Nine-Tenths

Forty-Five

The walk is deceptively named. It's long enough to be a hike.

I was expecting a nice country path with a romantic avenue of trees, leaning in to gossip over my head. There are trees, but they're regimented, canopy-shy maples. They border a darkly-paved drive wide enough for two vehicles to pass, marching toward a house hidden beyond a high wall of shrubs.

It's nice, but there's no personality.

There's nothing to suggest, beyond the whimsy of the front gate, that it's Dav who lives here. My Dav, who is proud of his wine, and secretly loves silly socks, and drinks his coffee with a hit of espresso. My Dav, who is tactile and comforting, and tries hard to please. My Dav, would be a hedonist, it's so clear in the way he makes meals, and makes love, but is not allowed to be.

That's what this walk looks like: Dav being denied.

Again.

In the ten minutes it takes me to get to the house, I oscillate between sorrow, fuming anger on his behalf, and curiosity. There are more walls inside the estate, low enough I have a view of outbuildings and vineyards. What would I find if I walked across the manicured lawn, risking the wrath of a security detail or gardener to crush the grass and hop the nearest wall? The sustainability-nerd in me is desperate to see if the original watering systems are still in place, if the equipment is run on gas, or solar, or literal-horse-power. I want to poke through every shed, analyze a real working farm that has been at it for centuries.

I don't because that can wait.

I'm going to see Dav.

I pass through the ivy-heavy wall—an inner bailey, my brain screams, a fortress prepared for a siege—and the house that's revealed looks like something out of Jane Austen. (Jane Austen was nine years old when Dav was born, I recall with a jolt.) The house is two and a half stories, topped with a pitched roof and dormers, built of the same sandstone as the walls, and overflowing with fussy classical detailing. The windows and front door are surrounded by stonework that looks like Greek pillars. The front door is topped with a little stone roof with ornate scrollwork, and a modern front door in a cheeky wine-red. I bet Onatah put him up to that.

The whole building is so quintessentially Loyalist it might as well be on a postcard.

But this isn't a museum. People live here: housekeepers, farmers, winemakers. And I'm standing like a dumbass in the middle of the inner courtyard, surrounded on both sides with a riot of barely-controlled rose bushes. I wonder how many pairs of eyes are watching me through the regimented rows of rectangular windows. The thought of being judged by the people who know Dav's private life better than I do gives me goosebumps.

The front door opens before I'm halfway up the three shallow steps.

"Hi," the woman holding the door open says. She's shorter than me, white, probably in her mid-thirties, with funky glasses and plump cheeks that betray a ready smile. Right now she looks serious, but not the bad kind of serious. Her gaze drops to the pin on my lapel, then bounces up to my face, politely bland.

"Uh. Hello. I'm, uh, I'm Colin."

"Yes, I know." She waves her hand to invite me into a narrow, well-lit foyer.

"Um, Onatah dropped me off."

"I know that, too," the woman says, and nods to a small screen beside the door, where a video feed streams a view of the front gate. It flicks to the walkway, the inner courtyard, and a terraced stone patio. Yikes, she watched my whole walk-of-not-shame. Awkward. She thrusts out her hand, business-like and confident. "Sarah Appleby." We shake. "I'm the P.A."