She glances at me, something almost mischievous in her expression. "Wouldn'tyoulike to know."
Then she turns back to the road, a small smile playing at her lips. I settle back in my seat, thinking I might be enjoying this car ride a bit too much. We drive in silence for the next several miles, the road climbing now as we head into the hills, and the vineyards gradually give way to oak forests and open meadows with cattle grazing on distant slopes.
"Can I ask you something?" Isabelle says, breaking the comfortable quiet.
"Sure, I'm an open book. What do you want to know?"
"You have this amazing restaurant in Dark Water that everyone raves about?—"
"DarkRiver," I correct, laughing. "Dark Water sounds like a place where people get murdered in horror movies. Dark River is more like a Hallmark town."
She waves a hand without taking her eyes off the road. "Right, Dark River. Anyway, I looked up your restaurant. It gets insane praise. And you built it from nothing with your brother, which I'mmorethan a bit envious of, by the way." She shakes her head. "Yet you want to leave it? Just walk away? That makes no sense to me."
I consider how to answer that, watching the road unspool ahead of us. "Well, I love the restaurant, and I'm proud of what Theo and I built. But for years I've been thinking about opening a place in the city. I had enough saved to make it work, but I never wanted to leave Theo holding the bag when things were still so unpredictable."
She glances over. "And now things aren't so unpredictable?"
"The restaurant isn't, at least. Theo's solid, we have amazing staff, the place basically runs itself at this point." I watch the hills roll past. "And then your father walked in with an offer that's bigger than anything I could have done on my own." I shrug. "I don't know. Maybe I just have an embarrassing need for external validation."
She snorts. "I know that feeling intimately. We have that in common."
"See? I knew we were soulmates."
"Don't push it." But the corner of her mouth is curving up. "So bigger opportunity and ego. That's the only reason? Plus just a new location?"
"Also I was ready for something different," I admit. "I've been doing the same thing for ten years in the same small town where I grew up, surrounded by the same people I've known mywhole life. And don't get me wrong, there's a version of that story where I'm perfectly happy forever. But there's also a version where I wake up at fifty years old and realize I never pushed myself."
She's quiet for a moment, her eyes on the road, fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against the steering wheel.
"What about you?" I ask, turning the question around. "Have you ever thought about opening your own place someday?"
"No." She says it without hesitation. "My father’s New York City flagship is the plan and it always has been. Why, what made you ask?"
"No reason, really." I look back out the window. "You just seem ambitious, and you're clearly brilliant at this, so I wondered if that was in the cards eventually."
She doesn’t reply to that, and after a minute I crack the window a little wider and the air coming through shifts, cooler now, carrying the faintest note of salt. We must be getting closer to the coast than I realized.
The road crests one more hill and she turns down a gravel drive flanked by white wooden fencing, the kind of fencing that says this land has been worked for a long time. A wooden sign at the mouth of the drive reads MORRISON JOHNSON FAMILY RANCH in faded black paint, the letters chipped where the sun has gotten at them. Sheep are grazing in the distance on a green hillside, white dots scattered against the grass like spilled sugar.
"You've got this," I say.
"We'll see," she says, and pulls up in front of the house.
Morrison's house is a low-slung farmhouse with a wraparound porch and a dog asleep under the front steps, one ear flopped over her eyes against the light. A big red barn sits off to theright, bigger than the house, and the whole operation has that quiet weathered look of a place that's been here for a hundred years and will be here for a hundred more. Two pickup trucks and a quad are parked in the yard, paint faded on the hoods, and a pair of rubber boots sit on the porch caked with dried mud up to the shins.
The dog lifts her head as we get out of the SUV, looks at us for exactly three seconds, decides we're not interesting, and goes back to sleep.
"Hello?" Isabelle calls out, walking up toward the porch with the kind of purposeful stride she uses in a kitchen. "Mr. Johnson?"
"Round back," a voice calls from somewhere past the barn.
Isabelle glances at me and I gesture for her to lead, which she does, striding around the corner of the house. I follow a step behind, taking in the place as we walk. Morrison is behind the house, leaning against a split rail fence watching three border collies work a small flock of sheep in the paddock.
He's late sixties with a weathered face, faded Wranglers, and a canvas work jacket that has seen a lot of weather and probably a few lambing seasons. He doesn't turn when we come around the corner.
"Afternoon," he says, eyes still on the dogs.
"Mr. Johnson," Isabelle says, stopping about six feet back. "Morrison. I'm Isabelle Beaumont. This is my colleague, Alex Midnight."