Tabitha could not keep still. She twisted her hands in her lap, crossed and uncrossed her legs, stood to refill her water for the third time. When she sat down again, Jillie looked up from the screen in front of her and regarded Tabitha with a cool eye.

“Stop fidgeting.”

“I’m sorry. I have some sort of reverse jetlag or something. I have jet hyper.”

“You are distracting me. Go sit in the living room with your father.”

“No, I’ll be quiet.” Her mother looked down at the computer and continued reading. The only things that moved were the index finger of her right hand as she clicked through the document, and her eyes, which ran across the page without forming an expression.

To Tabitha’s knowledge, Jillie Jones Lawson had never in her life fidgeted, slouched, or leaned. She remained still, composed, assured, no matter the chaos that surrounded her. Now she read with a ramrod straight spine, not touching the back of the seat, her head erect, chin parallel to the floor. Tabitha could see her mother’s legs through the clear glass dining room table, slanted to the side and crossed at the ankles.

Tabitha tried to hold the same position, to will her body into stillness, but she’d guzzled gallons of coffee on the plane from Italy; now her body buzzed with so much manic caffeinated energy that she could almost hear her blood pumping through her veins. Her right foot tapped against the opposite ankle and her fingers trembled in her lap.

Jillie looked up at her again, and Tabitha stopped tapping.

“I can tell you wrote it on an airplane.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s not exactly professional.”

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“What do you expect of me?”

“Goddammit, Mother.” Tabitha stood up from the table, strode to the guest bathroom and slammed the door. She turned on the tap and let the cold water pour over her hands before leaning down to drink out of her palm; long, cold draughts of water that filled her belly and cleared her thoughts. She splashed water on her face and took several long breaths before she dried it off and left the bathroom. At the end of the hall, her mother stood at the open front door.

“Let’s walk,” Jillie said. “You look like you need some fresh air.”

Tabitha glanced at her father, sitting on the couch. She thought she saw the tiniest smirk at the corner of his mouth, but Felix didn’t look up from the baseball game. Jillie knotted a scarf neatly around her neck, and Tabitha followed her outside, where they walked the stone path that edged the golf course.

“You’ve just arrived from Italy.” Tabitha nodded in response, though Jillie had said it as a statement, not a question. Jillie continued. “You came to a decision while you were in there. You spent the flight home writing a passionate, disorganized screed about Royal Hamilton’s nefarious business dealings. You showed up at my door, with your suitcase in your hand, and asked me to read it. Which I have. So now, I will repeat my question. Please, for once in your life, don’t get angry at me and stomp away. Just answer me. What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know.”

Jillie seemed oddly satisfied with this answer.

“Could it be that you want permission? Condemnation? Approval? I won’t give you any of those things. I think you already know that.”

“I think,” Tabitha spoke slowly, trying to figure out the answer for herself. “I think I want your advice. I want to know what you think I should do next.”

“That list of his offenses goes back to before you were even married. You won’t be able to prove anything that happened at El Zopilote based on what you are suspicious about now.”

Tabitha nodded. “I just wanted to write it all down. Everything I could think of that I have ever wondered about. To see if there were patterns to his behavior, to see how it all made sense.”

“And what did you find?”

“I think I can prove a pattern of paying off judges at competitions where our wines were sub-par. There were years when the wine was stellar and deserved medals. But there were other years where it wasn’t, and it objectively didn’t deserve awards. I’m willing to bet that if I examine all of our expenditures in those years, some of them will have connections to wine judges. I also think I can prove a pattern of lying about the wines he produces. False labeling, for the most part. If I can prove capitalization, it will lead to some pretty serious questions about tax evasion.”

“That won’t reflect well on you, personally or professionally. If it happened before you married Royal, you would look like an idiot. If it happened while you were married to him and in business with him, you would look like a guilty idiot.”

“I know.”

“Are you going to be okay with that?”

“Do you know what’s weird? I never even wanted to be a winemaker.” They paused their walk and stayed quiet as a golfer on the green near them prepared to swing. After he’d shot, they walked again, and Tabitha continued. “Not a winemaker like that, I mean. I never wanted to be a part of that high-stakes, high-money world that he loves so much, and you love so much.” She could see her mother open her mouth to object, but she kept talking. “There’s nothing wrong with it, and I’m not comparing you to him, Mom. Some people, like you, can thrive in it. Some people, like Royal, cheat their way into it. But either way, it’s not for me. I just want to give people good wine. I don’t care about the five hundred dollar bottles, or international prestige, or any of it.”

