CHAPTER 4
The Opening Must Go On—Lainie
The first car turned onto the private road while Lainie was arguing with the catering lead about chafing dish placement.
The catering lead—a woman named Diane with a clipboard and the bearing of someone who'd survived a hundred events and planned to survive this one—didn't look up. "They're always early."
Lainie smoothed her jacket and turned toward the road.
The ground was still wet, boot prints filling with muddy water, but the sky had cleared too fast. An hour ago, rain had been coming down in sheets.
Now: blue sky, no transition, no tapering off.
Just done. Like someone had thrown a switch.
Florida storms blew in fast, sure, but they didn't stop like that. Nothing natural stopped like that.
She filed it under the same mental folder as Brennon's empty bed and the timepiece running warm since dawn. The folder labeled deal with later.
A silver sedan crept along the gravel, tires crunching, the driver leaning forward as if the vineyard were something that needed to be inspected before entering. Behind it, a second car. A third.
Charlie was already moving. He stepped off the tasting room porch, raised a hand, and directed the first car toward the gravel lot behind the barn with the calm efficiency of a man who'd been parking guests since before Lainie owned a mailbox.
The driver waved. Charlie waved back. No rush, no fluster.
Just a man in his version of dressed up—clean shirt, pressed pants, boots that had been wiped but not shined—doing what he did best: making the place work.
Something sharp sat behind her breastbone. Charlie had sold her this dream and stayed to help her carry it. She hadn't asked him to. He'd just never left.
She blinked. Swallowed. Moved on.
A fourth car. A fifth. Then Karen's SUV—parked crooked, half on the gravel, half on the grass, because Karen drove the way she lived: committed to the general direction and unbothered by the details—and behind it, Alaina's black sedan, Picku's Highlander, and a car Lainie didn't recognize that turned out to be Sheena's rental.
Karen was out before her engine stopped running. She crossed the wet ground in three strides, practical flats, a blazer that meant business, hair up, eyes locked on Lainie with the energy of someone who had already decided the day would work and dared the world to argue.
"You look like you need me." Karen stopped two feet away. "Where do you want me?"
"Outdoor bar. Wine glasses aren't out yet. And check the—"
"On it." Karen was gone.
Alaina appeared next, heels that had no business on wet grass, a smile wide as the canopy itself. She touched Lainie's arm as she passed. "It's beautiful. Tell me what to do."
"Help Diane with the appetizer trays?"
"Done."
Picku hugged her—quick, warm, no words needed. Nandita waved from across the lot, already heading toward the pizza oven with the expression of a woman who had opinions about toppings. Sheena, dark curls bouncing, had her phone out and was taking pictures before she'd made it past the parking area.
They fanned out. No one waited for instructions. No one needed to be told twice. Five women in nice clothes and practical shoes, picking their way across damp earth, grabbing tasks the way they grabbed each other's drinks at dinner—without asking, without hesitation, because that's what you did.
Lainie stood at the edge of the canopy and watched them work. John had called them "too much." Said they were loud, said they made Lainie forget her place. He'd never liked her friends. He'd never liked anyone who made her feel like she was allowed to take up space.
These women had driven two hours on a Wednesday morning to set up wine glasses in the mud.
Her throat tightened. She bit down on her lower lip and turned away before anyone could see it.
There were appetizer trays to reposition, a music playlist to cue, the firepit to light.
Lainie moved through each task with the speed of a woman who knew that standing still would break her.
Hands busy. Brain busy. A woman who could conjure chocolate cake from a pocket watch, lecturing a caterer about chafing dish temperatures.
If that wasn't a metaphor for her entire life, she didn't know what was.
The timepiece sat warm against her sternum, a low background heat she told herself was normal.
She touched it through her shirt as she crossed toward the tasting room. Warm. Not hot. Not alarming. Just … there. The way it had been all morning, since before the storm, since before Brennon's bed was empty, since before any of this.
Normal. She was going with normal.
Kalen and Charlie came around the side of the building together. They'd been gone for—she checked the time—eleven minutes. Time to walk the grounds. Time to talk about whatever Kalen's face had been carrying since the kitchen this morning.
