Chapter 4
“Poppy!”
Poppy Springer’s looks were as startling today as they had been back when she and Junie were lifeguards at the Clarkston Community Pool. Junie jumped up from her booth to give her a hug.
“What are you doing home?”
“Busman’s holiday. Mom and Pop took the motor home up to Whistler for a few weeks. Their annual vacation just happened to fall when I was between jobs. I’m holding down the fort. I left you a message.”
“I know....” Junie slid back onto her vinyl seat. “Sorry I haven’t gotten back to you. It’s just that I’ve been so busy with work...”
Poppy set down their water glasses, eyes lowered.
“Join the club. She doesn’t return her own mother’s calls,” Mom said.
Junie knew her excuses were getting old, but what could she do?
“How are you, Dr. Hart?”
“I’m fine, thank you very much. Nice to you again so soon, Poppy.”
Poppy turned to Junie with a patient smile. “Your mom and I ran into each other at the place in the city where I’m hostessing part time.”
“Really?” Junie frowned. Mom hadn’t mentioned that.
“I’m not blowing you off, Poppy. I promise.”
“Stop!” That was Poppy for you, swallowing her own disappointment so that Junie wouldn’t feel bad. “I know you have your hands full out there. Now, what can I get you two? The sticky buns are hot out of the oven.” She beamed at Junie. “Guaranteed to spike your blood sugar.”
“I’ll just have green tea. Decaf,” said Mom.
Junie skimmed the menu for something her mother would approve of.
The bell above the door jangled, and two couples, the women in expensive linen and the men in cargo shorts, a camera with a telescopic lens swinging around one of their necks, entered the café.
“Do you need a few minutes?” To the untrained eye, Poppy appeared unaffected. But Junie knew she had alerted like a bloodhound on a kilo of heroin. In a town like Clarkston, catering to tourists was how restaurants survived.
Junie bit her lip. Those sticky buns sounded awfully good.... “Okay.” Junie slapped her menu down on the Formica. “I’m in. A bun and coffee.”
Poppy swept away their menus. “Coming right up.”
“I’ll be good tomorrow,” Junie muttered.
“I’m not judging you. But it is worth remembering that excess sugar consumption causes diabetes.”
Thank you, Doctor Mom.
Now that they’d ordered, Junie waited for her to come out with whatever it was she’d brought her here to talk about.
“Poppy’s doing well,” Mom remarked with mild surprise. “Did you hear about her new job offer?”
“Yeah. I’m really happy for her.”
Poppy had left Clarkston right out of school to stock wine in a dusty little shop on a Portland side street. When the manager quit three years later, the owner had tagged Poppy to replace him, even though she was still a month shy of being able to take her first legal drink. From there, she’d started hostessing. Now, she’d been offered a plum position as wine steward at one of Portland’s hippest restaurants.
“She’s had luck on her side. Somehow she managed to find a great niche. Who knew female sommeliers would be the next big thing?”
“Or it could’ve been her strong work ethic and her natural way with people. Plus, she has a great memory. Have you noticed? She never writes down an order.”
Mom folded her arms on the table. “If Poppy can make it in Portland, anyone can.”
“Meaning?”
“Now, don’t you get all defensive on me. You know as well as I do that nobody ever had any great expectations of Miss Poppy Springer. She got good genes, I grant you that,” she said, in an obvious reference to Poppy’s classic good looks. “But she has the cranial bandwidth of an amoeba. And without a degree...”
“Newsflash, Mom. College isn’t for everyone.”
A graciously smiling Poppy approached the table. Mom sat back to make room for her to set down her steaming tea. When she left, Mom went on. “I’m not here to argue about Poppy or extoll the virtues of college. Junie, you’re my only daughter. I love you very much. And it’s about time you got a real job.”
“Mom.” Junie closed her eyes, struggling to remain calm. “We’re not doing this again. I already have a real job. Do you still think enology is some passing fancy?”
At their table nearby, the tourists turned and stared.
“Keep it down,” said Mom. “And you’ve got circles under your eyes. You look exhausted. Have you lost weight?”
“Haven’t checked lately.” She hadn’t weighed herself in months. The workweek flashed through Junie’s mind like clips from a movie. Monday, the concerned look on the face of the volunteer from the co-op after examining her financials. Tuesday and Wednesday, trudging miles through rows of vines to tweak the pruning, racing to tie cordons to the top wires to keep the flower buds off the ground in case of a late frost. Her jeans did feel looser, come to think of it. Trust Mom to notice.
“And your freckles are coming out already, and it’s only April. Aren’t you wearing sunscreen? Juniper, darling, I know much you loved your father—we all did—but don’t you think that vineyard has cost this family enough? It’s been five long years. When I think of all the money sunk into this venture...and then losing Storm so he didn’t have to see the disappointment in his father’s face every time he looked at him—”
“Storm didn’t have to move to Colorado.”
