Chapter 28
Twenty-eight
Alaric
The next morning, my head is still full of Liz, even though I promised myself I would lock it away before my first appointment. I’m usually good at compartmentalizing, but right now, every thought feels sharp. Every breath catches on the memory of walking out.
Alicia, my patient, sits across from me with her hands clasped in her lap, her shoulders rounded like she’s trying to make herself smaller.
“It’s just so quiet now,” she says. “The girls were always here. The noise. The mess. There was life in the house. And now, it’s just me and James, and he doesn’t need me the way they did. ”
I nod and stay with her, even as my thoughts keep drifting toward my phone in the other room and Liz’s silence. “It makes sense,” I tell her gently. “Everything changed at once. It’s normal to feel unsteady.”
She exhales. “I don’t know who I am without being their mom.”
A familiar vibration rumbles through the wall behind me.
I left my office door cracked just enough that I can hear it.
My phone on the desk in the next room buzzes again.
And again. The steady thump against the wood tells me it’s not one message.
It’s a stream. Family. Only they text like that.
The insistent sound punches at the same raw place Liz scraped open.
I force my attention back to my office. “You’ve spent twenty years caring for other people,” I remind her. “It’s natural to lose track of what you need. What if this is a chance to rediscover things you set aside?”
She blinks at me, eyes going glassy. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“That’s okay,” I assure her. “You don’t have to know today. Try asking yourself a different question. Not what you should be doing, but what you want. What interests you? What makes you curious or excited? Even small things count.”
Another buzz shakes the silence. It’s insistent enough that even Alicia glances toward the door.
“Sorry,” I say, offering an apologetic smile. “It’s been one of those mornings.” I keep my expression easy and neutral, even though my stomach keeps dropping.
Alicia draws a steadier breath. “I used to paint,” she says. “Before the girls were born. I wasn’t very good, but I loved it.”
I smile. “That sounds like a start.”
She smiles too, and the panic she walked in with loosens its hold. Something like possibility takes its place.
By the time we wrap up, she’s sitting taller and her breathing is calmer. These are the moments that usually settle me, remind me that my work matters.
Today, it barely reaches me. My own anxiety remains lodged behind every breath.
When she leaves, I close the door behind her and force myself to take a deep breath before I walk into the adjoining office and pick up my phone.
In my family group chat, there are twelve missed messages and six missed calls. I look at the last one.
Sera: Her press conference is on the CTV website.
A headline preview sits in one of the texts like a fist to the gut.
Evelyn Dempsey Subpoenaed
My thumb barely brushes the screen before the group chat opens in a burst of frantic messages.
Sera: Holy hell, turn on CTV right now.
Josie: Is she serious? Is this real?
Addie: I’m shaking.
Ginny: This is going to make Sunday night dinner interesting. Shit. It almost makes me want to be there. But not enough to actually go.
My stomach tightens as I tap the link.
The video opens on a press conference outside City Hall. A podium with Black Bear Vineyard’s crest bolted to the front. And then Evelyn Dempsey steps into frame.
Her hair is perfect, her expression carved from stone. She looks like she’s at a coronation instead of responding to a subpoena. The crowd behind her shifts, but she stands completely still. I know that posture. It’s the one she uses when she’s about to lie.
“Good afternoon,” she says, voice like a blade. “I want to address the baseless accusations circulating today.”
I sink into my chair with my pulse thudding in my throat.
“I have been informed that Nicole McQuarrie,” she continues, stepping closer to the microphone, “a known Paradise cousin and a Crown prosecutor, has orchestrated a smear campaign against me and my family.”
My jaw tightens.
Sera: She is naming her on camera.
Evelyn leans into the podium like she’s daring someone to challenge her. “There is absolutely no merit to the allegations brought against me. None. This is yet another attempt by the Paradise family to weaponize the government to undermine our business and reputation,” she says.
I rub a hand across my forehead. “Oh God,” I breathe.
“They poisoned our water supply,” she says with cold certainty. “They killed our prize-winning grapes. And now, they’re trying to hide behind this subpoena, hoping to paint us as criminals instead of victims.”
