This Place of Wonder
Barbara O'Neal
Prologue
Maya
My first impulse was to burn it all down, but no native Californian would ever—even reeling with drink and fury and a desperate need for revenge—set anything on fire.
Instead, I found an axe and carried it out to the vineyard. The night was clear, full of stars. The mountains carved a jagged line across it, and I had to pause to admire the scene for a moment. So beautiful. Such beautiful land. Such a beautiful night. How could things still be so beautiful? Shouldn’t everything stop?
A song ran through my head, an ancient pop song.
Before me stretched the tidy rows of vines, so very alive even without leaves. I raised the bottle I carried to my lips and drank of their fruit, sharp and dry, almost perfect. I imagined I could hear the vines breathing, taking in the moonlight and the cold night air, preparing for the new season, their roots drinking nourishment from the soil that I had so carefully tended.
I raised my axe.
And could not bring it down, could not kill the living vines. It would be murder.
Instead I picked up the nearly empty bottle and carried my axe to the wine cave. Rows of casks lined both sides of the center aisle. The most perfect vintage we’d created, seven years of work to arrive here, to the thing I’d always known I could make.
I raised my axe, swung, and brought it home, right through the center of the first cask. Wine burst free, pouring out like blood, faster than I would ever have imagined. For one moment my heart clenched, hard, as if to wake me up.
But I walked down the row, swinging. It was hard, physical, slamming work. I sweat, and paused to capture wine in my palms. Only I would ever taste it. No one else, ever. I wept, and swung, and drank, and chopped open every single cask in that room.
Sticky, cold, swaying, I climbed the stairs to the outside and pulled my phone out of my pocket. “Meadow,” I said when she answered. “I think you need to come get me.”
AP-Santa Barbara Famed chef Augustus Beauvais, 67, was found dead in the kitchen of his Santa Barbara restaurant Peaches and Pork early this morning, apparently of natural causes.
Beauvais was well known for his contributions to the American food scene, joining such luminaries as Alice Waters and Dennis Foy in creating the modern farm-to-table movement. He and his former wife, Meadow Beauvais, author of the iconic food history Between Peaches and Pork: A Celebration of Sustainable and Festive Food, have long held an illustrious spot in the California foodie world, creating new models for service and sustainable farming. Mr. Beauvais was a guest judge on Top Chef for two seasons.
He leaves behind two daughters—Maya Beauvais, a sommelier and vintner who created the label Shanti Wines, and Rory Beauvais—and two grandchildren.
Chapter One
Meadow
I’m sleeping hard when the phone rings. It shatters the dream state and slams me into a state of high alert. Phones don’t ring in the middle of the night for no reason. They don’t often ring at all since technology has allowed us to shut out anyone we don’t want to hear from.
Augustus.
Throat tight, I scramble for the phone. Squinting at the screen, I blink at the bright light, but it isn’t a number I recognize. I drop the phone on the bed, nestle more deeply into my fluffy duvet. A cat body, limp and immovable, sprawls over my ankles, and I try not to move so much that I disturb her. Beside the bed, my two dogs snore. Elvis with his big nose sounds like a train. It makes me smile. Better snoring dogs than snoring men, I always say.
The phone rings again, and I suddenly worry that it might be Maya, trying to reach me. I ignored her once, exasperated with her drama, and that led nowhere good. She hasn’t been allowed many calls in rehab, but I grab the phone, just in case.
“Hello? Maya, is that you?”
“It’s Norah.”
I shift hair out of my eyes. Norah is my ex-husband’s most recent live-in, and she’s never called me before.
A clammy shiver walks down my spine. “What is it? Is Augustus okay?”
“No,” she wails. “No! He’s dead.”
My heart squeezes hard. “What? That’s impossible. I just saw him last night.” But I’m sitting up, my feet touching down on the floor. “What happened?”
She’s sobbing, incoherent, and it makes me impatient until I remember that she’s barely thirty.
“Norah, take a breath. What happened?”
I hear her inhale, exhale. “I don’t know. Maybe a heart attack or something, they think.”
Augustus. For a moment my mind goes still, filling with an image of his big, competent hands. Sensual hands. Strong. “Are you at the house?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Thank you,” she breathes.
I hang up, and for one long moment I don’t move. A faraway howl rises in the canyons of my body, coyotes crying out. The world will not be the same without him. I drop my face into my hands. No tears, only a shattering that creates a kaleidoscope of images arranged over thirty years.
Augustus.
My phone rings again, and this time the call is from Peaches and Pork, the restaurant that made us both wealthy and mildly famous. For a moment, irrational hope flares. Maybe Norah was mistaken, and he isn’t dead at all.