
Jesus. Everything about him simultaneously offended and aroused.
“Yes.”
Duncan laughed and swung his arm down to his side. “I’ll be more considerate about where I touch myself when you’re around.” With one of his canines, he ripped a short piece of duct tape from a roll that sat on one of the bigger logs. “Rowan’s with Harry in the Cab Franc. I’m sure she’ll have something for you to do.”
“I just came from there. I’m here to help you.”
He slapped the tape into a rip in the palm of his work gloves. “Help me?”
“I’m stronger than I look.”
Duncan paused with a flask of water halfway to his mouth. “I’m more concerned about your willingness to follow instructions.” He tilted his head to the side. “I go pretty hard, Temperance.”
She lifted her chin and matched his tone. “I can handle whatever you give me, Duncan.”
His throat pulsed rhythmically as he sucked hard on the flask. A few tiny fresh razor nicks marked skin glossy with sweat, and he had a faint tan line where the upper edge of his beard had been. Temperance’s thumb used to fit perfectly in that deep dimple in his left cheek.
I know you.
It was silly, really, this sensation that she somehow knew the person who stood before her now better than the person he’d been only hours before. The beard, the tattoos—it was like he’d intentionally disguised the boy he’d been when he’d loved her. He’d been hiding in plain sight.
Temperance lobbed his keys at him with an underhand throw.
Her toss went wide, but Duncan snatched them out of the air without taking his eyes off her face.
“I thought nobody drove your truck?” she said.
“You’re not nobody.”
Warmth bloomed through her like a late spring peony, but she kept her tone light. “Why did you shave your beard? You look like you’re eighteen.”
“I thought you hated my beard.” He scratched his jaw and glanced at his hand with curiosity, like the feel of his own face was foreign to him.
“Hate is a very strong word.”
“What happened to beards are dirty?”
“I might have been”—she crossed and uncrossed her arms over her chest—“misinformed.”
“Dr. Temperance Jean Madigan, changing her mind? Pfff.”
“Duncan, your beard isn’t why I won’t let you kiss me. Is that why you shaved it?”
His eyes sparkled, but his expression quickly turned serious. He touched a fingertip to the side of her neck. “I hurt you.”
She waved a dismissive hand. “It stung a little when I put sunscreen on. It’s fine.”
“It’s not.” A big breath rose his chest high under the thin shirt. “I never want to hurt you.”
“Oh, god.” Temperance cupped a hand over the beard burn. “This is why you shaved?”
A clattering bang came from inside the equipment garage up the hill. Will Brady howled, “Fecking balls.”
“Language,” sang Gia from somewhere deeper inside.
Duncan cast a distracted look in that direction. He took an impatient step closer. “I want to talk to you.” His voice was heavy, like the words themselves had weight.
She blinked. “We’re talking right now.”
“Somewhere else. Later.” He cut his eyes sideways and waved distractedly to the vineyard crew heading toward the gardener’s cottage for a break. Then, toward where Rowan and Harry worked in the north vineyard. “Please.”
Something urgent and aching swelled inside her. A metamorphic sort of fullness that could have been longing or lust or love or some inescapable fusion of the three. The heart of the boy she’d fallen in love with was still inside Duncan Brady, and the sum and substance of the man he’d become was more compelling than eighteen-year-old Temperance had had the capacity to imagine.
How cruel, for everything you’d ever wanted to be wrapped up in the one person who’d cut you the deepest.
“Temperance.” He waited until she looked up at him. His cheeks were flushed. “I’m trying to bend here. But you’re not doing enough reaching. We’re never going to meet halfway.”
The words were unexpected, but unsurprising. They were salt and sunscreen lingering in a beloved old beach towel, months into winter.
Longing nearly bent her in half.
She took a bracing breath. “Okay.”
“Okay?” He held her eyes for a moment, then exhaled a relieved little laugh through his nose. “Well. We’d better get started then.”