The Viognier Vendetta

Miranda Asher was stopped at Kennedy Airport when a TSA attendant spotted her wearing a blond wig and carrying a forged passport as she tried to board a flight to Greece. She pleaded ignorance of her husband’s business dealings amid a media frenzy as investors continued to reel from their losses.

David Wildman turned Rebecca’s package over to the SEC, though it wasn’t like he had a choice. Along with the stories of Harlan and the Ashers, the Trib ran his front-page multipart series on Tommy Asher’s Ponzi scheme—its victims, its far-flung scope, and all the players involved, including Rebecca. I avoided just about everyone I knew, from Dominique to Thelma and the Romeos, for as long as I could after that news came out. As for Quinn, he spent most of his days out in the vineyard and we hardly saw each other.

Rebecca Natale’s body was finally recovered from the Potomac River—ironically, the plastic bag containing her decomposed remains was discovered not far from the Three Sisters. Linh Natale’s press conference on television was painful to watch, and though I called her several times, she never picked up the phone or returned any of my messages.

Simon deWolfe pleaded guilty to the murder of Ian Philips and as an accessory to Rebecca’s murder. According to Simon, it was Tommy who strangled Rebecca during a violent argument the afternoon of the gala. When his half brother called in a panic, Simon moved her body to a horse stall at his Upperville farm before disposing of it in the river when one of his stable boys complained of a bad smell coming from the barn a week later. After the medical examiner’s report confirmed Simon’s story, I shuddered to think how close I’d been to dying in the same grim way Tommy Asher had murdered Rebecca.

Between Quinn and me, things remained tense and overly polite. Then one evening, he stopped by my house with a bottle of Château Petrus. He joked that he’d used the last of his money to buy it. When he reached for me, I thought we were going to be all right. We spent a tumultuous night in bed—though it involved some new contortions with my taped ribs.

He made his customary sludgy coffee the next morning, but when he showed up in the bedroom door he was holding only one mug.

“Here,” he said, “just the way you like it.”

I grinned. “Where’s yours? Drank it already?”

His smile faltered and I knew something was wrong.

“What is it?” I said.

He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “One of the guys is coming to pick me up in a couple of minutes. I need to go back to California for a while, Lucie. You’ll be okay. I’ve talked everything over with Antonio.”

“Talked what over with Antonio? What are you saying?”

“I gotta clear my head. I can’t do it here anymore. I need to go home.”

“Your home is here !”

He walked over to the bed and set the mug on my bedside table. Then he kissed me and I tasted good-bye and regret in that kiss.

“When are you coming back?” I held on to his wrists.

“I’m not sure.”

“A couple of weeks? A month?”

I saw a muscle twitch in his jaw.

“You are coming back, aren’t you?” I said, finally.

“I won’t leave you in the lurch, I promise.”

“Then don’t go. Please.”

He cocked his head as a car horn sounded outside. “That’s my ride. I can’t miss this flight.” He gave me a cockeyed smile. “It’s nonrefundable.”

“Will you call me when you get there?”

“I … sure.”

The horn tooted impatiently, and he slipped his hands out of my grasp.

“Take care of yourself,” he said.

I nodded, feeling numb. His boots clattered on the stairs and then I heard the front door slam a moment later.

He was gone and I was alone.

I met Dominique at the Inn later that morning. We sat on the terrace dunking her homemade croissants into bowl-sized mugs of café au lait. Below us, Goose Creek, still rain swollen, rushed on to the Potomac. Her garden, in sun-dappled sunshine, was a riot of tulips and the last of the daffodils.

“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” she said, spooning apricot preserves on her croissant. “I can’t believe Quinn took off like that.”

“Me neither.” I still felt numb.

“He probably feels like he’s got crow on his face,” she said. “That’s why he left.”

“I suppose it’s something like that.”

“Are you going to be all right?”

Our eyes met. “Sure. How about you?”

She looked away. “Simon’s house is back on the market. Did you know he took me there once? Wanted me to see the place. We skipped touring that barn.”

“Oh, God, that’s gruesome.”

“We’ll get through this, the two of us,” she said. “We always do. We’re tough. That’s how our mothers raised us.”

“I know.”

“What about Easter?” she asked.

“What about it?”

“Why don’t we spend it together?”

“Mia called from New York the other day to check on how I was doing. My ribs and all that,” I said. “She thought she’d come home for Easter this year. And Eli’s been dropping by, too. It looks like he’s finally worked out custody arrangements for Hope, thank God. He’ll have her for Easter. Brandi’s going somewhere with her new boyfriend.”

“Well, then we could all be together,” she said. “It’d be the first time in ages.”

“Let’s do something at the vineyard,” I said. “We can plan an Easter egg hunt for Hope and then have dinner. The whole family.”

I drove home afterward and tried not to think about Quinn and whether he might or might not come back.

Dominique was right, that we’d get through this.

It was spring. New beginning.

Love survives. Family endures.

The War Of 1812 And The Burning Of Washington

The War of 1812, called “the second war of independence” and “the war nobody won,” was an unpopular conflict between the United States and Great Britain that was urged on the country by a warmongering Congress. Now nearly forgotten, it had its origins in trade disputes, anger at the British navy’s practice of impressing American merchantmen into service, and the British military’s support of Native American armed resistance to the northwest frontier expansion. Sentiment among congressional War Hawks—who controlled both houses of Congress—that the British ought to be driven from Canada further fueled the push for a military response to American grievances.

The war that inspired the writing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” caught most Americans by surprise and found the young country unprepared to fight. When President James Madison signed the declaration of war on June 18, 1812, the United States had neither sufficient troops nor the money to pay them. Undaunted and hoping for a quick victory, the Americans decided to first launch an assault on Canada, thus gaining control of the Great Lakes waterways. The campaign was a disaster in every possible way; in fact, by the end of 1812 the army’s war efforts