My breath stops. For a few seconds, I can’t move. My clinical brain notes the detached delivery, the lack of micro expressions, the textbook narcissistic reframing. She believes her story the moment she says it.
Yes, the water contamination happened, and it destroyed a block of vines.
But she leaves out the part where the Paradise family came forward immediately.
They told her themselves. They compensated her fully.
They believed someone was trying to start a war between us, and they were ready to make sure it didn’t happen.
But now, she’s lighting the match herself.
“Jesus, Evie,” I whisper.
She keeps talking and spinning the story into a polished attack, calling Nicole a political opportunist and painting herself as a woman under siege. It’s high-level con that bulldozes truth into the ground and plants flags on the wreckage.
When the video ends, my phone lights up again.
Sera: Evie just called. This isn’t a request but a demand from her, not me. Be at dinner tonight. Mandatory. Her words.
Josie: Except Ginny.
Addie: I’m not going. She’s already disinherited me multiple times. Ginny, if you want to meet, let me know.
Ginny: It’s a gift that I married a Paradise. Addie, come over here for dinner, and we can gossip and be rowdy while they’re all being verbally pummeled.
Josie: Can I come? I don’t think she’ll miss me.
Sera: Oh yes, she will. Alaric, I know she wants you there, but you don’t have to come. However, Josie and I could really use your support tonight.
My thumb hovers over the keyboard. My mind races. The woman I saw on screen wasn’t just deflecting. She was rewriting history with a steady hand and believing it.
Alaric: I’ll be there after my last patient and rounds.
Sera sends a string of kiss emojis.
I lock my phone and sit for a moment. The echo of Evelyn’s voice still hangs in the air. I’ve always known she was capable of distorting and pushing and intimidating. But this is something else. Something dangerous. I don’t know that she can come back from this.
I turn my phone face down on the desk, like that alone can shut out everything Evelyn just unleashed. It doesn’t. The room still feels too tight. I take a long breath, the way I teach patients to do when their anxiety spikes. It barely makes a difference.
Liz flashes through my mind again. Her face when I walked out. Her cutting words. The universe feels tilted.
I still have two appointments before rounds. I still have people who need me to be the version of myself who isn’t gutted by Liz and horrified by my grandmother going nuclear on live TV. I straighten my shoulders and go to the door just as my next patient arrives.
It’s a teenager, quiet and withdrawn, with eyes that dart everywhere.
He’s struggling with panic attacks at school, and today, he’s barely holding it together.
I coax him into breathing with me and help him unravel the thought spiral he’s trapped in.
For a few minutes, I manage to push Evelyn aside.
This kid needs calm. So I build calm with slow questions and quiet space and the reassurance that he’s not broken or alone or failing.
But when he leaves, the calm goes with him.
My next appointment is a couple dealing with grief after losing a parent.
They sit close together with their hands knotted tight.
They speak about guilt and fear and the ache that won’t let go.
Normally, this work grounds me, bringing me back to something human and true.
Today, I just feel numb, like I’m saying the words but not actually making a connection.
By the time we finish the session, the sky outside my office window has softened into late afternoon.
I check the time, grab my white coat, and head to the hospital for rounds.
There, the halls are loud with shift change and the beeping rhythm of monitors and nurses trading updates.
At least, things make sense. People get hurt.
They heal. They fight to survive instead of turning on each other.
Even here, my mind keeps sliding back to that podium and the cold gleam in Evelyn’s eyes, the glint I recognize from every textbook case study on authoritarian leadership.
I move through each room and check vitals and reassure families and speak with nurses. I do my job. I do it well. But there’s a tension I can’t shake.
When rounds end, the sky has turned violet. The air smells like pine and smoke from a fireplace. A normal evening. A quiet one.
But I know mine won’t be.
I pull out my keys and look back at the hospital lights. Dinner with Evie. Mandatory. She’s already drawn her battle lines. And I’m walking into the middle of it.
A few minutes later, I pull into the driveway at Black Bear Vineyard, and the whole property glows in harsh artificial light. Floodlights blaze along the main house brighter than I’ve ever seen them, like Evie is warding off an attack she thinks is coming. Or welcoming one.