“Come on in.”
Once they were inside Tam paused to look around, making sure they were alone and assuaging her general curiosity. The tasting room was lush with plants and a curved brass and oak bar gleamed in the low light. The faint, fresh aroma of wine mingled with cheese and toasted nuts. In spite of the mountain of food she’d consumed already that day, her stomach made it clear that she would not gag on a nice malbec with a platter of antipasto.
Their silent guide led them through the tasting room to a well-organized storage and shipping area. A center table held empty boxes and both walls were lined with stacks of wooden crates. At the far end a computer monitor glowed.
The woman snapped on an overhead light when they reached the computer station. “You said you’d have cash.”
182
Tam was taken aback by her first good look at their unlikely accomplice. She was cheekily attractive with a shock of short bright red hair and a pert nose over a sideways smile that warned of attitude. Gaydar instantly pinged—clearly a Sapphic Sister, as Kip’s contact had said.
“Yes,” Kip answered. “I didn’t get your name.”
“That’s because I didn’t tell you.”
“I’d rather not call you Hey There, or Fake-ID-Lady.”
“So call me Glenn.”
“Okay, Glenn. Yes, we brought cash.”
“The photos are fifty bucks each.”
Tam frowned. But before she could voice her skepticism,
“Glenn” pulled two plastic cards out of her back pocket.
“These are a thousand each. And yes, that’s more than I paid, and no I didn’t give you any kind of family discount. We live in a capitalist world and God Bless America.”
They were still getting off cheaply, Tam thought, so she reached into her pocket and counted out the bills.
“Alrighty, step right this way.”
A small side room was draped with white sheets, though several black sheets were slung over a chair. A covered pedestal held a trio of fluted wineglasses and a vase with roses, somewhat past their bloom. The featured wine was in a bottle with obviously feminine curves, and Tam couldn’t help but smile.
Glenn set up a backdrop of watery industrial blue and switched on a large fluorescent lamp. She gestured at Kip.
“You first.”
Kip delivered an anxious smile for the camera, which made Tam grin. The lighting robbed Kip of most of her coloring.
When her turn came she tried for a squint and scowl.
“So while I check the photos and adjust the size, you guys should type out these details.” Glenn pointed at the screen.
“Name, address, date of birth, all that jazz. Don’t make any typos.”
“She’s kind of cute,” Tam whispered as Glenn left them alone.
“The apple did not fall far from the tree in their family. Aside 183
from the red hair, she looks a lot like her brother, except it all looks better on her. Where are we going to say we’re from?”
Tam was busy typing. “I picked a non-existent street address in Boise. I think we should use our existing birthdays so we don’t get tripped up on our age, and for names...” She gestured at the screen for Kip to take a look.
She punched Tam in the arm. “I am not going to be Gracie Lou Freebush.”
“Oh fine, I thought it suited you.”
Kip glowered with mock offense and watched as Tam turned her into Pippa Merritt. “That’s better. Pamela Curling?”
“Better chance of reacting to names that rhyme.”
Glenn returned to shoo them back into the tasting room.
“This is going to take me about thirty minutes. There’s six laminate layers and the security strip. Go out there and wait for me.”Kip perched on one of the stools at the bar, and propped up her head by leaning heavily on one hand. She looked as tired as Tam felt. “There was an inn with a vacancy sign back toward the freeway. Do you want to stay there?”
Tam agreed. “How do you suppose someone who makes wine also does, um, creative photography?”
“Do you suppose the wine is good?”
Glenn’s voice floated out of the back. “None of your business and yes, it’s very good.”
Kip snickered. “It’s incongruous, isn’t it? I mean, I’d be happy to sit here on a sunny day and see if I might like wine, one kind or another. Instead, I’m waiting for a fake ID and that’s about the last thing I would have said I’d ever do.”
“We’ll come back, then, to sample the wine. Would you like to, really? You don’t drink...” Tam studied Kip’s face.
“I’ve nothing against alcohol in general. I have a problem with it when it’s near my father.”
“That must have been tough as a kid.”
“He wasn’t around very much to make it tough.”
Tam wondered if Kip’s exhaustion was why she was so much 184
easier to read. Her expression was nostalgic and just a bit sad.
“What are you thinking about?”
“My grandfather. And my father. They didn’t get on, as you can imagine. But whenever my father came back and swore he’d changed, my grandfather tried, I think, to forget the past. But it always fell apart and my father would be gone for longer and longer periods. When I was seven he left for five years, after...”
Tam waited for more, watching a ghost of a wry smile pass over Kip’s lips.
“He was supposed to pick me and Kim up from school. I went to the car and Kim was already in it. She was in kindergarten I think. I don’t know what I knew, or thought I knew, but I told Kim to get out of the car and come sit with me at the curb. She finally listened to me, the whole time my father was telling me to get in so we could go home. So Kim and I sat on the curb for what seemed like forever. What I remember most vividly is that my father sat in the car crying. I felt awful. I had made him cry, but I didn’t want Kim to be in the car with him. Eventually my grandfather showed up and I guess I forever became grandpa’s little girl, because he squeezed me hard and told me to stop crying, that nothing Daddy did was about me. Daddy was crying because he was ashamed to be drunk. I didn’t understand then, but it left a big mark. That and my grandfather telling me I’d done a wonderful job of protecting my sister. Kim will tell you that I’ve never stopped.”
Touched, Tam pictured Kip as a serious little girl. “That was really brave of you. You were so young.”
“I don’t know what went through my mind. Maybe I smelled the liquor and knew that whenever I smelled it my mother was also crying.”
“It’s a powerful trigger, the sense of smell.”
Kip nodded. She looked so unguarded that Tam wondered how she had ever thought Kip was complicated—or humorless.
Her gaze sharpened in the next moment, not a lot, but Tam could see the wheels of Kip’s mind turning. “I’ve told you a lot about me. Tell me something about you as a girl. I don’t know a 185
thing. You grew up in Germany. I’ve been there several times on business.”
Tam strove for a neutral smile. “I remember nothing to speak of.” Truthful, and exactly what she had been trained to say.
“What was your favorite food? Who was your first crush?”
“I’ve always liked apple fritters and I was smitten with a teacher at boarding school at the old age of seventeen. Miss Dunham had a girlfriend. My classmates were shocked and I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one who liked girls way better than boys.”
“That was here in this country?”
She nodded. Kip’s lips parted and the question was there, Tam knew it. The awkward and somewhat irrational fear in the pit of her stomach threatened to blossom, but Kip only looked at her for a long, intense moment. Tam relaxed and the fear subsided. What was there to reveal that Kip, of all people, wouldn’t understand?