“That’s great. Do you have a client?”

“Yes, silly. His name is Jack Holland. Now get in this here tub.”

And just like that, her mood was better.

* * *

HADLEY WENT CRAZY with the redecorating.

Jack’s house was at the very top of the ridge, a good quarter mile up from the Old House, where his grandparents lived, and the New House, where Dad, Honor and Mrs. J. all resided. He’d been given the land when he turned thirty; Dad had similar parcels for the girls, but so far, none had done anything with them. Pru and Carl lived in a nice neighborhood on the other side of Manningsport, Honor lived with Dad and Faith was a Californian for the time being, though Jack suspected she’d move home soon enough.

But Jack had built his house two years before, after living in an Airstream trailer for six months to get the feel of the land, where the light hit at various times a day. He studied house plans from Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts and Crafts era, then hired an architect to draw up plans.

The end result was an airy and open floor plan based around a huge stone fireplace with an exposed chimney. The floors were wide-planked cherry, the kitchen counters black soapstone. Two bedrooms upstairs for future kids, one down, as well as a home office. The basement contained a pool table and wine cellar. The house wasn’t huge, but it had breathing space.

Most importantly, it blended seamlessly into the landscape, the most important thing to a Holland. The outside of the house was planked with cedar, with huge windows that overlooked the vineyard and Crooked Lake. On three sides, it was surrounded by a forest of maples, oaks and pine, so it was almost camouflaged. Faith had drawn him up a landscaping plan for a Christmas present, and he’d followed it.

The result was that Jack’s house looked as if it had been there forever. It was modern yet traditional, too, and everyone who saw it was rather dazzled.

Except his wife. Oh, she’d cooed over it when she’d first seen it, but now that she’d lived there for a month, it was suddenly in sore need of “Southern charm.” Which would’ve been fine if it had been the type of charm Jack had seen at her own childhood home, carefully chosen antiques and family photos, clean lines and high-end furnishings.

But no.

Throw pillows seemed to be her trademark. The couch was covered in them; it looked nice, but it was impossible to sit without moving at least three. Their bed had the two pillows they used for their heads, four additional pillows covered in something called shams and a dozen more pillows in various sizes and colors. There was a painstaking order to these pillows, one Jack could never quite figure out. Lazarus liked to hide in the sea of shapes and then leap out, scattering them, which irritated Hadley to no end.

She rearranged the furniture. Ordered a new couch, one that cost eight thousand dollars, without asking his opinion. Bought a rather hideous fan shaped like a peacock for the fireplace, which Jack had stacked with white birch logs until it got colder. She bought velvet curtains that blocked out the light. Little signs appeared everywhere, ordering him to “Live Fully, Love Deeply, Laugh Often” and reminding him that “We Are So Blessed!” In the kitchen, there now hung a chalkboard in the shape of a dancing reindeer that said “Only __ Days Till Christmas!” The sign that bothered him the most hung in the foyer—“Life isn’t about waiting for the storms to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” He always felt as though he should apologize for that one. After all, his people were Dutch Yankee Lutheran farmers. There would be no dancing in the rain.

But it was Hadley’s house, too, now, so he moved aside the pillows and hoped her efforts would make her happy.

Then she asked if she could do some work for Blue Heron. When Jack said he’d ask Honor, Hadley sulked and said Honor was bossy and mean. And yeah, Honor was bossy, but not in a rude way. Just in the way that she had to be, because she was indeed the boss of the business end, and a damn good one. She certainly wasn’t mean. She was maybe misunderstood, but when Jack tried to explain that, Hadley claimed he was taking his sister’s side.

Honor said she’d love to have some help—proof that she wasn’t at all mean. But by the end of Hadley’s first day, Honor asked Jack to come by her office. She closed the door after him.

“Hadley’s not going to work out,” she said, getting straight to it.

“Shit,” he said. “You sure? It’s only been a day.”

“I thought she could start out by picking merchandise for the gift shop, maybe rearranging some of the displays out there.”

“That’d be great. She loves buying stuff. And rearranging.” Just last night he’d caught his shin on the coffee table, which Hadley had moved for the fourth time.

“Well, she had other ideas.” His sister fiddled with a pen.

“Like what?”

“She wanted to redo our logo and every label on every bottle we sell. Redesign the tasting room by getting rid of the bar and putting in Italian marble and tile flooring.”

Italian marble? The tasting room (which had been voted one of the ten most beautiful tasting rooms in America by Wine Spectator) featured a long, curving bar made by Samuel Hastings, using wood from a tree that had fallen in a winter storm ten years back. Blue slate floors. Two stone fireplaces, post and beam construction, beautiful old Oriental rugs.

“She also thinks we should sheetrock the Cask Room, because the stone walls are—” Honor made quote marks with her fingers “‘—downright spine-chilling.’”

And the Cask Room was one of the best parts of the vineyard, an old stone cellar where the wine was aged in wooden barrels. Tourists loved it.

“I’d told her we were all set on those things, and she...” Honor paused. “Well, I think her feelings were hurt. You might want to bring her flowers.”

Flowers didn’t help. Hadley was seething, stating over and over that Honor hated her and didn’t believe in her.

“Honey,” he said, “you have to understand that we all love Blue Heron. We don’t want it to change. New ideas are great, but—”

“But you don’t want new ideas!”

“Not an overhaul of everything, no. The tasting room is only a few years old.”

“Well, it’s ugly.”

“Not according to our visitors,” he said, his voice a little tight. He paused. “Honor knows what she’s doing, babe. Maybe telling her to change everything on your first day wasn’t the best idea.”

“Fine. Take her side. You always do.”

Her feelings of being persecuted baffled him. After all, his father called her sweetheart and always kissed her cheek and hugged her, Goggy beamed when Hadley made Jack show up at church each week, Pops told her she was the prettiest thing Manningsport had ever seen. Faith sent her emails and girlie gifts from San Francisco. Mrs. Johnson gave her the recipe for lemon pound cake, Jack’s favorite dessert, which al-Qaeda wouldn’t have been able to pry out of her. Pru invited them over and admired how good Hadley smelled, and Honor...well, okay, Honor didn’t like her. But she never said anything that could even remotely be construed as impolite, not to Hadley, not to Jack.

Granted, the first year of marriage was the hardest, everyone said. And it wasn’t all bad, not at all. There were moments when Jack couldn’t believe he had a wife who literally skipped into his arms when he came home (sometimes) and who constantly told him how smart and handsome and wonderful he was. Who put her head on his shoulder and told him that all her dreams had come true the day she met him.