Chapter Two. Duncan
After more than a decade of practice, Duncan Brady had it down to a science how long he could look at Temperance Madigan before anyone who noticed could call it staring.
In the flat stretch of lawn between the big sugar maples at Cloud Tide, everyone sat around a dying campfire, glancing intermittently at the greenhouse on the hill. It gleamed like an amber gemstone on the highest point of the property, lit from within by the thousands of fairy lights he and Temperance had hung earlier that day.
They’d made a damned good team.
The eerie songs of night creatures pulsed all around them, like the earth itself had a heartbeat. A particularly warm and wet spring meant fireflies in early May. They rose from the grass by the hundreds, lighting the dark spaces beyond the halo of firelight. Duncan couldn’t remember seeing this many in the past ten years.
His family was uncharacteristically quiet; all of them chatting in hushed tones, pretending not to be fixated on the greenhouse. A few big candles burned on two outdoor tables pushed end to end, dimly illuminating what remained of the earlier picnic feast. His sister Arden pinched cake crumbs between her fingers and nibbled them like a nervous bird gathering seed. Temperance and Frankie Moreau had their heads together at the opposite end of the table, whispering to each other.
Temperance laughed quietly at something Frankie said. Night wind drew threads of her long hair across her face, and her cheeks bloomed pink around a subtle smile. She looked soft. A pale Mona Lisa in a Monet palette.
Up on the hill, the lights in the greenhouse turned off. Everyone gasped in unison. Breaths were held.
The lights flicked back on, then off again, then back on. Harry’s signal.
Ma whooped. “She said yes!”
“Of course she did,” Dad said. He used the heel of his palm to swipe moisture from the outer corner of his eye.
“All right, then,” Duncan said. He stacked a few new logs on the fire. “Let’s have a party.”
THEBradys never needed an excuse to have a bonfire, but that night, they had a reason to celebrate. Everyone sat around the fire, intermittently roasting marshmallows and affectionately roasting the newly engaged couple.
“You two thought you were so clever.” Nate laughed.
“Oh, please.” Maren nudged him in the arm. “You’d have never noticed if I hadn’t told you.”
Rowan’s cheeks were crimson in the oversaturated light of the fire. “You knew?”
“Honey.” Maren’s smile was gentle. “Once you’ve felt it for yourself, it’s pretty easy to recognize. I know what falling in love with a Brady boy looks like.”
Duncan didn’t miss the way Maren’s eyes flicked over toward Temperance.
“I heard you two whispering at each other in the library the morning of Patrick’s and my wedding last April,” Mercy said to Rowan.
“And I saw you banging on the door of the carriage house last May, Rosie,” said Patrick.
Mercy was the newest Brady as of her wedding to Patrick last spring. Patrick and Nathan were the oldest Brady brothers, identical twins who were becoming more difficult to tell apart now that Patrick had decided to grow a silver-flecked beard like Nate’s.
“Jesus, I think the real thing we need to talk about tonight is what else Patrick and Mercy have seen—” Harry said.
“If we want to go there”—Patrick squinted one eye and pointed at Malcolm—“I’ve definitely got a few stories about that one—”
Mal cut him off. “No.”
Malcolm was the next oldest after the twins—Duncan’s tallest, grumpiest, and most antisocial brother. Until recently, at least. For the past six months he’d been driving down from New York to stay at the vineyard a few weekends a month with his daughter, Charlotte. Duncan had a feeling it had a lot to do with Frankie Moreau.
“I hate”—Temperance leapt to her feet with a screech of frustration, slapping at her legs—“mosquitoes!” She bent at the waist to swat the back of her calf, then pirouetted to try to reach her back, whipping her ponytail around her face.
Everyone watched her, wide-eyed.
“You look like one of those wacky-armed inflatables they put outside car dealerships,” Frankie said.
Again, Temperance swiped at her legs. She almost elbowed Frankie in the face. “Oh my god, why aren’t they going after any of you?”
“Me? I taste disgusting,” said Frankie.
“I seriously doubt that,” Mal muttered into his can of ginger ale.
