Chapter 2
THE LOST ART OF CHASING DREAMS
Rory was standing in their Vermont kitchen, wearing one of his cheesy pinstriped suits. A red tie was pulled away from his neck, his typical after work appearance. With his politician’s smile—the one Margot had grown to hate more than anything in the world—he asked, “What’s for dinner?”
Margot raised her eyes at him from the cutting board, where a Santoku knife waited next to a pile of chopped garden carrots.
“Hi, Sugar. So glad you’re home.” And with that, she took the knife by the blade and threw it at him with the expertise of a ninja.
The blade embedded in his throat. She laughed, a sinister, devilish cackle, as he fell to his knees and bled to death on the kitchen floor, the last gurgles of his life a symphony of joy to her ears.
Margot Pierce reached for the glass of merlot she’d poured, sighing as she sank into the bubbles and savored the last moments of her daydream. Taking a bath in the early afternoon had become a ritual. So had imagining how she’d kill her ex-husband.
He had been the mayor of Burlington, Vermont, the father of her only son, the man who tracked her down after seeing her in Crazy for You on Broadway in New York, put a ring on her finger, and dragged her back to Vermont.
The man she’d left her promising career behind for: Rory Simpson. Just his name disgusted her now.
How unlucky she was to have been Margot Simpson, even temporarily.
The name had invited an exhausting amount of teasing in comparison to the matriarch of The Simpsons.
She’d changed her name back before he’d even signed the divorce papers.
The bastard. The man whose affair was exposed by a journalist who managed to capture images of Rory’s cock in his secretary’s mouth—a slutty little whore named Nadine—a news story that made its rounds internationally and made Margot the most pitied woman in America.
These kinds of daydreams—admittedly disturbing as they were—had kept her from going insane since she’d left him.
She attempted to keep each fantasized murder civil by only using objects found in the kitchen.
It was the one rule to her cathartic game.
One day, she’d have to quit killing him and move on to something else.
It couldn’t be healthy. Maybe she needed to see a therapist, but she didn’t have time right now.
She had a business to get off the ground, and things weren’t off to the best start.
In a way, she had to appreciate his infidelity.
Her half of their money had allowed her to move to Washington to realize her greatest dream: opening an inn and farm sanctuary.
The inn was already being built, but the associated hemorrhaging of cash was starting to threaten the possibility of the farm sanctuary, a place where abused and neglected farm animals could live out their lives.
Since childhood, she’d been a protector of all living things, not even letting her friends squash a bug in her presence.
Philippe, her rescued three-year-old terrier mutt, was curled up on the cool tile floor against the wall.
His wiry gray hair and royal gait made Margot think he belonged at the feet of Queen Guinevere while she held court. Margot spoiled him accordingly.
She’d bought her home and the land for the inn before she’d moved out to Red Mountain, but she couldn’t yet purchase the adjoining ten acres for the sanctuary.
At this rate, someone else might swoop in and buy the property out from under her.
Every time she drove by, she wanted to grab the “For Sale” sign and put it in her trunk.
The inn was supposed to be open by now, but delays in construction had held up the project.
Her contractor, a man she was learning to distrust, had assured her he’d be finished by September 1.
Now, she’d be lucky to open the doors by June.
And she’d be even luckier if she wasn’t painfully over budget.
That’s what I get for trusting someone, especially a man, she thought.
If her contractor wasn’t careful, she’d be daydreaming about him in the bathtub too.
She had no shortage of kitchen weapons in her arsenal.
She dressed and went downstairs, Philippe following closely behind.
Her home stood on the lower part of Red Mountain, below Col Solare, a winery owned by St. Michelle and the Antinori family.
She’d bought the house from a Microsoft couple who’d built it only five years earlier.
She never knew why they left, but the house was everything she ever wanted.
It wasn’t very big, but she didn’t need much space for herself and her son.
The white stucco and red roof, that Santa Barbara kind of look, fit so perfectly with the desert climate and the vines that ran in rows as far as you could see in every direction.
The Microsoft couple had done an exceptional job inside too, sparing no expense on fixtures, appliances, and the little details.
Due to the escalating nature of real estate on Red Mountain and the seller’s market they were in, Margot paid top dollar, but she believed in her purchase.
Red Mountain was only beginning to show its potential.
One day, people would compare the area to Yountville or Calistoga.
She heard a car door shut and walked out the front door.