“You saw what farming did to your father in the end.” Mom knew how to angle the knife for maximum damage. “If not for Brendan chasing that pipe dream, he would still be alive today.”
Junie frowned. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation again, after all the times I’ve tried to explain it to you. Weren’t you even listening?”
Mom appraised her with a cool eye. She wasn’t used to being told no. When she walked down the halls of the hospital, the nurses snapped to, and in the ER she had absolute control over her staff. “You’re a bright girl, Junie, a hardworking girl,” she said in the detached tone used for stubborn patients. “I have connections. I could find you something Monday if you’d only let me. Stefon’s partner is the people champion over at—”
“Who’s Stefon?” Junie asked, exasperated. “And what’s a ‘people champion’?”
“Stefon. One of my surgical techs. People champion...what did they used to call them? Human resource managers? Whatever. Maybe you could even find something in the wine field that doesn’t put your health at risk.”
“Mom.” Junie framed her words with her hands, homing in on her as if she were the parent and her mother, the child. “For the hundredth time. It’s not Dad’s dream anymore. It’s mine. I’m the third generation of Harts to raise grapes. And it’s only a matter of time before I start to break even.” She took a meager salary, and she’d been doing all she could to keep up with her credit line and meet expenses. “All I need is a distributor. Sam says the market for Willamette pinot is growing so fast it can’t keep up with the supply. It’s just that I’m still new, I have a small yield, and my advertising budget’s close to zilch.”
“Tom Alexander gave me a call yesterday.”
Junie cradled her forehead. “Why does he call you? Why doesn’t he just call me? I’m twenty-eight years old. I don’t need my mother to speak for me.”
“Tom and I are colleagues as well as friends. We can communicate—unlike my own daughter and me.”
Dr. Alexander probably owned tons of pretty coffee table books about grape growing and winemaking, but he’d never sifted the Willamette’s ancient marine sediments through his long, elegant fingers. He hired other people to do the dirty work.
“Let me guess. He’s worried about me.”
“He asked how you were, that’s all.”
“He’s trying to wheedle out of you whether he’s going to be able get his hands on half my yield again this fall.”
Last crush, Junie had had no choice but to sell some of her grapes to Dr. Alexander. Hand selling bottles out of her tasting room hadn’t covered the payment on her line of credit, and coincidentally, Alexander had been scrounging for every bushel of grapes within a thousand acres of Clarkston.
Mom’s eyes widened. “Honey. What’s wrong with that? He’s a shrewd businessman as well as an excellent physician.”
Nothing was wrong with that. But Junie poured her heart and soul into her wine, while people like Tom Alexander used the interest off his investments to fund what was for him merely a prestigious hobby.
“He saved Storm’s life.”
Junie sighed. “That was a long time ago, and Storm’s completely recovered.”
“I’ll never be able to repay him for that.”
“None of us will, Mom. But that was then. Now, Tom Alexander just wants to buy up as many Clarkston area grapes as he can so his wine qualifies for the AVA stamp.”
“AVA, XYZ. It’s beyond me, the finer points of the wine business.”
“Wine begins in the vineyard. You heard Dad say that a hundred times.”
“About as many times as I heard him say, ‘You can make a small fortune in the wine business, provided you start out with a large one.’”
“It’s simply supply and demand. When the local vintners realized they were sitting on the mother lode of American pinot noir, they got together and lobbied for legal designation for six distinct viticultural areas. That changed everything. It painted a clear picture that wine from grapes grown on one side of the road tastes different from the other side, everything else being equal.”
“You told me Tom’s generosity was the only thing that got you by, these past few months.”
“Generosity? Hah. Yes, he bought some of my grapes. But now he’s having them made into a wine that will compete directly against mine.”
“You’ll both benefit. What’s wrong with that?”
How could Junie make Mom understand her grapes were her children? Selling to Tom Alexander had broken open old wounds. It had made her mourn Dad all over again. Shock, denial, anger—the whole cycle. She’d promised herself: Never again.
“I’m sorry I brought it up,” her mother said.
“That’s not what you left work early to talk to me about?”
Her mom looked genuinely puzzled. “No, not at all.”
Good Lord. “Then what?”
“I bought myself a townhouse.”
“What?” Junie blurted.
“If you’d listened to my messages, you would know. I have asked you and asked you to go house hunting with me. You never wanted to come. You know how bad traffic’s getting, thanks to the tourists and all the new development. And that was a close call I had last winter on the ice during the cold snap. Besides, it doesn’t make financial sense for me to waste two hours a day commuting when I could be operating.”