“Listen,” Duncan said. “If you want to hang with the fireflies, you have to brave a few mosquitoes.”
Temperance glared.
“Nice.” Harry chuckled. “Life lessons from Duncan Brady.”
“Did you know fireflies find mates based on specific flashing patterns?” Rowan’s cheeks bulged with a jumbo marshmallow. She swallowed and cut her eyes over to where the kids were preoccupied, dropping her voice to a stage whisper. “We’re sitting in the middle of a big bug orgy right now.”
“Thank you, David Attenborough,” Frankie deadpanned.
Harry glanced at Duncan, then back to Rowan. “So, what you’re saying is—that communication and good timing are essential when it comes to a successful romance?”
“Communication is everything.” Rowan queued up a new marshmallow on the end of her stick and held it in the fire. “In some species, the females mimic the signals of a different species, then when the male of that species comes swooping in to mate, they become dinner instead.” She smacked her free hand on her thigh.
Temperance sat back down. “Well, that got dark real fast.”
Harry laid a hand on Rowan’s arm. “You’re on fire, sweetheart.”
“Fascinating, right?” Rowan said.
“Yes—but I mean, ah, the marshmallow,” Harry said.
Rowan gasped and blew out the flaming end of her stick, then she crinkled her nose and gave Harry a messy kiss on the mouth.
To Duncan’s left, Nate was rapid-firing questions at Arden. She was a few weeks away from the end of her senior year of college, and she planned to hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail later in the month. Nate had a morbid fascination with the lack of reliable toilet access.
“I gotta know, Arden,” Nate said. “How will you poop?”
Arden blinked a few times. “The same way you do, Nathan.” Her eyebrows twitched. “With my butt.”
Everyone laughed.
“How’s work, Doc?” Duncan said to Harry.
“So many babies born last month. What the hell happened last August to make everyone so horny?”
“Neat how my patients come in a nine-month lag behind yours.” Temperance smiled.
“I don’t get it,” Nate said.
“Pediatrician joke,” Harry clarified.
Across the fire, Duncan’s eight-year-old nephew, Grey, piped up, “What’s horny mean?”
Ma shot a withering look at Harry. Nate barked a laugh and stuffed a piece of flatbread as big as his hand into his mouth. Maren elbowed him in the side.
His niece, eleven-year-old Alice—“call me Ace”—held her marshmallow over the fire at a distance optimized for browning instead of burning. Without taking her eyes off the end of her stick, she wisely said, “It’s when you can’t wait to have breakfast with someone.”
All the adults were silent for a beat. A few nodded their heads. Dad covered his face with his hands.
“Well, then.” Harry raised his plastic cup. “To having breakfast!”
Everyone laughed and raised their drinks.
“Speaking of babies…” Mercy’s eyes glittered as she laid an affectionate hand on Patrick’s thigh. “A new Brady will be arriving early next year.”
Patrick pulled her closer and kissed her forehead. “Mercy’s pregnant.”
Murmurs of happiness and congratulations went up around the circle. Ma rushed to Mercy, arms wide for a hug.
Duncan thumped Patrick on the back and laughed. “Better you than me, big brother.”
Patrick chuckled. “Ah, come on, bud—there have to be at least a few little Duncans running around out there in the valley, don’t you think?”
Nate groaned, and Harry launched a marshmallow that hit Patrick in the face.
Duncan pasted on a tight smile and muttered a lukewarm “Yeah, yeah,” but his insides felt hollow and hot. When he caught Temperance’s eye across the fire, the hurt in her expression hit him like a brick in the mouth. The heat of the fire made the air shimmer between them, and he had to look away.
When she’d left for college all those years ago, she’d stayed out of the valley for most of that entire first year, and the distance had given him a wildly overestimated sense of closure. He’d tried to reinforce it with an impressive—or embarrassing, depending on who you asked—number of hookups that only left him feeling emptier afterward. But there was no such thing as closure when it came to Temperance Madigan. Every time he thought he’d fully buried his feelings, they came heaving to the surface with just a glimpse of her face in a crowded room. Sometimes, all it took was overhearing someone say her name.
