Ellen Crosby - The Chardonnay Charade

She spoke with such passion and longing that I wondered when the last time had been that some young man had ignited her flame into a blaze. I opened my mouth to speak when she put her glasses on and the old Thelma, with her va-va-voom persona, was back.

She cleared her throat. “Randy reminds me a little of my Tré.”

“Who?” Maybe she did have a boyfriend.

“Tré. He plays Dr. Lance Tarantino on Tomorrow Ever After. Such a nice young man, even if he does have to pretend he’s a serial killer. Even so, he’s got all the women in Silver Ridge just throwing their-selves at him. You ought to watch that show, Lucille. It’s just so real. These people are like family to me.”

“I’m sure they are,” I said gently. “Did you ever talk to Randy about Georgia?”

“I have my way of finding things out, but I never asked Randy direct, you understand. And Georgia…well.” She pursed her lips. “My store’s not classy enough for someone wears those Manolo Blanket shoes. She almost never came by.”

“When’s the last time Randy came in to pick up his mail?”

“Saturday morning,” she said promptly.

“We haven’t seen him at the vineyard since the fund-raiser Saturday night. Some people think he might have gone fishing.” Like I was doing right now.

Thelma rocked some more in her chair and regarded me thoughtfully. “Why, no, he hasn’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he would have told me. He gets all those catalogs and such about guitars and music and what have you. I swear that boy’s on more mailing lists than I am. Fills that itty-bitty mailbox right up, so I put everything in a special place for him. He’s right regular about collectin’ it, too. If he’s not coming in for a few days, he’s pretty considerate about letting me know.”

“So where do you think he is?”

She stood up and began polishing imaginary spots off the spotless glass cabinet. “I wish I knew,” she said. “I really wish I knew.”

“If you hear from him, will you let me know? I’m concerned about him, too.”

“I’ll do some pokin’ around,” she said, “and see what I can find out. Everyone just seems to bare their souls to me, Lucille, so if there’s any news, you can be sure I’ll know about it.” She paused and added, “Now, keep me posted on that nice Mr. Dunne.”

“Mick Dunne? The English terrorist? I doubt I’ll see him except at Georgia’s funeral. He’ll be gone in a few days.”

Thelma put her hands on her hips. “Don’t you go mocking me, child. And you’ll see plenty of him, believe you me. Told me he’s planning on movin’ here. He’s looking to buy a nice piece of property. A vineyard.”

“A vineyard ? Are you sure?”

“’Course I’m sure. I have a memory like a steel-trap door.”

“He seems to have confided in you quite a lot.”

“I told you. It’s my God-given way with people.” She grinned, raising one painted-on eyebrow flirtatiously. “I happen to have a particularly good repertory with men.” She glanced at the clock above the cash register. “Lordy, will you look at the time? I missed the first five minutes of my show. I gotta scoot, honey. Be seein’ you.”

She was gone before I got to the front door. When I climbed back in the Mini and picked up my mobile phone from the console, I saw three missed calls and a message. I punched a button. All of the missed calls—within minutes of each other—were from Quinn.

I listened to the message. He was shouting. “Where in the hell are you? As soon as you get this, get over to Catoctin General. Hector just left here in an ambulance. He had a heart attack. It doesn’t look good. I’m on my way there now and I hope I’m not too late.”

On the few occasions since my accident when I have walked through the entrance to a hospital—especially Catoctin General—I get a lump in my throat as though I’m trying hard not to cry. When the door hisses shut behind me, my heart starts to hammer in my rib cage and my breath comes short. It is in these moments of panic laced with dread that I understand that I am not done grieving for what might have been.

Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the time, I am perfectly fine dealing with my physical disability. But I have not been able to confront my invisible injury—that it is impossible for me ever to have children. I do not speak about it. Most people know me well enough not to ask. But something about being in a hospital brings it all back up, like bile.

I went straight to the emergency room. Obviously I wasn’t too far behind Quinn because I could see him, oddly refracted through multiple glass doors, talking to someone at the reception desk. I came up and touched his arm.

He turned to me. “The ambulance just got here. They’re bringing him inside. We have to wait.”

The receptionist, a large man wearing a pale yellow shirt and blue jean overalls, looked over the top of his glasses at us. “Yes, miss?”

“We’re here to see Hector Cruz,” I said.

“Only family members allowed in the ER,” he said.

“She’s his niece.” Quinn hooked a thumb in my direction. “I’m his nephew.”

The man’s face never changed expression. “That’ll be fine. I’ll call you. Please have a seat.”

The waiting room had the cozy warmth and appeal of all institutional places—it could as easily have been an airport or the DMV. Molded plastic chairs locked together in rows with an aisle down the middle, all facing an enormous television set that blared the latest news from CNN. Two magazines. Sports Illustrated predicting who was going to win last year’s Super Bowl and a well-thumbed copy of Car and Driver.

Quinn and I sat next to each other in two of the plastic chairs. “Niece and nephew?” I said.

“Well, we aren’t his kids. What’s left?”

“Nothing, I guess. So how did it happen?” I propped my cane against the chair next to mine.

“We were in the barrel room getting ready to top off the Pinot Noir. All of a sudden he grabbed his chest. I called 911 right away and Manolo went to get Sera. She looked like the world just ended when she saw Hector, but she kept it all together and never stopped talking to him until the ambulance came. They let her ride with him.”

“How long did it take to show up?”

“Too long.” He ran a hand through his long, unruly hair so I could see the furrow lines in his forehead, deep as canyons. His face was pinched with worry. When I first met him he’d worn his salt-and-pepper hair in a military brush cut. Then his girlfriend—now ex-girlfriend—decided she liked it long when she found out he had naturally curly hair. So he’d let it grow out into an untidy mop that always made me think of an unmade bed. After she moved out I figured he’d cut it again, but he hadn’t. Frankly, I liked it better long, too, though I’d never told him.

“Thank God I had some aspirin in the lab,” he added. “We got him to take that and maybe it helped.”

“He’s been working too hard. I told you he didn’t look too good the other day. I wish we hadn’t needed him to help out the night of the second freeze.”

“Yeah, then he insisted on taking those tarps off the new fields yesterday.”

I sat up straight. “He did what ? I thought that was Manolo and César and the others. How could you let him do that?”

His voice rose. “What do you think, he asked my permission? You know him. He does what he wants.”

“Well he can’t. And you should have stopped him!”

He sat forward and steepled his hands like he was praying, resting his forehead against them. “I know. Lay off, will you? I feel bad enough.”