Her seventeen-year-old son, Jasper, was getting a backpack out of his car.
The sight of him brought her so much joy.
Though Jasper hated her to say it, he was the most adorable boy, or man, she’d ever seen.
He was barely 5’8”, weighed maybe 150 pounds, and had this baby face that made her want to gobble him up.
He’d attempted to hide his youth by growing a beard, but the effort was so patchy that it somehow only enhanced the cute factor.
He had exceptional taste in clothes and took great pride in his dress.
Today, he was wearing a pair of red John Fluevog brogue shoes with dark jeans and an ironed white button-down shirt.
And he’d been the one to iron it! His brown hair was shaggy and he wore glasses with thick rims. She’d offered him LASIK but he had no interest. He liked looking sophisticated.
His beat-up wool fedora rarely left his head.
The whole look especially worked when he got on the bench behind the piano, which is where he had spent the majority of his life.
He had this kind of budding-jazz-star look, “the mad scientist on the ivories,” as one of the college recruiters trying to poach him had said.
Margot was learning more and more that the only person she could really trust in this world was Jasper.
Somehow, despite all the crap she and her husband had put their son through—the media bullshit, the agonizing divorce, her own mental breakdown—her son was still solid as a rock.
As long as he was in her life, everything was going to be all right.
He reached down and greeted Philippe.
“How was school, sweetheart?”
“Not bad. I’m figuring it out. By graduation, I’ll be running the show.
” Jasper was generally very quiet, a great listener, but he was rarely short of words with her, even if sometimes sarcastic.
He had put all the anger he felt toward his father into taking care of her.
What an amazing man, Margot thought. That’s right: man.
He was a man now. Jasper was an old soul, always acting twice his age.
Alas, because of this maturity, he had a hard time making friends, finding little in common with kids his age.
He approached her, put his hand on her shoulder, and gave her a peck on the cheek. “What’s going on with you?”
“About to make culurgiones, your favorite.”
“Can I help?”
“Don’t you have homework?”
“Yeah, but it can wait.”
“Wait a minute. So you want to help your boring old mom make dinner tonight? How did I get so lucky?”
“I enjoy making dinner with you. Especially Sardinian. I could use some comfort food.”
“Why don’t you take an hour and play the piano?
I know you’re dying to.” Jasper had proved to be an exceptional classical and jazz pianist, and staff from Julliard, the Berklee College of Music, and the New England Conservatory, among others, had been bugging them for years.
Half of their decision to come to Red Mountain was for Jasper; one of the top piano teachers in the country lived close by in Richland.
As Jasper started inside, Margot noticed someone had stuck a piece of paper to his back that read I love boys.
She caught up to him and ripped it off. He didn’t notice and kept moving.
Did he really like his new school? Without his father as mayor, she was worried people would treat his strange side with a bit more teasing.
She didn’t want to baby him, though. He could take care of himself.
At least, she’d keep telling herself that.
Before following him back inside, Margot took a minute to look at the inn, or what was to be her inn.
Her contractor was on vacation, and he’d failed to line up work while he was gone, so the site on the other side of her property was a ghost town.
Actually, the only signs of life were her five hens pecking and scratching diligently at a patch of dirt near the yet-to-be-working fountain in the front.
The actual exterior of the inn, built of concrete block, was up, but they hadn’t even started stuccoing yet.
The only landscaping they’d done was the line of young black locust trees along the driveway and parking area.
She named the inn épiphanie, homage to her mother’s side of the family, who came from Carcassonne in the southwest of France, no doubt the roots of Margot’s deep love for cooking and European cuisine.
épiphanie stood two stories high, with eight rooms upstairs for guests, each with a private balcony.
The architecture matched the Spanish style of her home.
Downstairs, there was a giant dining room, a commercial kitchen, a wine cellar, two bathrooms, and a large entryway that would feature a grand piano for Jasper to dazzle guests with when they entered.
On a clear day, from any chair on the back patio, you could see the snowy top of Mount Adams off to the west.
Margot went in to finish dinner. Jasper was on the Steinway in the living room warming up. She’d always enjoyed his playing, even when he was stabbing out “Heart and Soul” when he was five. Now and then, she could listen to him for hours.
Today, he was teasing Debussy. She pulled out the piece of paper she’d ripped off his back and looked at it again. Her blood boiled. Youth could be so damn cruel.