Page 78 of Release Me

“Sebastian!” I whine, hating him for drawing this out even more.

He doesn’t even respond, just blinks at me until I do what he asked. As soon as I’m in compliance, I feel something smooth and cool to the touch in my hands. I run my fingers along the object, feeling the width taper as I get closer to the end of it.

“A bottle of wine?” I ask, hoping it’s a nice full bodied red to go with the dinner I made.

“Yes,” he says, excitement layered in his tone, “but not just any bottle, open your eyes.”

Once again, I follow his instruction and find myself holding a bottle I never thought I’d see again. My eyes rove over the black bottle and black label with distinctive gold foil that denotes the name of the brand in a flowing script font made from my mother’s handwriting. My lips part because I have so many questions, so many things to say, but not a single sound comes out.

“It’s the ‘93 Thornehill Pinot Noir, the bottle you were looking for that night at Ludus,” Sebastian says, reminding me of the day when I almost wasted this perfection on Preston Fredricks. “Ruthie helped me track it down. She says it’s one of the last bottles left in existence from a vineyard in Sonoma.”

Tears blur my vision and sadness becomes a tremor in my voice. “Did you know it takes two years for Pinot Noir to age?”

“No, I didn’t know that.” There’s a world of caution in Sebastian’s voice when he answers me, which lets me know that he’s caught on to the change in my mood. “So that wine was actually processed and barreled in…”

“1991,” I interject. “The year I was born.” I look up and give him a watery smile, wanting to sob because I miss my parents so badly and holding this bottle makes that pain more acute, wanting to laugh because suddenly I don’t have a desire to talk about anything except them.“I guess we are talking about my parents today.”

“We are?”

I nod. “Yeah, we are, but first I need to decant this.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, the timer I set for the short ribs goes off.

“I’ll get it,” Sebastian says, moving around me to the oven. While he gets the short ribs situated, I pull out the decanter, cork screw and two wine glasses, sitting everything on the counter but freezing when it comes time to open it. My fingers shake as I run them over the label, tracing the letters that spell out the name I haven’t dared to speak in months. Thornehill. It’s a combination of Hawthorne—my father’s last name—and Hill—my mother’s maiden name—but to me it has only ever sounded like home.

Sebastian’s questioning gaze is a heavy weight on the side of my face. “Do you want me to do it?”

“No, I got it.” I sound so confident, but my hands still aren’t moving. I’m not moving. I’m just standing here, barely breathing, staring at the bottle like if I look hard enough my parents might appear in the black glass.

“Nadia.”

Pulling in a shaky breath, I start talking, saying the first thing that comes to mind with no regard for if it makes sense or whether it’s the best place to start.

“When I was a kid, my dad would repeatedly tell me about how harrowing it was to have a newborn with colic and a quarter of an acre of grapes with thin skin and a sensitivity to everything.”

Sebastian’s brows dip inward. His expression a silent question that compels me to elaborate.

“Pinot Noir grapes are notoriously difficult to grow. They’re completely unforgiving, reacting to every little change in their growing environment. And if you do manage to get them through growing season, you still have to worry about their tendency to rot during wine making.”

His head bobs up and down, signaling his understanding. “Your dad made wine.”

“My dad made this wine.” I spin the bottle around, so he can look at the label, so he can fully appreciate the fact that he unknowingly brought home the key to the safe that holds all of my secrets. “And it was his favorite because despite the challenging circumstances, he managed to get everything exactly right that year, and two years later, he put out a small batch of his first Pinot that went on to win several distinctive awards.” Sebastian stares at me in awe, and I take his silence as license to continue. “Instead of framing his success as a result of overcoming the difficulties of having a new baby who refused to sleep anywhere but in his or his wife’s arms, he attributed that success to me. Saying that taking care of me taught him how to be patient and more nurturing, which is exactly what the grapes needed most.”

I turn the bottle back towards me and shake my head. The motion sets the tears lingering at the corners of my eyes free. “I can’t open it.”

“You don’t have to.” His hands cover mine, and I look up, wondering how I missed him moving over to me. “We don’t have to drink it. Ever. Tell me something else about them. About your parents.”

The gentle request sets memories I haven’t accessed in years free, and I see everything, I feel everything, and it’s just too much. I crumble under the weight of it all, sinking down to the floor as heavy sobs wrack my body and waves of tears pull me under, drowning me in a current of grief. Sebastian doesn’t crumble, but when I hit the floor, he hits it with me. Actually, he hits it mere seconds before me, allowing me to use his body as a cushion to soften the blow. I curl in on myself, and he wraps his arms around me and lifts his legs up, drawing me in closer, cradling me like a baby.

By the time I finish crying dinner is cold and my throat is raw. I’ve barely got a voice, but I still want to speak. I still want to tell Sebastian everything there is to know about me.

“My mother’s name was Corrine Hill, and my dad was Maxwell Hawthorne.” Just speaking their names makes my throat burn, my vocal chords feel like they’re being seared by grief. “He had this great, big laugh that only my mom and me could get out of him. With everyone else he was super serious, borderline grumpy.”

I close my eyes, trying to recreate the boisterous sound of his laughter in my mind and failing.

“Sounds like my kind of guy,” Sebastian muses, and I smile.

“You two would have gotten along really well….eventually.”

---