The pages crackled as she turned them. She found herself riveted by the beautiful, smiling people. And the story the pictures depicted. Of a close-knit group. One that spent a lot of time together partying-she couldn’t really call it anything else. It was the rare photograph that didn’t include someone-or several someones-with a glass in their hand. In many of them they were hugging one another, laughing or mugging for the camera.
Obviously feeling no pain.
Alex studied her mother. She had been a beautiful woman, certainly the most beautiful of their circle. The youngest, as well. She’d been only twenty-four then, Alex realized. Younger than Alex was now, and already married and a mother.
Not that she was in any way matronly, Alex thought, as she landed on a photo of the group poolside. Her mother wore a skimpy bikini and in several shots was draped over a couple of the other husbands.
A knot settled in her stomach. Alex turned the page. There she was again, this time in a cover-up, sitting on Treven’s lap. She was laughing; he looked irritated.
The things Reed had said raced around her head. She pushed them back. But she wasn’t alone. The other wives were carrying on as well. No one looked scandalized.
As Alex moved on to the second album, then the third, the photos evolved. Her mother seemed to become less carefree and more introspective. Candid shots caught expressions of worry, unguarded anxiety, furtiveness.
Alex passed a hand over her face. Or was she imagining it all? Had Reed’s story caused her to look at the photos differently? Change her presumption about her mother’s life?
“Hey, Alex. This is a nice surprise.”
Reed’s younger brother, she saw. Alex smiled and closed the last album. “Hey back, Ferris. Your mother offered me a peek at the family photo albums.”
“Still trying to catch up on your past?”
“Yup, still trying.” She stood and carried the three albums back to the bookcase. She reshelved them, then turned to find him standing directly behind her, close enough to lift her hand and touch.
“Any luck?” he asked.
Uncomfortable with their proximity, she inched backward. “Truthfully? Not a lot. But it was fun seeing them.”
“Would you like to go out to dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Yeah. Tonight?”
“I don’t think that’d be a good idea. Thanks anyway.” She stepped around him and crossed back to the couch to collect her purse.
He followed, not looking at all bothered by her answer. She wondered whether he was one of those guys who was always putting the query out there, or if he had heard the stories about her mother.
“I knew it,” he said. “You have something going on with Dan.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” He grinned. “Say, if you want to see some more memorabilia from those days, you should pay a visit to the Sommer Winery, they have a museum area, the walls are covered with photos. In fact, I think they have one of your mother’s paintings in the tasting room.”
Treven had told her that as well. She had forgotten.
“I could even take you-”
“Ferris, your brother is waiting for you out in the conference room.”
Wayne Reed stood in the doorway, frowning at his son. Ferris straightened. “Duty calls. Good seeing you, Alex.”
When he reached the doorway, he stopped, murmured something to his father that she couldn’t make out and left.
Wayne Reed turned his attention to her. “Stay away from my sons.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. They’ve been hurt enough.”
To say she was shocked would be an understatement. “I don’t understand why you would say that to me.”
“I think it would be pretty obvious, considering what your mother was.”
Angry color flooded her face. “How dare you.”
“How dare you,” he countered. “Go back to San Francisco. There’s nothing for you here.”
She supposed she could have been hurt or intimidated. She was spitting mad instead. “I didn’t have any part in what you say my mother was involved in. Which, frankly, I don’t believe is true.”
“Oh, it is true.” He advanced on her, stopping so close she felt his breath stir against her cheek. “What do you think it’s like for them? For all of us? Being reminded of-”
He leaned closer; it took all her strength of will not to back away. “Your mother didn’t just fuck our sons. She fucked them up.”
He turned on his heel and strode to the door. When he reached it, she stopped him by calling out, “It’s not true.”
He froze, then turned slowly to look at her. “Excuse me?”
“What you said about my mother. I know it’s not true. And I’ll prove it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re no longer welcome here, Ms. Clarkson. I’ll have one of the staff escort you out.”
“Don’t bother.” She strode past him and through the door, passing so closely he could have grabbed her. And for one crazy moment, she wondered if he would.
He didn’t, and minutes later she collapsed in her car, trembling so violently she gripped the steering wheel for support.
She’d be damned if she would run and hide. Scurry back to San Francisco and pretend none of this had happened. The way her mother had. No. What they were saying about her mother wasn’t true. She didn’t know how she would prove it, but she would.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Friday, March 12
3:30 P.M.
Alex took Ferris’s suggestion and headed for Sommer Winery. There she discovered that she had arrived in time to make the four o’clock tour, the last of the day. The for-a-fee tour took in both the winery and caves, then ended in the tasting room to sample several Sommer wines.
She bought a ticket, then was directed to the museum for the winery’s history and a short video on winemaking. She made her way there; a half dozen others already waited. Catching parts of various conversations, she learned the Sommer tour was considered one of the best in wine country.
Covered with photographs and other memorabilia, the museum walls served as a visual history of the winery, from its early days making inexpensive jug wine to now, an internationally renowned name in California wine.
But what captured her interest were the labeled photographs. Harlan and Treven as boys, then young men. Harlan’s first wife. Rachel, from infant to the winemaker she was today. Treven’s wife, his son Clark-again glorifying his ascent from childhood athlete and young scholar to company president.
But not a single photograph of her mother or Dylan. None of her.
She must have missed something, Alex thought. She quickly walked the room again, scanning the clusters of photographs.
She hadn’t. It stung. Her mother and Dylan hadn’t even registered as a blip on the Sommer family timeline.
The guide arrived and called them all to join her. The group had burgeoned to twenty-one, Alex saw. She also noted she was the only person traveling without a companion.
The tour began in the crushing area. The guide described the grape-sorting process, how those grapes were mechanically transported to the crusher-destemmer. The machine’s blades and chewers created free-run juice. Nobody stomped grapes with their feet anymore, the guide informed them-only as part of demonstrations or winemaking history lessons.
They moved on to the fermenting tanks. Stainless steel, the tanks stood twelve feet tall and each held three thousand gallons of fermenting wine.
“Notice the catwalks,” the guide said, pointing to them. “The fermenting juice is accessed there for a process called punching down. The process is actually quite dangerous. Every year there are a number of deaths-”
Alex stared at the tanks, at the catwalk, mouth dry, heart pounding. She pictured Susan Sommer, overcome by CO2 and tumbling into the tank. What had her last thought been? For the baby she carried in her womb? For the daughter she was leaving behind?