You couldn’t starve away a hunger.
Duncan chanced another glance at Temperance. She was still looking right at him. Close enough to touch. Completely out of reach.
“I thought you were quitting that thing, Malcolm?” Patrick slashed his hand through a cloud of sweetly fragrant smoke from Mal’s pipe.
“One vice at a time,” Mal said. The mellow bass of his voice seemed at odds with his angular frame.
“He still has writer’s block,” Duncan said.
“The hell does that have to do with the pipe?” said Nate.
“He’s channeling Sherlock Holmes,” Duncan said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Holmes wasn’t a writer,” Arden said. “He’s a fictional detective.”
“But he solved mysteries.” Duncan tapped a finger to his temple. “Mal writes mysteries.”
Nate whistled softly. “Sometimes I worry your train of thought left the conductor at the station, bud.”
“Fuck off.” Duncan laughed.
“Language,” Ma said as she set three unlabeled bottles of wine on the picnic table.
“Crime fiction,” Mal said. “I write crime fiction.”
Duncan shrugged. “Same thing.”
“It’s not.” Mal lowered his head and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Patrick flicked an aluminum beer bottle cap at Mal. “I wonder what all your broody edgelord fans would think if they knew you were actually soft as baby shit.”
Mal gusted a plume of smoke from his nostrils and looked bored.
“He’s definitely more Jessica Fletcher than Jessica Jones.” Arden patted Mal on the knee.
At the table, Rowan and Ma put out fresh plastic cups for everyone to try the first grape-to-glass Brady wine—a Chambourcin from last October’s harvest. Excitement was high, expectations were low. The vineyards were still in their relative infancy after Rowan had restored them from wild ruin over the past two years.
Once everyone had a cup—though Mercy and the kids got plain grape juice, and Mal declined in favor of his ginger ale—Dad stood for a toast.
“When we bought this place two years ago, we had no idea what we’d gotten ourselves into. Everything we’ve done here has been more difficult, more expensive, and more messy than we’d ever imagined it could be.” He paused for a moment to stare into the fire with a reflective half smile on his face. He held his red Solo cup to his chest like it was fine crystal. “I’ve gotta tell you, though—I’ve had the time of my life. This place has brought our family together in a way we never could have anticipated, and you know what? Turns out, it’s a hell of a lot of fun to do hard things when you’re doing them side by side with the people you love.”
Everyone raised their cups in agreement.
When they tried to drink, Dad held up a hand. “Wait, wait—not yet. I have a few more things to say.”
Patrick and Nate groaned. “Shocker,” Arden muttered.
Dad turned to Duncan, pointing to him with the same hand that held the cup. “You, Duncan Callum. I can’t imagine anything we’ve accomplished here in the last two years happening without you. You’ve become the backbone of Brady Brothers. Watching the way you’ve handled the family business while also helping to bring this land back to life has been a privilege and a joy.” Dad paused to swipe a tear away for the second time that evening. “Hell, maybe we should rename it to Brady and Son.”
Around the fire, everyone smiled at him with pride and affection—even Temperance, though she looked away as soon as his eyes met hers.
Duncan gave Dad a stiff smile. It should have felt good. But it felt like utter shit.
Of the six Brady kids, Duncan was the one Ma and Dad relied on the most. While all his siblings had gone off and gotten their advanced degrees, he was the one who’d stayed. How the hell would he explain to them—barely two years after he’d agreed to take over management of the family business—that he didn’t actually want to manage the family business?
Will Brady had barely been in his twenties when he and his older brother Iain founded Brady Brothers Contracting from the dirt up. It eventually became a design-build firm that employed both architects and contractors. Duncan had been sixteen when Uncle Iain died, and more than once throughout that first year, he’d overheard Dad working through his grief with Ma. “It’s not Brady Brothers without my brother.”
Duncan started working for Brady Brothers after school, mostly helping with surveying and job site cleanup. By the time he was seventeen, he’d taught himself 2D and 3D design in two different computer-aided design programs. By eighteen, he was generating leads for jobs, and shadowing the senior project managers and design teams. Dreaming of a future as an architect.
