Page 58 of You've Got Hate Mail
Elizabeth’s likely leaving as soon as she gets a report from the private investigator she hired to find out what other skeletons her husband has in the closet. Her divorce is imminent, and she’s in regular communication with friends back home.
She’s what the ladies here call a short-timer.
Someone who went viral, stayed for a few weeks, and then went back to her life, like Temperance.
Dori’s still lost.
She’d been working two jobs—one at a restaurant, one at a dog-walking service—and looking for something better to use her biochemistry degree when her viral moment happened.
We’ve been comparing notes about job applications and rejections too.
It’s been so cathartic to let it all out with people who understand.
Sometimes I wander through the rows and rows of grapevines. Ginny added to Heath’s explanation of the neighbor managing the fields, and it’s soPipthat it actually would’ve been my first guess.
Her husband apparently hated Walter, whose daughter, Winona, is the neighbor who runs the operations out in the fields. He also thought that women couldn’t run wineries, so the first thing Pip did after Dean kicked the bucket was to sign a contract with Winona, giving her all of the grapes for their winery in exchange for doing all of the work.
I haven’t yet gone into the production facilities on the back side of the property or the closed-up tasting room and gift shopnear the main road, even if Mabel’s made it clear that I’m welcome to wanderanywhere.
She wants this to feel like home.
And it does.
So much so that when I stroll into the house Saturday morning and discover Mabel, Ginny, Samantha, Olivia, and Heath all in the study with the door slightly cracked, I feel a little left out.
Dori and Elizabeth aren’t there either, but even reminding myself that I’m not a permanent resident here doesn’t help.
Not when one of them must have Lav.
I wasn’t asked to do that either.
“I hate this idea,” Olivia’s saying. “The whole point is that wedon’thave outside people here.”
Mabel’s frowning. “I don’t like it either, but Aunt Pip’s basically broke. Dean took out a second mortgage to build the event space and banquet hall, then he croaked before it saw a single booking. We’re giving the grapes away for free. We don’t have wine that Aunt Pip will let us sell. She’s been donating to every fundraising request on that site, HardshipHelper, for years, and what didn’t go there went to pet shelters across the state. The only reason we can still afford new guests is because I convinced Pip to set up a separate fund for it. But if we don’t bring in big money fast, we won’t have a home at all. Foreclosure’s knocking.”
“The wedding will be big, but also private,” Ginny says. “Mike has a distraction plan all worked out so that if anyone realizes he and Caro got engaged and are planning a fast wedding, they’ll think it’s happening elsewhere.”
And I suddenly don’t care that I’m left out.
I want the tea.
“Where will the guests stay?” Heath asks.
“Caro and Mike are the only two who need space here,” Ginny says. “Everyone else will fly in in the morning. A lot of them have houses around here or over in Napa, so the only thing that would draw attention is the coincidence of so many Hollywood people being at their vacation houses at once, or if people realize my parents and brother are here the same time that Mike’s family’s here too. And the rest of the guests aren’t high-profile enough to draw a lot of attention.”
Celebrities?
I stiffen, then tell myself to get over myself.
Clearly, whoever this is, they don’t want cameras and attention any more than the rest of us do.
Mabel wouldn’t allow it if they did.
I know Caro is Ginny’s sister, but I didn’t know she was dating someone who sounds famous.
Who’sMike?
“Catering staff?” Samantha asks.