“You sure acted as if you cared about it.”

“Fair enough. Maybe the right way to say it is, I cared about it for a while, until I realized it wasn’t making me happy. Now I don’t care anymore.”

They walked in silence until they reached a small bench near the fifteenth green and sat quietly until a group of golfers finished their putts.

“A lot of those accusations you made will hurt people I know,” Jillie said. “People I worked with for many years.”

“I’ve never once accused you of anything.”

“And you won’t. I have a sterling reputation in the wine industry.” Jillie spoke sharply, but Tabitha didn’t reply. She felt her mother watching her, but she kept her eyes on the golfers, who climbed into their cart and drove away. Finally, Jillie spoke again. “I suppose I have a much better reputation in the wine industry than I do in the parenting industry. So be it. In my day, you had to choose.”

Tabitha couldn’t keep her mouth from dropping open in shock. Her mother smiled at her expression. “At least, I thought I had to choose. It never occurred to me that I had options.”

Tabitha digested this information for a moment, then asked, “So how did you do it? How did you keep your hands clean? Because there is no way this is the first time you’ve come across dirty business practices.”

“You know why I’m considered such a dragon? Because I never backed down. I never once took a bribe. I never shut up when I saw something underhanded. I fought back when the men had a meeting and didn’t include me. I deserved to make decisions, and I deserved to be in the boardrooms, because I worked harder than any of them to get there. So they called me shrill, and intimidating, and a bitch. That’s what they do to women who don’t back down.” She paused and then corrected herself. “That’s what they used to do. Now, women who speak out are admired. You’ll see.”

Jillie stood and started walking back down the path, but Tabitha could only stare at her retreating figure. Had her mother paid her a compliment? Sure, it had been in that back-asswards way she had of never really saying anything kind to her daughter. Still, it had been almost encouraging. She jumped up to join her mother, who kept talking as if she hadn’t noticed Tabitha’s shock. Which, Tabitha knew from experience, she probably hadn’t. “The way you see it,” Jillie said, “You have two options. You can leave El Zopilote and let him continue doing whatever it is you think he is doing. You’ll take a hard financial loss, but the business will probably continue for the foreseeable future.”

“My friends and sister will keep their jobs.”

Her mother shrugged. “That’s their problem, not yours. What will you do with yourself if you leave El Zopilote quietly?”

“Move to Italy and work as a full-time rep for OWNS,” Tabitha replied without hesitation.

“Your other option, as you see it, is that you can expose him and his business practices, probably destroy the winery in the process, and ruin his reputation along with your own.”

“If it goes down that way, my friends and sister will lose their jobs.”

“Once again, not your problem. Though I do admire your newfound integrity. I can see a third option, if you’d like to hear it.”

“I’d love to hear it.”

“Buy him out and run the business on your own.”

Tabitha chewed on the inside of her cheek while she pondered this option. “Mom, I am not cut out for owning a winery. That much should be obvious to you, of all people.”

Her mother stopped walking and faced her. “You’re not cut out for owning a winery the way Royal Hamilton owns a winery. That much is clear to me. But you’re also not cut out for living like a hermit in Italy and ignoring everyone you love.” She put a hand on Tabitha’s shoulder in a move that almost resembled affection. “Maybe there is something in between?” Jillie raised an eyebrow, then turned and kept walking.

“You’d better be careful,” Tabitha called to her mother’s retreating back. “If you keep acting like this, people will start to think you are nice.”

“Well, they’d be wrong,” her mother called back. “I’m still a dragon.”

She quickened her steps to catch up and was surprised and pleased to see her mother smiling.

“So, I go forward with the information I have, and take Royal down? Even though it will expose some of the people you know? If I trace some of Royal’s payments to industry big shots, I’ll name names.”

“As long as you tell the truth, I’m behind you. I’ll even help you, if I can. So will Dad, and so will your sister. You can count on us. Me. You can count on me.”

“What the hell’s gotten into you, Mom? Offering me motherly advice and acting supportive? Did you have a stroke while I was in Italy?”

“You asked my advice, and I gave it.” Her mother pulled the scarf off her neck and opened the door of her condo for Tabitha.

“I mean, that’s great advice. Terrifying, but great.”

“So is everything in life that’s worth doing, Tabitha Lawson. It’s about time you realized that.”