Chapter 18
IT HAPPENED ONE STORMY NIGHT
Ginny
I don’t intentionally avoid Declan the rest of the week, but I don’t seek him out either.
I tell myself it’s more important to hunt for new clients, but the truth is, I’m scared.
I’m scared of how much I think of him.
I’m scared of how jealous I get when my friends tell stories about him.
I’m mad at myself for overthinking everything and missing most of harvest and the sorting and the fun.
But I don’t have to miss Flow, because Declan drops her off anytime he’s working, which is basically all the time, since we make the call to pick the Riesling and Syrah grapes ahead of the storm.
And then I wonder if he’s leaving Flow with me while he’s working because he knows how much I need an emotional support Flow, or if he’s doing it because his dog’s happy here.
I’m about to crawl out of my skin with all of the jumbled feelings and conflicting thoughts and desires turning me inside out.
With rain looming imminently Friday night, I slip out of the house and head to the tasting room at the front of the property.
It’s a stone building with a high roofline and rustic windows.
Inside are three main rooms—a cave-like room for tastings with more stone on the walls and iron light fixtures, a brighter-lit gift shop area with a fading mural of the property on one wall and exposed brick on the others, and a mostly empty storage room in the back.
There’s also a basement that we still need to fully sort through, but that’s an after-harvest problem.
I slip in through the storage room door and head toward the former gift shop half of the building. The plan is to renovate in here, building a wall to fully separate the gift shop from the tasting area and installing a hidden door that will lead into an adult gift shop.
We’re still debating what we want to call the winery when we reopen, but we’ve collectively agreed that we’re doing it with our viral moments in mind.
We’re owning it.
Taking charge of the narrative.
As much as we’re comfortable, anyway.
And then we’re taking it a step further.
Between Cricket going viral for flashing her vagina on a livestream and Samantha and Olivia going viral for a mishap with an axe and a ceramic dildo, plus my and Dori’s viral moments being about bad breakups, selling relationship and sexual wellness products instead of the traditional shirts and mugs makes sense.
Plus, the profit margin is amazing on adult products.
If I can’t help with the wine, then the gift shop is where I’ll spend my time, strategizing and sketching out ideas for the layout of the store.
I flip on the lights in the gift shop, take two steps into the space, and I freeze.
The room’s been mostly empty for a while now. Just three empty shelves, four open cases of Cabernet Sauvignon, a box of tie-dye T-shirts, and the check-out counter.
The check-out counter with an envelope on it that wasn’t there before.
A white, bulging, letter-size envelope.
And when I pick it up, I realize it’s full of cash.
I’m goggling at it when I hear someone behind me.
“I didn’t steal it,” I blurt as I spin, the instinct to defend myself ingrained inside me.
Declan and Flow both tilt their heads at me.
“Did you do this?” I demand, the instinct to find someone else to blame and defend myself heavy and irrepressible.
“Do what?” Declan ambles deeper into the gift shop, while Flow rushes me.
“Did you—did you leave this envelope of cash on the counter?”
His brow furrows, and for a second, I’m back in college, meeting him for the first time, him clearly suppressing a sneer as he realized that I was that Ginny Rhodes.
Judging me.
Finding me unworthy.
“If I wanted to give you cash, I would’ve just given you cash,” he says as he reaches me, looking down at the plain white envelope stuffed full of money.
“But would you?” I ask. “Or would you think we’d be embarrassed and try to spare our feelings by doing something anonymously?”
His brown eyes connect with mine. “If you need money—”
“We don’t need money. More money. We don’t need more money.”
His face goes placid, like he doesn’t want to call me on the lie.
Around here, we can always use more money.
Reopening a winery is no insignificant financial undertaking, and we’re managing it with all the volunteer help we can find and tight budgeting and holding our breaths and hoping for small miracles.
Miracles that miraculously keep coming.
“You okay?” he asks me.
“What are you doing here?” I ask instead of answering. My pulse is racing, and the taste of terror is heavy on my tongue.
I’m being framed.
I’m being framed for stealing an envelope of cash.
Cameras.
Are there cameras?
Flow leans into me and whines as I spin, looking for hidden cameras in the corners of the room. She smells like expensive doggie shampoo, and her fur is soft and glowing.
She could be a doggie model.
“Ginny?” Declan says.
“What are you doing here?” I repeat.
“Heard this is a good place to find a random bottle of wine without going to the house.”
“Who gave you a key?”