Junie’s head swam. First Storm, then Dad. Mom had been threatening to move to Portland ever since Dad died, but Junie hadn’t wanted to believe she really would. “You’re moving out of the farmhouse?” The house Dad had built for them with his own two hands? The only house Junie had ever lived in that wasn’t on some military base?
“It’s sweet that you’re nostalgic about the house. But be practical. This starry-eyed vision of living off the land never came true for your grandfather. You saw how your dad lived growing up—practically in squalor. And, Junie, as I live and breathe, it’s not going to work for you. I’ve tried to be patient. But you’ve been chasing your tail for five years, and where has it got you?”
“There’s a saying: ‘Do what you love and the money will follow.’ Most small businesses don’t show a profit in their early years. Wineries need even longer to get in the black.”
Mom shook her head. “I wish I could convince you to get out now, while you’re still young. Like Storm did.”
Junie worked like a demon between waiting tables and managing the vineyard without any real help. Now her deep-rooted anxiety bubbled up to the surface. Was she doomed, like Granddad and then Dad? Tears stung the back of her eyes. Was Mom right?
“The townhouse is in The Pearl. It’s brand new, which means I can move in right away. It has three bedrooms, plus plenty of storage, and a cute balcony overlooking the shops and restaurants.”
Junie envisioned The Pearl’s crowded sidewalks, heard the cacophony of the late-night partiers when the bars let out.
Mom laid her hand on Junie’s. There was a plea in her voice when she said, “Come to Portland with me. There’re jobs, great food, culture, men....”
“One thing about being a server, I’ll never starve. And there are plenty of men in Clarkston....”
The bell on the door signaled the arrival of a quartet of bearded lumbersexuals wearing colorful plaid shirts and skinny jeans. Bringing up the rear was an out-of-place, clean-shaven Hercules whose deltoids strained at the seams of his neatly pressed oxford shirt. He’d lost the navy blazer somewhere along the way, but Junie would have recognized him anywhere. When Manolo spotted her, he broke out in a spontaneous grin and scrubbed the top of his head, leaving his layered hair endearingly spiked. He angled his body in her direction.
Her heart stopped.
Then something spooked him, gave him pause. Maybe it was Sam and Heath’s polite but guarded waves. The next thing she knew, Poppy had lassoed Manolo in with the others and led them toward a table on the other side of the café.
Only Keval peeled off from the group. But then, Keval had always been a maverick. In the words of Red McDonald, voted Clarkston’s Best Therapist three years in a row, poor Keval had been “born without the ability to ascertain the emotional temperature of a room.”
“Hello, ladies! Sam thought we could use some coffee—considering he got us all day drunk. Didn’t expect to see you again so soon, Junie. And Dr. Hart! Don’t you look precious? Love those glasses with your face shape.”
“Hi, Kev.” Junie sighed with a combination of relief and disappointment that he had been the one to come over instead of Manolo.
“Thank you, Keval. But now, if you’ll excuse us, Junie and I are in the midst of an important discussion.”
“Oops!” Keval’s fingertips flew to his lips. “Sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt,” he whispered loudly, tiptoeing backward. “Pretend I wasn’t even here!”
“I meant eligible men,” Mom said when Keval was out of hearing range.
Unlike Keval, Junie was apparently cursed with an overdeveloped emotional barometer. The electricity that had been arcing between her and Manolo from the moment he’d entered her tasting room was stronger than ever, making the hair on her arms stand on end. It took all she had not to look over at him, to stay focused on the conversation at hand.
“Mom. I know what cities are like. When I was at college, I hung out in San Francisco more weekends than I can count.”
“Even if we put the house and vineyard on the market right away, it will take awhile to sell. But, Junie, the movers will be here first thing tomorrow morning for my things. I could ask them to take yours while they’re there.”
“Mom! I’ve moved seven times in my life—eleven, if you count each year of college! I’m sick of moving. I want Clarkston to be my forever home. Wait—tomorrow?”
Across the room, five heads jerked up in unison. Manolo caught her eye over the top of his menu. His face remained carefully blank.
Mom putting a date on her move somehow made it real. Junie felt her face threaten to crumble. She swallowed the hard lump in her throat. “I’m meeting a guy about the porch at noon. Besides, tomorrow’s Saturday. A good day for tourists.”
Her mom sank back in her chair with a pitying look. Then she drained her teacup and intoned, “There’s something else.”
Now what?
“I’ve met someone, Junie.”
Another one?
Just then, Poppy brought the check. She glanced at Junie’s gaping mouth and the half-eaten sticky, sitting forlornly on her plate. “Chin up, sweetie,” she whispered, bending down to give her a tight squeeze. “I’ll call you.”