“Austin was so excited, he could barely sleep last night.” Robin lived with my brother Austin, with whom she had been in love since third grade. She and I had been best friends since then, too, and I loved her as much as any of my three sisters. I didn’t get to see her as often as I used to when she was living in San Francisco, but I knew she was blissfully happy with Austin, who supported her sculpting work and was clearly as much in love with her as she was with him.
Austin ran the Dharma winery, and my brother Jackson managed the vineyards. My father did a great job of overseeing the entire operation, thanks to his early experience in the business world. Decades ago he’d turned his back on corporate hell and gone off to follow the Grateful Dead. Ironically, these days, Dad and four other commune members made up the winery’s board of directors. He was also part of the town council, but this time around he loved all of that business stuff. It probably helped that Dad had always been remarkably laid-back and still was. I sometimes wondered if Mom had cast a mellow spell on him.
I checked the kitchen clock. It was already seven thirty. The cave excavation was scheduled to begin at eight. “I’ll just fix myself a quick bowl of cereal, and then we’ll go.”
Robin glanced at Mom. “Becky, are you coming with us?”
“You girls go on ahead,” she said, pulling a large plastic bin of homemade granola down from the cupboard. “I want to put together a basket of herbs and goodies for the cave ceremony. I’ll catch up with you later.”
“What cave ceremony?” I asked as I poured granola into a bowl and returned the bin to the cupboard.
She looked at me as though I’d failed my third-grade spelling test. “Sweetie, we have to bless the new space.”
“Oh.” I shot Robin a wary glance. “Of course we do.”
Robin bumped my shoulder. “You haven’t been away so long that you’d forget about the sacred cave ceremony.”
“I’ve been busy,” I mumbled. She was teasing me, but still, I should’ve known that my mother would want to cast a protection spell or a celebration spell to commemorate the groundbreaking of our winery’s newest venture.
I could picture Mom doing a spritely interpretive dance to the wine goddess. She would chant bad haiku and sprinkle magic sparkles on the heavy tunneling machines and equipment. It would be amazing, and the heavy equipment would turn our dark storage cave into a large, magical wine-tasting space where all would be welcome.
“Oh, sweetie,” Mom said, hanging a dish towel on the small rack by the sink. “While you’re here, you should go to lunch at the new vegan restaurant on the Lane. They serve a turnip burger that is to die for.”
I swallowed cautiously, hoping I didn’t lose my breakfast. “I’ll be sure to check that out, Mom.”
She glanced at me and laughed. “Oh, you should see your face. Do you really think I’d be caught dead eating something so vile?”
“I . . . Okay, you got me.” I shook my head and chuckled as I carried my bowl to the sink. “I was trying to remember when you turned vegan.”
“I tried it once for a day and a half and vowed never again. And even then, did I ever serve my children turnips? No, never.”
“You’re right and I appreciate it. But I haven’t seen you in a while. I was afraid maybe you’d turned into Savannah.” My sister Savannah was a vegetarian now, but she’d gone through several austere phases to get there, including a few months when she would only eat fruit that had already fallen from the tree.
“No, I was just pulling your leg.”
I smiled at her. “You still got it, Mom.”
“I sure do.” She grabbed me in another hug, and it felt good to hold on to her. “Oh, Brooklyn, I’m so happy you’re here.”
“So am I.”
She gave me one last squeeze, then let me go. As I washed out my cereal bowl, she left the kitchen.
“Let’s get going,” Robin said after I put my bowl away in the cupboard. “I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Wait a second, girls,” my mother called from her office alcove off the kitchen. She walked out, holding two tiny muslin bags tied with drawstrings, and handed one to each of us. “I want you both to carry one of these in your pocket,” she said, her expression deadly serious. “It’ll keep you safe.”
*
“That is the coolest, scariest piece of equipment I’ve ever seen,” Robin said.
I had to agree. We both stared at the monstrous excavation machine that was parked at the mouth of the storage cave, waiting to roll into action. They called it a roadheader, and it was huge, weighing more than sixty tons (I’d overheard Dad gushing about its weight to Derek while they were standing around having a manly conversation about heavy equipment), and was as large as the biggest bulldozer I’d ever seen.