Page 194 of You've Got Hate Mail
This wedding is a done deal. I don’t know the financial details of what Caro and Mike are paying Mabel, but it’s obvious Caro’s biggest goal is privacy, followed quickly by a fast wedding before news of the engagement leaks to the press, and I get the impression she approached Ginny rather than the other way around.
I stifle myself every time I want to talk about the wine and ideas for rebranding and selling it.
Not the time.
I can brainstorm more with Ginny and Mabel next week. Dori too. Between her biochemistry degree and growing up helping her grandpa make berry wines at home, she’s eager tohelp any way she can, and she’s already started an online class on wine making, and she’s been talking to Winona too.
But we still have to make sure Pip will agree when she’s sober.
After dinner, I volunteer to do the dishes while more wedding plans continue in the sitting room.
I’m drying the last of the cooking dishes when Pip joins me in her nightgown.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Want some food? Olivia made chicken alfredo.”
When she doesn’t answer immediately, I glance up again from the pot in my hand and back at her.
She has one hand on the doorframe like she needs it for support, and her eyes are watching me with a solemness that has me putting the pot down and crossing the kitchen to her.
“Pip? You okay?”
“You’re something,” she replies.
I blink. “I—sorry?”
“I know what you did.”
Is she sleepwalking, or am I busted? “What did I do?”
“You got me drunk with Ten and needled him just right to use him to convince me to let you sell my wine.”
My face floods with heat.
That is, in fact, exactly what I did. And it’s suddenly clear that I should not have. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t?—”
“Smart girl,” Pip says. “I needed that.”
I stop stuttering and gape at her.
She sighs and looks past me at the kitchen. “I know we’re broke,” she grumbles. “I know it’s my fault.”
I want to hug her, but I haven’t seen anyone hug her, so I hold myself back. “Mabel says you’ve done a lot of good with your money over the years. You might not have it anymore, but it’s helped a lot of people.”
“Done a lot of bad too.” She wanders past me, still looking around the kitchen.
For a brief moment, I want to know what it would be like to be Pip. Eighty-five, survived fifty years of a rough marriage, the black sheep of her own family, hated by her dead husband’s family who want what she has here, but clearly still in love with life.
With the family she and Mabel have made with all of us that they’ve welcomed.
The way she’s looking at the kitchen—she loves this house too.
I keep my words soft. “If you’re still willing to consider selling the wine, we have some branding ideas I’d love to share with you. I think you’ll love them.”
“There’s no wine.”
I blink. “No—no wine?”
“I drained most all of those barrels ten years ago.”
