This Place of Wonder (9)

Great choice, Dad.

Rory and I get out, me carrying my meager belongings, and stand in the curving driveway, looking up at our childhood home. “You should have it,” I say. “You’re the one with the family.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The farm is my legacy. This house was always going to be yours.”

We both look at the whitewashed walls and blooming bougainvillea, the wrought-iron balconies and tiled patios. I’m flooded with memories. Rory and I have spent many happy years here, but what does a newly recovering, single woman with no means need with a fifteen-room house on the ocean?

“It feels like a punishment,” I say before I realize I’m speaking aloud.

“Maybe you could think of it as a totally fresh start.”

A fresh start. Starting what? From where I stand, my entire life looks featureless, empty, without markers of any kind. This house feels like going backward, but honestly, where else could I go? I’ve chopped down any pathway to my old life, not that Josh was going to be persuaded one way or the other. He is so furious over the lost vintage that he’ll speak to me only via lawyers.

A waft of memory, the vineyards on a foggy morning looking soft and painterly, burns across my vision, and I feel like I can’t breathe. So much lost.

Rory touches my arm. “Let’s go inside and get you settled.”

I open the big arched door and enter, shouldering my bag. The air is cool within, despite the heat of the day, and I smell basil and tomato and garlic, the signature notes of my stepmother Meadow’s cooking.

When she rounds the corner, no one would have to tell you Rory is her daughter. Her long red hair is barely touched with gray, except for a single white streak on the right side of her face, a body that’s gone curvier and curvier over the years, a face that still makes people stare. She’s the woman my dad stuck with the longest, twenty years, and technically my stepmother, but she’s the only mother I’ve known. My biological mother is a thin memory, a caricature of neglect, a fact my therapist called me on more than once. “Why,” she asked in her mild way, “if you don’t remember anything, did you name the winery for her?”

Anyway.

A teddy bear of a puppy rests in the crook of Meadow’s arm, no doubt one of her rescues.

“Surprise,” she says in her lovely, husky voice, coming over to kiss me. “I wanted to be sure you had a proper welcome.”

I drop my bag and fling my arms around her shoulders, relief flooding me as I fall into her softness. Her skin smells of lavender. Her hair brushes my face, and her arms cradle me close, and I manage, just barely, not to cry. “I’m so glad you’re here,” I breathe. “Thank you.”

“I have missed you so much, sweet girl,” she murmurs into my ear. The puppy wiggles between us, making a protesting little noise, and we both let go, giving him some space. She keeps a hand on my shoulder, touches my face, brushes my hair back. “How are you holding up?”

“Good.”

She knows that’s not true. Everyone knows I’m a long way from good, but she smiles.

It’s only now that I realize she doesn’t look that great herself, that she’s aged a decade since I saw her last, after the debacle at the winery. New tracings of lines show between her eyebrows, along her mouth, and the circles beneath her eyes are heavy and dark. “How are you?” I ask. “You look so tired.”

She tsks. “Never tell a woman she looks tired, Maya. You know that.” She kisses my head and pulls back. “Meet Cosmo,” she says, holding the puppy up higher on her hip for my inspection. “That’s his name for now. You can decide what you want to call him.”

The puppy is a husky mutt of some kind, with thick gray and white fur and a retriever face with floppy black ears and the ice-blue eyes of one of his parents. He meets my gaze and gives a soft woof, not at all little or puppyish.

“Nice try, Meadow,” I say, shaking my head. “I don’t need a puppy. I haven’t even been taking good care of myself.”

“You don’t have to decide right this minute,” she says. “I’m going to stay with you for a little while, until you get on your feet.”

“No,” I say. “You don’t have to stay.” I really need to learn how to be on my own again. Be present with being single, with being in recovery, with the fact that my life has changed irrevocably.

“Not for long,” she says. “Just a few days.”

Again I notice the strain in her face, and it makes me feel guilty. How much has worry about me contributed, and how much is grief over my father’s death? They’ve been divorced eight years but continued to be business partners—friends, even. In my opinion she never really got over him, and he would tell anyone who listened how leaving her was the greatest mistake of his life.

“I just want to help you get settled,” she says, touching my shoulder, running her hand down my arm. I have so craved touch. It eases something deep within me. “Keep you company while you get your sea legs. Is that okay?”

I stroke Cosmo’s ears, and they’re softer than a velvet throw. Sensing my weakness, Meadow lifts him into my arms. I take his surprising heft without thinking, and automatically bend my face into his fur, inhale puppy smell and puppy breath as if it’s the elixir of life. Maybe it is. He licks my ear, then again, as if it’s his job to clean me up. “Can he sleep with me?” I ask.