Blood and Wine - Margot Scott

Chapter One

Mariah

I meet my father for the first time at the Shenandoah Valley Airport. I don’t recognize him, which isn’t surprising given that the only photo I’ve seen of him is a somewhat blurry polaroid taken almost twenty years ago.

“Mariah,” he says, holding his hand out for me to shake. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

“Yeah, you, too...” I shake his hand and shift my denim backpack onto my opposite shoulder.

I have no idea what to call this man. Dad isn’t an option, so I guess that leaves me with...Ed? Edward? Mr. Radcliff?

“Call me Edward,” he says, for which I’m grateful.

I drag my suitcase off the conveyor belt and follow him into the bright mid-day sun. He unlocks his car—a sleek red Ferrari that probably costs more than the house I grew up in. I’m convinced my bulky bag won’t fit in the sportscar’s trunk, but he tilts and rotates my suitcase until it slides in easily, like a magic trick.

Ducking into the car’s posh interior, I immediately feel underdressed in my ripped jeans, Nirvana tee shirt, and my grandpa’s old red-checkered flannel. With only a single row of seats, I’m forced to sit beside Edward instead of in my preferred spot behind the driver where I can lip sync to my music in peace. I’ll have to resort to more subtle measures to sidestep the impending awkwardness.

I fish around in my backpack for my CD player.

“Feel free to take a nap,” Edward says. “You must be tired from traveling.”

I nod because I am tired, but not from traveling. The flight from Baltimore wasn’t long at all. However, the past year has been a non-stop nightmare that I can’t seem to wake up from.

My mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer barely a month into my senior year of high school. I begged her to let me take time off from school to help take care of her. Having skipped ninth grade, I was already way ahead of schedule, but my mom wouldn’t have it. So, instead of slowing down, I sped up. Worked myself to the bone to graduate in one semester instead of two, with honors.

Not being a full-time student gave me the flexibility to become her primary caretaker when things worsened. I took a part-time job working at a music store, but outside those few hours, my entire life revolved around making sure she ate enough calories and drank enough water when swallowing all those horse pills.

A couple of weeks before she died, she came into my room and handed me a first-class plane ticket totally out of the blue.

“Why am I going to Virginia?” I asked her.

“You’re going to see your father after I’m gone.”

There was no way I’d heard her correctly. My absent father had never so much as sent me a birthday card.

I checked the date of the flight, and my blood ran cold as I realized what the date implied. She knew when she was going to die, in the way she knew about everything else before it happened.

My mother was clairvoyant. It was one of her gifts, like her ability to communicate with ghosts. She always said the latter was more of a curse than a talent. Much like a line in a song that gets stuck in your head, dead people can be super annoying.

“Does my father want me to visit? I mean, he’s never even tried to meet me.”

“I wrote him a letter explaining the situation,” she said. “The ticket was his response.”

“Okay, but...shouldn’t I get a say in this?”

She laughed cheerlessly, adjusting the purple scarf around her head.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” she said, in the way that meant, I’ve already seen it happen, so there’s no point in us fighting about it. “Think of it as your chance to visit the house where I grew up.”

Mom always talked about the house she grew up in like it was the most enchanted place on earth. Her great-grandfather had purchased the hundred-acre estate back in the twenties, and it’d stayed in the family until the late seventies, when my grandpa sold it to Edward Radcliff—my father.

I’ve wanted to visit my family’s old estate since I was a little girl. I just always figured Mom and I would go see it together.

“Please put the ticket somewhere safe,” she said. “I’m going to take a bath.”

“Give me a minute. I’ll come help you.”

“Don’t bother, sweetheart.” She waved her hand. “I’ve seen my final moments, and they don’t involve cracking my head open in the shower.