The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: Secondhand
Liesl posts her best friend's beach photo with her husband for everyone they know, and when Dex demands a divorce in front of his crew, she signs it and tells him the 1904 doesn't grow on his land.
My best friend sent me a photo from the beach at 11:32 on a Thursday night.
My husband had his arm around her waist.
They were both laughing at whoever held the camera.
Under it was a text from Coralee Dobbs.
"Liesl, I'm so sorry. It just happened. I couldn't stop myself."
I was sitting on the farmhouse steps with my boots still on and grape juice dried on my wrists.
Dex was in Cabo for a distributor summit.
That's what he told me on Monday, when he kissed my forehead and zipped his good linen shirts into a bag.
Coralee had gone too.
He'd made her Vice President of Sales that same afternoon.
I'd bought her a cake in Healdsburg and written CONGRATS CORA on it myself, in crooked blue icing.
I zoomed in on the photo.
His wedding ring was on his hand.
Her hand was over it.
The crickets were loud.
Past the fence, the Old Block stood in its rows, black and crooked against the stars.
My great-great-grandfather planted those vines in 1904.
Every bottle with my husband's name on it came from them.
I saved the photo.
Then I opened Facebook.
I didn't crop it.
I didn't blur her face.
I tagged them both and typed.
"Huge congratulations to my best friend Coralee on her promotion! Turns out the new job came with my husband. Enjoy him, Cora. He's used, he's sold as is, and I'm not taking him back."
I set it to public.
Three hundred people in this valley had danced at our wedding.
I hit post.
Then I turned off the phone, pried the SIM card out with an earring back, and dropped it in the sugar bowl.
I slept eight hours straight.
I hadn't done that since July.
In the morning I put the SIM back in and the phone shook in my hand for a full minute.
Two hundred and fourteen missed calls.
Ninety-six messages.
Coralee: "Take it down. Please. People are calling my MOM."
Dex: "Take it down."
Dex: "Are you insane?"
Dex: "I'm on the red-eye. Don't you dare go anywhere."
I didn't take it down.
I put on my work shirt and walked next door.
Arnott Estate sat two hundred yards from my porch.
Stone tasting room. Glass doors. A barrel cave dug into the hill.
DEX ARNOTT in brass letters on the wall by the crush pad.
The crew was sorting the first sauvignon blanc off the belt.
Winona Platt sat on an upturned bin in her straw hat, the way she'd sat for the first fruit every year for forty years.
She'd run my grandpa's vineyard since before I was born.
"Saw your little post," she said.
"Are you going to lecture me?"
"Hell, no. I'm going to frame it."
Nobody on the crew looked at me.
Every single one of them had seen it.
At 7:40 a black SUV came up the gravel drive too fast and stopped crooked by the crush pad.
Dex got out.
His linen shirt was wrinkled and his nose was sunburned.
Coralee climbed out of the passenger side in a white sundress and big sunglasses.
She'd ridden home with him from the airport.
Of course she had.
"Have you lost your mind?" Dex said.
He didn't lower his voice.
He wanted the crew to hear.
"Do you know who saw that? Our distributors. The wine club. Every wine writer in San Francisco."
"Then they know what I know," I said.
Coralee took off her sunglasses.
Her eyes were already wet.
"Liesl, I told you the truth. I was being honest with you. You didn't have to do that to me."
"You sent me the picture, Cora. I only showed it around."
Somebody on the sorting line laughed and turned it into a cough.
Winona didn't bother turning hers into anything.
Dex's jaw went tight.
He unzipped his bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers, still warm from some airport printer.
He slapped them down on a barrel head.
"My lawyer drew these up at three this morning."
He clicked a pen and held it out.
"You want to humiliate me in front of the whole valley? Fine. I want a divorce."
The belt kept running.
Grapes rolled past and nobody touched them.
"Or," Dex said, softer, the voice he used on wine club members, "you take the post down. You apologize to Coralee, in public. And we forget this."
Coralee touched his arm.
"Dex, don't. She doesn't have anything without you."
He didn't argue with her.
"She's right, Liesl. You're an assistant with a farm and a Facebook account. Without me, you're a girl who sells grapes."
He thought I'd cry.
I could see him waiting for it.
Across Dry Creek Road, Augie Dahl had stopped his tractor at the end of his rows.
His little girl, Goldie, was standing on the seat beside him, staring.
The whole road was watching now.
I picked up the papers and read every page.
He kept the winery. The name on the wall. The wine club. The cars. The cave.
He'd been generous with himself.
I took the pen out of his hand.
I signed on the barrel head, every line he'd flagged.
Liesl Kessel.
Not Arnott.
I hadn't written Kessel on anything in six years.
My hand didn't shake once.
Dex stared at the signature.
"That's it?" he said. "Six years, and you don't even fight?"
"You asked for a divorce. I gave you one."
Coralee put her sunglasses back on, but not before I saw her smile.
I held the pen out to Dex.
He didn't take it.
So I set it on top of the papers, on the barrel, under his brass name.
"Keep your winery, Dex."
He chuckled in relief.
"Thank you. Finally, some sense."
"But get your picking bins off my vines by sundown."
The laugh stopped.
"Your vines."
I turned and looked across the fence at the Old Block.
Twelve acres. Gnarled, waist-high, a hundred and twenty years old.
Every grape of his famous 1904 grew in those rows.
"The 1904 doesn't grow on your land, Dex," I said. "It never did."
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