Chapter 37
Thirty-seven
Alaric
My phone rings just as I’m settling in with my tea at my desk. Josie’s calling early enough on a Saturday that I’m worried before I even answer.
“Hey,” I say in greeting. “Is everything okay?”
Josie doesn’t waste time. “She’s still in bed this morning.”
I know exactly who she means. A knot forms in my stomach. “Is she pouting?”
Josie sighs. “I don’t think this is a stunt. She sounds tired, not evasive, just worn down. Of course, I didn’t know she was going to pretend to pass out at the police questioning.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I rode with Evie to the hospital yesterday in the ambulance, furious the whole time. I told her she couldn’t keep pulling escape hatches every time consequences got close. She didn’t fight me. Didn’t argue. She just absorbed it.
And then she slipped out of the hospital as soon as the wheels on the gurney hit the ground. Graham opened the car door, she got in, and that was that. Left me standing in the ambulance bay. I haven’t spoken to her since.
I sit back. “So what’s happening now?”
“Well,” Josie says, “she’s…asking for you.”
That part throws me. Evie rarely asks for anything unless it strategically benefits her. “She said that?”
“Yes. Directly.” Josie hesitates. “I wouldn’t call if it wasn’t important.”
I look over my desk—half-finished notes, unread emails, the week ahead pressing at the edges of my mind. I’m behind. I don’t have time for this. I also know I’m going.
“Okay,” I tell her. “I’ll come by.”
Josie exhales. “Thank you. I’ll let her know.”
I gather my things and swear to myself that I’ll get back to my work as soon as I can. And then I go out to my SUV.
I leave the parking garage a few minutes later and travel toward the bridge. The lake is calm beneath a thin layer of haze, the surface silvered and still. I follow the curve of the shoreline and try to convince myself this is just Evie being Evie—nothing to be too worried about.
But why do I keep showing up when every interaction ends the same way? She pushes. I bend. She pulls. I follow. A rhythm I learned too young and haven’t managed to unlearn. I don’t know if I’m going out of concern or obligation. I just know I’m tired of pretending this doesn’t get to me.
The road curves past the marina. I grip the wheel a little tighter.
Josie meets me at the front door before I can knock. She looks like she hasn’t slept, arms folded tight across her ribs.
“Thanks for coming,” she says.
I nod and step inside. I’m instantly back to my childhood. The Dempsey house has always been curated within an inch of its life—no fingerprints, no clutter, nothing out of place. Even now, with everything unraveling around Evie, the home still presents as immaculate.
I spent so many afternoons here before my father was pushed out.
Running through the hallways. Sneaking cookies.
Sitting at the edge of adult conversations I didn’t understand.
And then one day, it stopped. The doors that had always been open clicked shut, and no one said my father’s name again unless it was to cast him as the villain.
Then the focus became her other son, my uncle Franklin—Dylan, Kaitlyn, Logan, and Matthew’s father. He was the center of her attention for over a year until she disinherited him.
She then moved to her daughter, Eleanor, and that lasted only about two weeks before she was removed from the family and Evie’s focus moved to me.
With her blessing, I went away to UBC in Vancouver to study viticulture and oenology.
But then I took an elective class in psychology my first semester and changed my major.
I realized how fucked up my family was, and I knew the wine business wasn’t for me.
I didn’t tell her for a while, and by the time I did, Sera and Josie were working for her, so she took it a little better than she would have otherwise.
But she was still mad. She’s been trying to get me back into the fold ever since.
I follow Josie down the hallway, footsteps soft on the runner. We pass the old portraits. Evie in her prime, sharp-eyed and regal. My father beside her in the early frames before he disappeared.
“Is she awake?” I ask.
“I think so,” Josie says. “She’s been quiet, but I told her you were coming.”
I nod, and we continue to the door at the end of the hall, the primary suite Evie has claimed as her throne room for as long as I can remember.
Josie gives a small, apologetic sigh and pushes the door open. Then she steps aside, letting me enter alone.
The room is dim, the curtains half-closed. I pause, steadying myself. This house holds many versions of me, and none of them knows what to do with the woman waiting on the other side of this silence.
I move toward the bed.
Evie is propped against a stack of pillows, covers smoothed to her waist, eyes closed as if she’s posing for a portrait of serenity. It’s unsettling. She’s never been serene a day in her life.
I pull up a chair and look at her. I can hear her breathing—steady, controlled, nothing like someone who can’t get out of bed.
She’s just choosing not to. Her hair is brushed, her lipstick faint but present.
Even her flannel robe is arranged as if a stylist had a hand in it.
A small tremor moves through her fingers as she adjusts the blanket.
This isn’t an illness. This is theater layered over time catching up with her.
“Sorry,” I say. “Wasn’t sure if you were awake.”
“I’m in bed, not in a coma.” Her eyes open. “You look disappointed.”
“I’m not disappointed.” I study her face. “Just trying to understand what’s going on. Josie said you haven’t gotten up.”
She presses her lips together, annoyed. “Josie shouldn’t have called you.”
