As I attempt to force my attention back to my play, I hear the faint buzz of bees permeating the glass of the French doors, and then a few moments later the snip, snip of flowers being cut. Claire must be back from her trip to the farmers’ market and collecting stems from the garden. Briefly, life here feels back to normal.
And then, as if confirming that thought, Henry bounds into the cottage with a grin on his face.
“How was the dog walk?” I ask.
“Good. Dad had to hold Bella’s leash because she kept wanting to run off the road and into the woods.”
“Where is Dad, anyway?”
“He’s in the house talking to Grandpa and Uncle Marcus. Can I go to the pool? Uncle Blake’s gonna swim with me.”
“Okay, but you can only go in the water if he’s in there with you or watching, okay?”
He shoots me a look that says, I hate being treated like a baby, but then dashes upstairs to change into his trunks.
I deliberate following him to the pool myself, but as soon as Henry’s out the door, I’m nailed by a wave of fatigue, the result of how few hours of sleep I clocked last night. I shift to the couch and stretch out, closing my eyes.
The slam of the front door wakes me. I blink a couple of times and sit up slowly to see Gabe standing in the entranceway.
“So how’d it go? Did—?”
And then I take him in more fully. He looks stricken.
“Gabe, what’s the matter?”
“It’s a fucking mess.”
My heart jumps. “What is?”
Rather than join me, he strides into the kitchen, where I hear him yank open the refrigerator. “Is it too early for a beer?” he calls out. He obviously decides it is because by the time I join him in the kitchen, he’s chugging seltzer water from a liter bottle.
“Gabe, please,” I urge. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“That vineyard in Spain that Marcus and I invested so much in? It’s going bankrupt.”
“No,” I say, trying to keep panic out of my voice. “And you just found this out today?”
“I did, but Marcus has known for over a week.”
That explains why Keira seemed so concerned about the meeting.
“Here, sit,” I say, motioning to a chair at the kitchen table and taking a seat across from it. “How much will this set you back?” What I’m not asking but, of course, also wondering is how much will this set us back.
“We’re not in danger of going under, but we lose all our investment in the vineyard, plus anything we expected to draw from it. And now there won’t be money for the initiatives we planned for next year. Marcus and I will both probably have to take a pay cut.”
“But what about the money your dad was going to invest?”
He sighs in frustration. “That’s not happening apparently.”
“What?”
“Despite his hints otherwise, he’s decided not to give us any more money, at least for a while.”
I’m flabbergasted. Ash has seemed so eager to help with Gabe’s business.
“Maybe he needs time to think about it?” I ask.
“He’s had time. Turns out, Marcus called him last week and gave him a heads-up so he’d have the chance to look over the paperwork before we met. Again, all unbeknownst to me.”
“I can’t believe Marcus would keep this from you. What was he thinking?”
“Oh, he’s got this whole justification—I’m the front person for the company, doing sales and marketing, and he’s the numbers guy. He says he didn’t want to burden me until he had proof things were really coming undone.”
“You think that’s true?”
As smart as Marcus is, he apparently floundered a bit professionally in his early twenties, and it wasn’t until Gabe asked him to join the fledgling wine business that he seemed to find himself. He’s been a great partner, but Gabe is the face of the company and thus gets most of the attention. Maybe by attempting to solve the problem on his own, Marcus was trying to prove his own importance.
“Not sure why it wouldn’t be. He’s seemed a little moody over the past couple of weeks, but I guess it was probably from trying to handle this solo.”
I set my elbows on the table and sink my face into my hands, and another thought pushes into the front of my mind. “Do you think your dad could be having money troubles?”
Gabe shakes his head. “No, and he assured me this doesn’t affect anything for us personally. He and my mother are still going to be paying for Henry’s school and contributing to his college fund. And they’re still taking us skiing at Christmastime.”
“Then what’s the reason? I don’t get it.”
“It seems to be about spreading the wealth around when it comes to his investment dollars. Dad feels he’s been more than generous to Marcus and me for the time being, and of course, he helped Wendy start her gallery. And now he feels he should do something for Nick, who’s got some side real estate project he’s trying to launch. Dad has every right to turn us down, but I just didn’t see this coming.”
My stomach feels like a fist by now. I hate seeing Gabe unhappy for any reason, but this one’s especially troubling. It will surely cast a pall over the vacation, and it’ll ultimately have ramifications on the personal front. Should we really plan to try for a baby next year if his salary could be reduced? I’d been hoping to step back from any voice-over work while my play’s in the festival, but I realize I won’t be able to do that now. We have bills to pay and a mortgage on our loft, and that means we’ll have to continue to count on income from me every week.
“Gabe, I’m so sorry,” I say. “Are you going to be able to handle the week ahead out here?”
He shrugs with both shoulders, his expression defeated.
“I don’t have a choice. I’ll just have to suck it up.”
He takes another long swig of water from the bottle, and after wiping his mouth, says he’s going to take a short hike before lunch to burn off his agitation. Do I mind, he asks, keeping an eye on Henry for the next hour or so? Not at all, I say, and half jokingly urge him to steer clear of coywolves.
After he leaves, I flop back on the sofa, my whole body thrumming with dread. It’s hard to believe that two days ago I was nearly giddy over the idea of our vacation here. In our six years together, I’ve never seen Gabe face any issue this size with his family, and I have no idea how this might play out over the next days.
Desperate for a distraction myself, I set out in search of Henry and find him on the lawn finishing a game of horseshoes with Blake, his cherry red trunks still damp from the pool. I usher him back to the cottage, and an hour later, as we’re playing our thousandth hand of Uno, Gabe returns, lugging a wicker basket filled with sandwiches, chips, pickles, and soft drinks.
“Bonnie helped me put it together,” he says, with Henry out of range. “I just couldn’t face sitting around that table. I blamed it on Henry being up last night and us all being wiped.”
“That’s fine,” I say. “It’ll be nice to have one meal with only the three of us.”
I help Gabe set out the food and drinks on the kitchen table and we eat there, a light breeze mercifully finding its way in through the window. By the time Henry’s finished his sandwich, he looks almost comatose with fatigue, so Gabe urges him upstairs, promising to read to him up there.