Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
D eclan
The absolute best way to distract a nine-year-old from asking questions about his parent’s past is to stuff him full of Wisconsin’s finest cream puffs. I’m not proud of it or looking forward to the inevitable sugar crash in about an hour, but it gives me a moment of peace, and I’ll take it.
Alex and his friend Mac take their cream puffs and dash off to eat them where no one will offer them napkins. Which will have to be quite a distance away. If we didn’t live in a small town where everyone knows both kids like they know their own, I would have placed a tracker on Alex.
“Hello, Declan.” Marie Marshall, the head nurse at the local clinic, stands before me, wearing denim overalls and a brightly colored zigzag-patterned short sleeve shirt. She must have been out at the lake a lot that summer. Her normally white skin is tanned bronze .
“Hi, Marie. What can I getcha?” I set a clean glass before her.
“Whatever you’re having.” Her dark brown eyes twinkle. She doesn’t mean anything by it. Marie still pines after her wife, who died twelve years ago.
“Sweet? Light? Blush?”
“I’ll bet you make all the young ladies blush,” Marie says kindly.
Not all. “Here, try the Swooning Dove Rosé. It’s been popular, with the weather and all.” I pour her a generous glass. This is the wine I thought Daughtry would like, not the Chardonnay. That’s too heavy, too buttery. The rosé tastes of watermelon and strawberries. If my parents ever listened to me, they’d let me take the Chard grapes and age them in steel instead of oak. Or maybe amphora. An unoaked Chardonnay, styled like a Chablis, would suit Daughtry. A little classic, a little naughty.
No, not naughty. I’m not thinking anything naughty about Daughtry.
Marie swirls the pink liquid in her glass and raises it to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Oh, heck yes. This smells perfect.” She takes a small sip, holding it on her tongue. “Delicious. Your family’s outdone themselves.”
I wave a hand. “It’s not a competition.” It is, mostly among the local vintners, and not for any sort of prestige beyond lording it over one another at hot ham and rolls on Sundays. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Did you hear Daughtry Sutcliffe is back in town? Poor Maddy. She feels so badly about the mixup with the reservations.”
Memories of Daughtry hugging me are not things I should contemplate while trying to upsell my family’s wine. “Yeah, she stopped by earlier. She tried the Chardonnay.”
“Her loss. Maybe next time you can convince her on the rosé.” Marie catches my gaze as she takes another healthy sip. “Will there be a next time, do you think? I always liked Daughtry. Shame she was here for only a year.”
Small town gossip is one of the many things Josie hated about living here. Not the final straw, no. But a conversation like this would have made her snap pencils into tiny toothpicks. “Actually, Daughtry is going to be staying in my parents’ guest cottage. Everywhere else is full, and we fixed that water leak.” I wish someone else would stop by the tent to distract me, but it’s barely noon and the real drinkers have not yet descended on the festival. Though I see Rove approaching. “So…She’s staying with us.”
Marie’s eyes sparkle even more as she finishes off her rosé. “If that isn’t making hay while the sun shines, I don’t know what is, believe you me. I’ll take a bottle of that rosé. Frannie and Laura will love it the next time we make paella.”
I ring her up and place the bottle in a paper carrier bag for her. “Have a great day, Marie.” I wave as she leaves.
Great. The news that Daughtry is staying Chez Foster will be all over town in three-point-two seconds.
I’m wrong. It’s one-point-two.
Ciaran rushes toward the tent. “Daughtry’s staying in our guest cabin?”
I finish pouring a glass of Dumpster Fire Red Blend for Rove, the town’s sanitation expert, before turning my attention to my brother. “Jeez, Ciaran. Did you burn your shirt along with the hamburgers?”
Ciaran glances down at his outfit, which consists of low slung jeans held up by red suspenders and nothing underneath. The man needs to hydrate more.
Unperturbed, Ciaran shrugs. “I didn’t burn any burgers. This time. And the fire department gets better tips if I serve shirtless.”
“That’s objectifying and concerns me for the state of our society.” I ring up two bottles of rosé for Shirley Mott, our local high school principal.
Ciaran sidles up to the bar, reaches over the table, and pulls a can of blueberry hard cider out of the cooler. “You’re missing the point. You saw Daughtry before I did and you got her to stay at our place?”
“Technically, it’s not your place. How’s that blend, Rove?” I ask. The ginger-haired man tilts his palm back and forth in the gesture version of meh . “Try the Cranbernet next. It’s more your speed.” My brother’s energy sucks up all my attention, the asshole. “You have your own place. You’re just at the vineyard all the time because you forget to buy groceries. And you enjoy making my life hell.”
“My brother made my life hell.” Rove drains the glass of not-bad red blend down his gullet. “That’s why I ran him out of town.”
That’s a story I have no desire to hear. “Ciaran, I’m working. Don’t you also have to work? People will be wanting their shirtless bratwurst.” I hope the beer-steamed onions splash and burn his naked nipples.
Ciaran opens the can of cider and sips it. “Come on. You of all people know how hot and heavy Daughtry and I were. I always thought, if we didn’t go off to separate colleges, we could really have made it work. You know?”
No. I don’t know and I have no desire to know. The little I do know makes me want to burn my eyeballs with sulfuric acid.
This entire conversation makes my head buzz uncomfortably, like I’m stuck in a broken MRI machine.
“I’m working. Can we talk about this later?”
“Okay.” Ciaran, in a first-of-its-kind gesture, places a hand on my shoulder. “Thank you, bro. You’re doing me a huge solid. I never knew you were this awesome of a wingman.”
I wait until he and Rove are gone, then I take the bottle of red blend and empty it down my throat. Glasses are for winners, not unwilling wingmen.