Honor said she’d love to have some help—proof that she wasn’t at all mean. But by the end of Hadley’s first day, Honor asked Jack to come by her office. She closed the door after him.
“Hadley’s not going to work out,” she said, getting straight to it.
“Shit,” he said. “You sure? It’s only been a day.”
“I thought she could start out by picking merchandise for the gift shop, maybe rearranging some of the displays out there.”
“That’d be great. She loves buying stuff. And rearranging.” Just last night he’d caught his shin on the coffee table, which Hadley had moved for the fourth time.
“Well, she had other ideas.” His sister fiddled with a pen.
“Like what?”
“She wanted to redo our logo and every label on every bottle we sell. Redesign the tasting room by getting rid of the bar and putting in Italian marble and tile flooring.”
Italian marble? The tasting room (which had been voted one of the ten most beautiful tasting rooms in America by Wine Spectator) featured a long, curving bar made by Samuel Hastings, using wood from a tree that had fallen in a winter storm ten years back. Blue slate floors. Two stone fireplaces, post and beam construction, beautiful old Oriental rugs.
“She also thinks we should sheetrock the Cask Room, because the stone walls are—” Honor made quote marks with her fingers “‘—downright spine-chilling.’”
And the Cask Room was one of the best parts of the vineyard, an old stone cellar where the wine was aged in wooden barrels. Tourists loved it.
“I’d told her we were all set on those things, and she...” Honor paused. “Well, I think her feelings were hurt. You might want to bring her flowers.”
Flowers didn’t help. Hadley was seething, stating over and over that Honor hated her and didn’t believe in her.
“Honey,” he said, “you have to understand that we all love Blue Heron. We don’t want it to change. New ideas are great, but—”
“But you don’t want new ideas!”
“Not an overhaul of everything, no. The tasting room is only a few years old.”
“Well, it’s ugly.”
“Not according to our visitors,” he said, his voice a little tight. He paused. “Honor knows what she’s doing, babe. Maybe telling her to change everything on your first day wasn’t the best idea.”
“Fine. Take her side. You always do.”
Her feelings of being persecuted baffled him. After all, his father called her sweetheart and always kissed her cheek and hugged her, Goggy beamed when Hadley made Jack show up at church each week, Pops told her she was the prettiest thing Manningsport had ever seen. Faith sent her emails and girlie gifts from San Francisco. Mrs. Johnson gave her the recipe for lemon pound cake, Jack’s favorite dessert, which al-Qaeda wouldn’t have been able to pry out of her. Pru invited them over and admired how good Hadley smelled, and Honor...well, okay, Honor didn’t like her. But she never said anything that could even remotely be construed as impolite, not to Hadley, not to Jack.
Granted, the first year of marriage was the hardest, everyone said. And it wasn’t all bad, not at all. There were moments when Jack couldn’t believe he had a wife who literally skipped into his arms when he came home (sometimes) and who constantly told him how smart and handsome and wonderful he was. Who put her head on his shoulder and told him that all her dreams had come true the day she met him.
But Jack was learning that for every nice thing she said or did, he was expected to reciprocate in triplicate, and Hadley was definitely keeping score. One night, they went out to dinner to a really nice place in Corning, but Hadley barely spoke to him, becoming more and more sullen as the night went on, refusing to answer when he asked what was wrong. Finally, and only after they’d gotten home, she told him. He hadn’t noticed that she was wearing a new black dress. When he pointed out that she owned quite a few black dresses (eight, to be precise, he counted later), she slammed the door so hard a picture fell off the wall.
She had an endless need to be complimented. If he said she looked pretty, she’d pout until he said beautiful or gorgeous or sexy. She’d ask if he noticed anything different about her, and God help him if he didn’t guess it was a new perfume or a different shade of pink on her toenails, because she’d accuse him of taking her for granted. She loved gifts, and though he often brought flowers home, she’d make a pretend game of patting down his pockets to see if had anything else for her. The thing was, she meant it. Whatever he did get her, it wasn’t enough, the one exception being her engagement ring. Even so, she was already hinting for an anniversary ring—a sapphire-and-diamond band that, according to the website she showed him, cost twenty-four thousand dollars.
Then again, there were days when she’d tell him a story full of dry humor and her musical laugh, and her eyes would dance, and he’d feel this almost painful pressure in his chest, because this was the way he’d always thought it could be. Sometimes she’d call him to say she just wanted to hear his voice. She might bake cookies and bring them down, still warm from the oven, for him and Dad and Pops.
And, certainly not least of all, their sex life was fantastic. Frequent, boisterous, interesting...planned...mapped out, really. Choreographed. By her. Hey, he wasn’t complaining. It was just always a bit of a production.
In four months of marriage, not once had Jack just been able to go to bed at the end of the day and make love to his wife. Nor was he able to come home from work and kiss her and just take her to bed (or to the living room rug, or the couch and its many throw pillows). Morning sex was frowned upon. Lunchtime sex was okay, so long as he let her know a day or two in advance so she could get ready. Jack sort of thought that was his job, getting her ready, but...well. It was okay. Frequent and boisterous, those were good things.