He caught her eye and gave her the look.
She knew it: chin dipped, one corner of his mouth turned up, golden eyes steady.
Everything's handled. Don't worry. She'd learned to read that look the way she'd learned to read the weather app—with the understanding that it was almost always wrong but occasionally comforting.
Charlie walked a step behind him. His shoulders were squared in a way they hadn't been this morning, his jaw carrying a new weight.
She couldn't name what had changed, but something about the two of them—their posture, the space between them, the way they moved like men who'd just made a plan—sat wrong in her stomach.
She didn't push. She needed him to be fine today. She needed everything to be fine.
"Looking good out there." Kalen's hand found the small of her back for a half-second as he passed. "Charlie says the '23 cab is pouring well."
"It should. We worked hard on that one."
"Aye. You did."
The heat of his hand lingered after he walked away.
She watched him position himself near the entrance—black shirt, black trousers, cuffs rolled, standing at the edge of the crowd with the easy posture of a man who looked like a host but moved like a guard.
One hand near his hip. She knew about the knife.
More guests. The tasting room filled. Charlie poured behind the hand-carved bar, talking about tannins and oak barrels with the rehearsed ease of someone who'd been doing this for decades.
The caterers had the outdoor bar running.
Smoke trailed from the pizza oven. The fairy lights, still on from setup, caught the post-rain light and turned the canopy into something from a magazine she couldn't afford to advertise in.
The vineyard looked good. Better than the brochure she'd designed at two in the morning. Better than the version in her head. For a few minutes, she let herself believe it was working.
Karen appeared at her elbow. Two glasses of wine, one in each hand.
"One for nerve, one for the occasion."
They clinked. Lainie took a sip. The 2023 cabernet—dark cherry, cedar, something earthy underneath that she'd never been able to name.
She and Charlie had bottled it in December, the two of them plus Kalen and a hand-labeling machine that jammed every forty bottles.
The wine was good. She'd made something good.
Karen took a long drink and nodded. "That's solid. You should charge more."
"I'll put that on the business plan."
Karen's eyes tracked across the crowd, scanning faces the way she scanned a room—fast, efficient, filing everything. "Where's that tall kid of yours? I wanted to congratulate him on the Taekwondo thing."
Lainie's stomach clenched. A single beat of quiet where the answer should go.
The truth: Brennon was out all night. Came home at dawn smelling like beer and looking like he'd slept on a couch. Said there were too many secrets in the house and he was done pretending. The truth sat right there, a step away, waiting to be spoken.
"He's running late. You know teenagers."
The timepiece vibrated. Not a pulse—a vibration.
Sharp, pointed, pressing against her sternum like a finger jabbed into bone.
The relic didn't like lies. She'd known that since the first time she'd told Jenna the money came from savings and the watch had run so hot she'd had to take it off.
Half-truths made it warm. Full lies made it hurt.
This one hurt.
She pressed her palm flat against her chest, covering the bump of the watch beneath her shirt. The vibration cut through her hand and into her wrist.
Karen's gaze dropped to the hand on her chest. Stayed there for a beat. Came back up.
She didn't ask. Of all the bougie bitches, Karen knew the most about the relic’s magic. She’d experienced it firsthand.
Lainie didn't explain. She found herself watching Karen's face, waiting for the question that didn't come.
"I'm going to take a walk." Lainie set her wine glass on the nearest table. "Check the perimeter, make sure the parking signs are up."
"Sure." Karen's voice carried something—not suspicion, but a bookmark. A mental note filed for later.
Too many secrets in this house. Brennon's words from this morning. The watch pulsed once more, quieter now, as if making its point and stepping back.
She deserved that.
She walked away from the crowd. Past the tasting room.
Past the canopy with its dripping edges and its strings of light.
Past the last table, the last guest, the last pocket of laughter.
The noise thinned. The air changed—wetter, cooler, carrying the green bite of dormant vines and the mineral smell of damp stone.
The timepiece got warmer.
Not the lie-heat. Different. A pull, almost. The relic reaching for something the way a compass needle reaches for north—not choosing a direction, responding to one.