“She said you asked for me,” I remind her.
Evie lifts one shoulder. “I said your name. That apparently counts as an invitation in this house.”
I hold her gaze. “Are you actually not feeling well?”
She sniffs, offended. “I am eighty-two years old. I’ve earned the right to stay in bed if I choose.”
Of course, she turns it into a power statement. Even under a comforter, she negotiates for the upper hand.
I lean forward, forearms on my knees. “You asked for me,” I repeat. “Why?”
She studies me, probably arranging her words. Finally, she says, “Because, sometimes, it’s useful to know who will show up.”
There it is. Vulnerability dressed as strategy.
“Fine,” I say softly. “I’m here. What do you need?”
Evie relaxes, as if my presence restores something in her. She closes her eyes, not in rest, but in triumph she thinks I can’t see.
“So,” she says, “tell me what my family is doing.”
There’s the first hook.
“Everyone’s managing,” I offer.
She huffs. “Non-answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
Her eyes flick open. “My children don’t know what they’re doing. And the grandchildren are worse. They think there’s a mystery that requires posturing.” Her gaze narrows. “What are they saying?”
I hold her stare. “I feel certain you already know.”
Evie smiles, though not warmly. “And at the hospital? What are you hearing about my little…incident?”
“Episode,” I say. “That’s what people are calling it.”
She accepts the terminology with a regal nod. “And?”
“People are curious, confused, trying to figure out why you collapsed in the middle of a police interview and walked out ten minutes later.”
She lifts her chin. “I needed an exit.”
“I know,” I say. “You told me.”
Her eyes soften—not remorse, just recognition. “You were angry with me.”
“I was honest with you.”
Evie studies me, as if I’m a problem she’s trying to solve. “You think I manipulate you.”
“I know you do,” I say evenly. “You manipulate everyone.”
Her fingers tighten around the blanket. “Yet here you are.”
“Because Josie called,” I tell her. “Not because you staged another issue. And not because you whispered my name when you knew she’d overhear.”
Her lips curve, tasting the truth. “You showed up. That matters more than why.”
I sit back. Such a simple sentence, carrying a lifetime of expectation—her belief that proximity equals loyalty, and loyalty equals usefulness.
“I worry about you, you know,” she says after a moment. “You don’t make it easy to care.”
There it is, the slide from strategy into guilt.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “You don’t need to worry about me.”
She closes her eyes again, but the expression isn’t peaceful. It’s calculating. She’s taking inventory. Measuring what landed.
For the first time, I’m not pulled in. I’m just watching her, seeing it from the outside. She’s not the myth, not the matriarch, not the architect. She’s just a woman who’s spent her life bending the world and doesn’t know how to stop.
Her brow tightens. “Something’s different.”
She’s right. But I’m not ready to say what changed.
Evie settles deeper into the pillows. She’s tracking me through lowered lashes, waiting for me to fall back into the rhythm, the one where she speaks and I absorb.
For most of my life, that was enough. Not today.
She lets a few seconds pass. “You’re quiet,” she says.
“I’m thinking.”
“That’s usually when you get yourself into trouble.”
I almost smile. It would be easy to fall into the old dance. “I’m not in trouble,” I assure her. “Not this time.”
She shifts, seeming irritated by my calm. “Then say what’s on your mind.”
She only wants the version of my truth she can use. Still, I draw a slow breath.
“I’ve spent a long time letting other people decide who I need to be,” I tell her. “You. Dad. Everyone after. I’ve spent years running from anything that looks like love because I didn’t trust myself to choose it. Or keep it.”
She blinks, seeming surprised I’m offering this without her coaxing.
“And?” she presses.
“And I’m done with that,” I say. “I’m done repeating patterns that never belonged to me.”
Evie’s expression tightens—the faintest recoil. “You think I made you this way,” she says.
“I think I let you shape more of me than I should have,” I answer. “That’s on me, not you.”
Her fingers twitch. A crack in the armor. “You don’t have to push me out to grow up.”
“I’m not pushing you out.” I hold her gaze. “I’m stepping away. That’s different. I told you years ago I didn’t want this.”
“I never changed my will. You’re still set to inherit the vineyard.”
“I don’t want it.”
“That’s why you’re listed.”
“It should be Sera and Josie.”
Something crosses her face, her breath catching. For a heartbeat, she looks not offended but startled. Does she think my education and career are just a ruse to show my independence before I give in and take over the vineyard? She’s delusional.
We sit in suspended quiet. Even the air feels paused. Then Evie looks away first. Perhaps she’s recalibrating, rewriting her understanding of me.
“You’ve always been difficult,” she mutters, but without sting. Something else flickers—maybe respect, maybe fear, maybe both.
I rise from the chair. Not dramatic. Not angry. Just choosing to stand. “I’ll check on you tonight,” I tell her. “Get some rest.”
She doesn’t argue. She just watches me.
I leave the room with a strange clarity. I’m not walking away, still carrying her as a burden. I’m simply walking away.