Chapter 34
WINETANIC
Cricket
Pip and Ten miss dinner, which is in the dining room tonight instead of the eat-in kitchen, in honor of our guest.
Lav’s so wound up that Heath takes her back to their place for dinner.
I wish I could join them, but I’m needed for wedding plans and putting our best foot forward for Caro.
This wedding is a done deal. I don’t know the financial details of what Caro and Mike are paying Mabel, but it’s obvious Caro’s biggest goal is privacy, followed quickly by a fast wedding before news of the engagement leaks to the press, and I get the impression she approached Ginny rather than the other way around.
I stifle myself every time I want to talk about the wine and ideas for rebranding and selling it.
Not the time.
I can brainstorm more with Ginny and Mabel next week. Dori too. Between her biochemistry degree and growing up helping her grandpa make berry wines at home, she’s eager to help any way she can, and she’s already started an online class on wine making, and she’s been talking to Winona too.
But we still have to make sure Pip will agree when she’s sober.
After dinner, I volunteer to do the dishes while more wedding plans continue in the sitting room.
I’m drying the last of the cooking dishes when Pip joins me in her nightgown.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Want some food? Olivia made chicken alfredo.”
When she doesn’t answer immediately, I glance up again from the pot in my hand and back at her.
She has one hand on the doorframe like she needs it for support, and her eyes are watching me with a solemness that has me putting the pot down and crossing the kitchen to her.
“Pip? You okay?”
“You’re something,” she replies.
I blink. “I—sorry?”
“I know what you did.”
Is she sleepwalking, or am I busted? “What did I do?”
“You got me drunk with Ten and needled him just right to use him to convince me to let you sell my wine.”
My face floods with heat.
That is, in fact, exactly what I did. And it’s suddenly clear that I should not have. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t—”
“Smart girl,” Pip says. “I needed that.”
I stop stuttering and gape at her.
She sighs and looks past me at the kitchen. “I know we’re broke,” she grumbles. “I know it’s my fault.”
I want to hug her, but I haven’t seen anyone hug her, so I hold myself back. “Mabel says you’ve done a lot of good with your money over the years. You might not have it anymore, but it’s helped a lot of people.”
“Done a lot of bad too.” She wanders past me, still looking around the kitchen.
For a brief moment, I want to know what it would be like to be Pip. Eighty-five, survived fifty years of a rough marriage, the black sheep of her own family, hated by her dead husband’s family who want what she has here, but clearly still in love with life.
With the family she and Mabel have made with all of us that they’ve welcomed.
The way she’s looking at the kitchen—she loves this house too.
I keep my words soft. “If you’re still willing to consider selling the wine, we have some branding ideas I’d love to share with you. I think you’ll love them.”
“There’s no wine.”
I blink. “No—no wine?”
“I drained most all of those barrels ten years ago.”
No. “You drained the barrels?”
“Tapped ’em and let ’em flow, then washed the floors with his favorite whiskey, then turned the hose on all of it like I was cleaning a murder scene. Didn’t want anything left that that old bastard was proud of.”
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
“The barrel we drank out of—” I start, and then stop myself as I remember that she and Ten couldn’t tap most of the barrels they tried first.
We were halfway down the row before they found one at ground level that they could tap.
Pip said the barrels were broken, which seemed odd to me, but I’ve never been part of the process, so I didn’t know.
They weren’t broken.
They were empty.
A hollow panic builds in my chest and spreads to my arms and legs.
That wine—that wine could’ve saved us.
But it’s not there.
One corner of her lips tilts up in a smile that’s not a real smile. “Said most of them, didn’t I?”
I swallow.
Then swallow again.
“So I fucked us over,” she says. “Can’t sell the wine. No wine left to sell.”
Dammit.
I thought we had it.
I thought we had the golden ticket. That I’d found the right thing to say.
And I did.
I found the right thing to say.
The thing that would put us in the black and save our home.
Except it’s not possible.
I swallow hard. “I don’t know firsthand what your marriage was like, but if you needed to drain the wine for closure, for processing, for healing, then you did what you needed to do. And it was your right to do it.”
She studies me. “That’s it? Not gonna yell at me for being dumb?”
Absolutely not.
It’s what my parents would’ve done, but it’s not who I want to be.
“Who’d do that here?” I ask softly instead.
“Dean would’ve.”
“Fuck Dean. I’m glad his legacy is gone.”
I am.
I’m devastated that we can’t use what he created to keep us afloat, but I get it.
It would be like me setting my parents’ house on fire after they’re gone to burn down the house that made me feel like I was broken.
I wouldn’t, but I can understand the urge.
“You’re a good egg, ladybug,” Pip says.
“Being here makes me better.” I move to the fridge. She should eat. “We’ll find another way, Pip. Don’t live in regrets. We’re not out of options yet.”
She blinks at me, then shakes her head. “That man better be giving you good orgasms. You deserve them.”
Once again, my face floods with heat, but this time, I’m laughing. “Don’t ever change, Pip.”
She grimaces, then grins back at me. “Who’s got a mangy hip?”
“Ten does.”
Her bark of laughter fills the kitchen, and everything feels a little lighter.
Still heavy, but a lighter heavy.
“Get me some of that chicken alfredo, will you?” she says. “Some asshole gave me a wine headache.”
I fix her a plate, then sit with her, prodding her for stories of her Vegas showgirl days while my brain turns with questions about how many barrels of wine might be left.
The wedding will only take us so far financially, and we don’t know if we’ll be able to pull it off in a way that will get us more bookings.
We’re still struggling to identify potential investors.
And the wine that I thought would save us can’t.
This is a setback in my optimism, but I’m not done yet.
We’re not done yet.
We will figure this out.
As a family.
Because that’s what we are, and this family?
This family’s worth fighting for.
I just hope we can save us in time.