Love You Always (Buttercup Hill #5)

Chapter 37

CHAPTER 37

A rcher

When we get to the house, the nurse is there waiting for us. She hands me a letter with my name on the envelope in my dad’s messy scrawl. “His instructions were to give you this if he reached a point where he couldn’t hand it off himself. I’m betting he still has many days ahead, but I’m not psychic, so here it is.”

“Thank you, Betsy.” I take the letter and turn it over in my hands before shoving it in my pocket.

Betsy starts up the stairs. “The doctor is still examining him. He may want to brief you before you all go in to see him.” She gestures to the second floor, where I hear the hushed voices of Dash and Jax talking with PJ.

I start to follow Betsy, but Trix lays a hand on my arm and gestures with her head toward my pocket. “You don’t want to see what it says?”

“I dunno. Do I?” I can only imagine what kinds of “take care of the family” pressure my dad wants to impart .

She shrugs. “Open it anyway.”

I’m too worn out to argue, so I pull out the letter and read it aloud.

Archer,

By now, you’re probably pretty pissed at me, both for leaving you to manage the winery I built and for not giving you an explanation for my shenanigans. And maybe you’re also a little mad at me for dying, if I did that, or getting sick enough for this letter to be sent. Maybe it’s because you miss me, but I don’t want to presume too much. I know I was not a very good father.

“He always cuts right to the chase.” My voice comes out like a croak, and despite the situation, a hollow chuckle escapes me at my dad’s pithy recap.

“So, are you?” she asks.

“What?”

“Pissed at him?”

I start to nod because yes, of course, I’m angry. But my response comes from a different part of my brain. “No.”

She nods and leans her head against my shoulder. “Good. There’s nothing to be gained by it now.”

“Maybe he knew he had limitations, even if he never admitted to them.”

We keep reading.

Believe it or not, everything I did was with my kids in mind. I felt I owed something to Graham after the way I left his mother and denied him a family, even though you were all living right nearby. Maybe you won’t see it that way, but I hope you’ll come to realize that family is family, even the ones you stumble into because your dad has ransacked your company to buy him land next door. He’s a good man in a world where we need good men. I hope you’ll all find solace in each other.

I close my eyes. “It’s unbelievable but so typical of him, somehow,” I say. I can’t even get mad because there’s something sweet about the way he thought things through. If completely misguided and nuts.

As to the fire, I hope everything worked out the way I planned. Our insurance policy was meant to reimburse you for the damages and give you a choice. Rebuild or take the money and go live the life you want. No strings attached. When a person builds a family business, there’s always the hope that a son or daughter will find the same passion that went into growing it in the first place. My hope is that you’ll want to keep Buttercup Hill alive for another generation. But I’m aware it was my dream, not yours. So now you have a choice. Build it your way, or go the way your dreams take you. Either way, I hope you can do it without too many hard feelings about your dad and the way I made sense of the choices I had.

Be well,

Dad

A small slip of paper falls from the envelope and flutters to the ground. “What’s that?” Trix asks, bending to pick it up .

We open the folded square and look at it together. It’s a list of letters and numbers that I recognize as positions in the bottling racks. I’ve spent so many years there sweating over our various vintages, there’s no mistaking what it is. And in my dad’s slanted handwriting, a few final words, “Cheers, kids.”

“Guess my work around here is never really done. Probably some last bit of business he wants us to take care of in the cellar. Even now, he’s giving me a to-do list.”

Betsy beckons us upstairs where the doctor is waiting to talk to us. “He had a mini-stroke, nothing fatal, certainly, but not good for someone in his condition,” the doctor tells us. “He’s suffering partial paralysis on his left side. You’ll notice his facial muscles are a little limp on the left.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Trix asks.

The doctor shakes his head. “He just needs to rest. The paralysis could abate over time. You can go in and talk to him quietly. He might hear you. Good to have love around him.”

My siblings and I look at each other and Jax points to me. “You go.”

I nod, having no idea what to say to my dad, and fearful that he won’t even recognize me like last time. I take the stairs two at a time toward his room.

My dad doesn’t move or give any indication he knows I’m in the room. His meal sits untouched on a tray by his bed, which confirms that he hasn’t lifted his head off the pillow. Even in his most confused and agitated state, he always had an appetite.

Betsy wheels the ergonomic desk chair over to me and leaves the room wordlessly. I sit in the proffered chair and stare at my dad, who looks like he’s sleeping peacefully, which feels like a relief after so many interactions when he was angry. It also feels like a sad surrender for a man with his kind of strength and loud voice to be still and quiet. It’s not the real him.

I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do right now. Talking to a man who probably can’t hear me seems like something people do in movies—an unburdening, a forgiving.

The TV is turned to an animal documentary channel without the sound, and a cheetah on screen is walking through the African tundra hunting its next meal. I wonder if my dad expressed an interest in animals at one point or if his nurse just decided it was a safe thing to have on in the background. If it were me, seeing animals gnaw at the carcasses of other animals would not be relaxing, but my dad seems relaxed, so I don’t question it.

Walking over to the bed, I look for signs that my dad is uncomfortable with me coming closer to him. Sometimes he holds up a hand to keep me out of his personal space, but not today.

I take a seat on the end of his bed so I can talk with him out of earshot of Betsy, who knows enough to walk outside and give us some time alone. “Dad,” I say, watching him for a glimmer of recognition that I’m speaking to him. Even if he thinks I’m one of my brothers, it’s something. He doesn’t move. “I read your letter.”

Moving a bit closer, I think about what I want to say. I used to know when my dad was ignoring me. There were always subtle signs that he was annoyed—the furrow of his brow, the set of his jaw—the same things Ella says she sees in me.

Now, he doesn’t flinch.

“I don’t understand why you did what you did with the money and the fire,” I tell him. Even if he doesn’t acknowledge that he hears me, I tell myself he does. “But, Dad, we’ve got this. We have your back. We’ll keep this place going because it’s our legacy. You built it and that’s worth something to me. I know I haven’t always said so. I mean, I guess I’ve pretty much said the opposite, but that’s just me being grouchy. It’s not that I don’t love it here.” I take a long, deep breath. “I do love it here. And I love you. But I think this place isn’t for me. Maybe it never was. And as much as I want to keep your dream alive, I think my time— my life —would be better spent doing something else. I’ll be happier, and that’s gotta make for a better situation here. So…I guess that’s it.”

I close my eyes for a moment because I feel the hot sting of tears and I will not cry in front of my dad, even if he’s not aware I’m even here. He raised me to keep my shit together. The bed shifts, and my dad’s hand reaches out and covers mine. My eyes pop open, but he looks exactly the same as he has the whole time I’ve been talking. Serene. Expressionless. Void of personality. But his hand stays on mine—I didn’t imagine that.

Then the tears come. And I don’t care if he knows it.