Still, it might’ve been nice not to have to spend all that time lighting candles. Or scattering rose petals (he’d done that on their honeymoon, and now it was kind of a thing). Or playing certain music. Sometimes there was a theme to the night, and Jack would be asked to guess what that theme was.
These productions required a special wardrobe for Hadley, as well—new lingerie and red-soled high-heeled shoes, or skimpy little nighties, when all Jack really wanted was nudity.
While it was great that she put so much effort into that aspect of their marriage, it was a bit...much all the, uh, staging. And, yes, all the money.
“Is this a mistake?” he asked one night after he opened the AmEx bill. “Two grand at Bergdorf?”
“Nope. Not a mistake, sweetheart.” She smiled at him, dimple flashing.
“When were you at Bergdorf Goodman?”
“I ordered something online,” she said, not looking up from the game she was playing on the computer.
“And what did you order?”
“A pair of shoes.”
“What else?”
“Nothing.”
“One pair of shoes cost two grand? My God! Are you kidding me?”
“Don’t raise your voice to me, Jack Holland!” she said. “And don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Yes. Two grand on one pair of shoes.” She gave him a pretty little pout. “Don’t you think I deserve nice things, baby?”
This is where fights began, Jack was well aware by now. Two hundred would’ve been a lot in Jack’s book, unless they were those really good steel-toed leather work boots Pru had given him for Christmas last year. But two thousand? “Of course you deserve nice things. But you have dozens of pairs of shoes already. Two grand—”
“They’re Christian Louboutin, babe! You sure didn’t complain the other night.” Another smile. Yes, the other night she’d done a very hot little striptease, leaving on only her trashy shoes. Even so, they weren’t worth two grand.
He took a deep breath. “Honey. That’s way, way too much.”
“We have the money.”
Jack folded his arms. “We don’t have two grand to spend on one pair of highly impractical shoes, Hadley.”
Well, that opened the door. She stomped her foot. Jack clearly didn’t appreciate how hard she worked to make their home beautiful. How much effort she put into being attractive, because “that’s what Southern women do, Jack, not like your sister, who looks like a man!”
Jack ran a hand through his hair. “Honey, you can’t drive us into debt because you liked a pair of shoes.”
“One pair, Jack! I think I deserve one pair of Christian Louboutin shoes!”
Except, he learned, she had four pairs.
They sat down that night and worked up a budget on how much discretionary spending money they had. She sulked.
It was obvious she’d had the wrong impression of just how much Jack earned. Yes, Blue Heron supported the family. Yes, Jack was a part owner and received a salary in addition to vineyard profits (most of which went back into the land or a savings account—farmers never took income for granted). She gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the night.
But the next morning, she apologized, said she’d been childish and kissed him sweetly. She baked a pie using one of Mrs. Johnson’s recipes, and, after dinner, she called Faith and had a long giggle-filled chat.
They flew down to Savannah for a Southern Thanksgiving. Hadley was overjoyed to be with her family again, and they were happy to see both of them. He played Southern football (which was an awful lot like Northern football) with her dad and two brothers-in-law, both very good guys, as well as the kids and Frankie.
“You guys planning on having kids?” asked Beau, who was married to Rachel. The game had pretty much finished, and Jack was tossing a nephew in the air.
“Absolutely,” Jack said.
“Might want to think that through,” Frankie said, flopping on the grass. “Kids make things permanent. Right, ankle-biter?” she added, grabbing her niece around the waist.
“Now, Frankie,” Hadley’s dad said, shooting Jack an apologetic look. “Come on, kids—I smell ham and turkey. Your grandmother’s worked too hard for us to be late to her table. Y’all get in there and wash up, now!”
Everyone went in, except Frankie and Jack.
“Sorry if I put my foot in it,” she said. “You just seem like a real nice guy is all.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean, Jack,” she said with a smack to his head, just like one of his own sisters, “Hadley’s a handful. Gives us Southern chicks a bad name. Just be sure you know what you got there.” She started in, then glanced over her shoulder. “By the way, I’m coming out to the family after dinner. Hope I can count on you not freaking. You knew I liked girls, right?”
“What? Oh, yeah.” He was still digesting her words about Hadley.
Frankie’s announcement wasn’t exactly groundbreaking. Ruthie and Rachel stated that they’d known since Frankie was eleven, and Bill and Barb admitted that they had suspected but had hoped to be wrong, because it could carry some “difficult consequences.”
“What are y’all talking about?” Frankie said fondly. “I’m a Yankee now. There’s lots of us lesbians up north. We’re all the rage.” This got a laugh, and Bill came over and kissed his youngest and told her they all loved her no matter what.
“You’ll look after her, won’t you, Jack?” Barbara asked.
“Of course,” Jack said. He liked Frankie a lot. “Not that she needs looking after, but we’re just an hour away from Cornell.”
“Jack and I are about ready to start a family,” Hadley announced.
He looked at her in surprise. Since that first conversation after the honeymoon, the subject of kids hadn’t been brought up. But the conversation turned to babies and pregnancy, and when Jack looked across the table at Frankie, she said nothing. Just cocked an eyebrow, and it dawned on Jack that maybe his wife was, in some weird way, trying to steal Frankie’s thunder and turn the attention to her.