“Cricket.”
That, unfortunately, makes sense.
He picks up the envelope and thumbs through it, whistling softly as I nearly choke on my tongue.
Those aren’t fives or tens.
Or even twenties.
It’s all hundred-dollar bills.
My mother made me count out a stack of one-dollar bills once on the show. Wanted me to understand the value of every dollar, which is ironic, considering that she blew through every dime the show made and more.
There were a hundred dollars in the stack.
It looks like there’s about a hundred bills in this envelope too.
“We have to turn this in.” My body is flushed in a cold sweat, getting colder and sweatier by the second. “Someone lost this. They need it back.”
Declan pulls out a bill with a pink sticky note attached.
“Name a wine after me,” he reads aloud as I track the words.
I slide a look at him.
He shakes his head. “Recognize the handwriting?”
“Yes.” I’m panting, but I make myself answer him. “It’s Comic Sans font. That’s printed.”
The message isn’t doing anything to soothe the cold sweat drenching my body or the fear racing through my veins.
“You can print on a sticky?”
“Someone left an envelope of cash, and you’re worried about the technicalities of sticky note printers?” Dammit, I’m screeching now.
“Ginny?”
“It’s a setup. Someone’s setting us up.”
“Ginny—”
“It’s the kind of cash that will get you flagged by security at the airport. Ask me how I know.”
“Saw that episode,” Declan mutters. “Hey, listen, it’s—”
“Call Mabel. We have to call Mabel. She’ll know what to do.”
Flow does her half-yowl as she leans into me, staring at me with her big brown puppy dog eyes like she’s asking me to quit freaking out.
“Pretty obvious what you have to do is name a wine Anonymous Donor and take the cash,” Declan says, watching me like he’s waiting to see if I crack.
“No. No. Was this in here the last time you were here?”
“Haven’t been in here. Just came in through the front door.”
“But the wine under the stars—”
“Had my own bottle from town.”
“So it was a wedding guest. But how would they have gotten in here? Who had access? Who’s setting me up?”
“Ginny.”
“What?”
“Breathe.”
“I’m fucking breathing, okay?”
His eyes crinkle at the edges as he smiles at me. “Okay.”
“Stop laughing.”
“I’m not laughing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m glad you’re breathing.”
“I realize you don’t think this is a problem, but you didn’t grow up being told to do everything from steal an orange from the grocery store to being grounded off camera for refusing to key a car in a parking lot on camera. Someone is setting me up.”
Two thick arms are suddenly around me, my face pressed against a wall of muscle with a solid, beating thump thump thump in my ear while a furry body leans so hard on my legs that my knees almost buckle.
“I won’t let anyone set you up,” Declan murmurs. “You didn’t do this. You just found it. It’s okay. You have me, and Mabel, and Cricket, and Dori, and Olivia, and Samantha, and Pip, and Heath. We all know you didn’t steal this.”
“But—”
“We’re your defensive line. No one’s getting through us.”
Flow whines louder and pushes harder on my legs while I realize I needed that reminder to breathe.
“I got arrested once for real,” I whisper. “My mom wanted it to air on the show, but the producers refused. Because I was a minor.”
“You’re not getting arrested today. It’s a donation. Someone wants you to have that.”
“I—I stole a pack of condoms and lube from a pharmacy. The cameras weren’t on me.
Ten and Caro were having a fight about candy and I went to another aisle and I was fifteen but very, very sheltered, and I didn’t even know what condoms and lube were.
I just knew it looked like something I shouldn’t have. ”
He hugs me tighter, and I give up the fight and let Flow push me all the way into him, letting him hold me up.
“I thought—I thought it would be good for ratings for me to show Ten later, but one of the employees saw me and called the cops for real because he knew—he knew who I was. He knew what I did. On camera. That’s when I started to hate the show. When I realized that what we were doing wasn’t normal.”
Declan strokes my back, his grip an iron vise on me. “You deserved a normal childhood.”
“At first, I knew it made me special. But the cops—they scared the fuck out of me. I thought they were going to take me away from my mom and from Ten and Caro, that I’d have to go to jail and my family would travel on to the next town without me, and it was very, very clear that my family wouldn’t be staying in jail with me.
The show’s crew either. I couldn’t understand why the police didn’t see that my mom was right.
That it wasn’t real. And that’s when I started to understand that maybe my mom wasn’t right. That she wasn’t right at all.”
“Hard thing to do at fifteen.”