By nineteen, he’d given up.
Again, everyone raised their cups to drink, and again, they were interrupted. This time, it was Ma.
She looked to where Temperance and Frankie sat together, smiling at them both. “They all know this”—she gestured to everyone else—“but my mother is Galician, and my father was Spanish. So, when I was growing up, we always did toasts and celebrations in both languages.” Ma walked around the fire to stand by Dad. “Que el amor nos encuentre siempre dispuestos,” she said in Spanish, raising her cup.
Across the fire, Harry leaned to whisper into Rowan’s ear. His face was half-hidden by her billowy red curls, but by the way his mouth moved, Duncan could tell he was translating the words for her. Cheeks flushed, eyes dreamy, her fingers curled in her lap as she stared into the flames. To their left, Maren leaned into Nate with her head notched against his shoulder. He tipped his face sideways to drop a slow kiss on her windblown hair.
May love always find us ready, Ma had said.
Duncan felt something begin to unravel in him. Slowly at first, then faster, as the weight of it grew heavier and heavier. It was a hell of a lot easier to pretend that he didn’t burn for that kind of visible, visceral love when it wasn’t staring him in the face. He’d had it once, with Temperance. But it had been hidden. They’d never been able to share it, display it publicly.
Moving only his eyes, Duncan looked to where she sat.
She was looking right at him. The jolt it gave his nervous system felt like she’d physically pushed him. Eye contact with Temperance Madigan redefined the phrase. Connecting with those electric blues felt like a tangible, knock-you-backward collision.
Again, she looked away first.
“Para nós e para os nossos,” Ma said, this time in Gallego.
For us and ours.
Temperance dampened her bottom lip with a quick dart of her tongue. With her free hand, she twisted the end of her braid around her fingers.
Dad put his arm around Ma and raised his cup. “Let’s toast! To when can we start, instead of how long will it take. And to what’s next, instead of what if.”
“To Cloud Tide,” Ma said.
“To Cloud Tide,” everyone echoed.
Cup high in the air, Nate shouted, “To the longest toast that has ever been toasted, Jesus Christ on a Jet Ski. Let’s drink some wine.”
Laughing, everyone tapped their cups against those of whoever they could reach. They smiled and murmured cheers, and how exciting, and can’t wait.
When they took their first sips, silence fell.
Someone cleared their throat.
“Oh my,” Maren whispered.
Harry coughed and banged his chest with the side of his fist.
“Um, I don’t—I don’t think—” said Rowan.
Frankie discreetly lifted her cup back to her mouth and dribbled the wine back into it.
“Well, that’s, ah—” Dad tipped his head thoughtfully to the side. “That’s—it’s—interesting—”
“Satan’s mouthwash,” Nate muttered.
Arden cackled out loud.
Duncan forced himself to swallow.
Everyone turned to watch Ma.
For a few agonizing moments, she looked down into her cup before slowly setting it on the table behind her. She removed her glasses and let them dangle on the crystal chain around her neck. Without a word, she walked away from the campfire and stood with her back to the group.
More silence. Everyone shared concerned glances when Ma bent at the waist and put her hands on her knees. Her shoulders began to silently shake.
Nobody moved.
From Ma, a thin, high-pitched sound.
“Oh, Gia—” Rowan began, softly. She started to get up, but Harry grabbed her hand.
Ma stood up straight and turned back toward everyone, helplessly waving her hands in front of her face. Tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes. Another weird wailing sound came from her, but she wasn’t crying.
She was laughing.
One hand over her chest and one hand over her belly, Ma was laughing so hard she was wheezing.
Everyone lost it.
Dad dumped his wine onto the ground behind him. Rowan teased that he was going to kill the grass, and everyone laughed even harder.
“Maybe you and Ma should stay in Spain for more than ten days next month, Rosie.” Duncan chuckled. “Aunt Renata is going to need time to pull off a miracle.”
“If we served this to guests,” Ma howled, “we’d have to pay them as an apology!”