Chapter 28
CHAPTER 28
A rcher
Ella stretches her full length like a cat taking in the sun’s rays, only she’s so petite that there’s a full foot of space at the end of my couch. So I slide in beside her, tugging her feet to bring her closer, and drape her legs over my lap.
She settles in with a carefree hum, doing nothing to dispel the image of a contented feline. For a moment, I allow myself to sit with the image of the two of us here, as though it’s real. Just a normal couple in love on the couch—not a woman who was engaged to someone else mere weeks ago and a man who loves her more than he should. Do they make Hallmark cards for that version of a couple?
“Do you have to drive back down to the Bay Area?” I ask, already knowing the answer. Ella told me she has an early meeting in San Francisco, so I know she’ll need to sleep at home.
“Nope.”
I can’t have heard her correctly. “Wait, what? ”
“I can stay.” She pushes herself up onto her elbows so she can look at me. Sparkles dance in her eyes.
“You were planning this all along?” I ask, thinking back on how hard she made me work to figure out when I could see her again. She nods, her smile edging up the corner of her mouth, hair glowing in a messy halo around her with the afternoon sun that streams through the window.
“But I have conditions.” She sits up, her face serious now.
“What are those?”
“I want to talk.”
I nod. “Is this one of those ‘we need to talk’ discussions or just a regular conversation?” I can’t help feeling like each time I see Ella could be the last. One of these days, she’s going to get over her wine-boy fantasy and find a man who will father the children she wants to adopt.
“It’s a regular conversation, but I have questions for you.”
“Questions?”
“Yes. Those are the things people ask when they’re unclear on something and want more information.”
“I’m familiar.”
“Good. All you need to do is answer. I ask, you answer. Easy. Like Ping-Pong.” She mimes the motion of a Ping-Pong paddle returning a shot.
I lift her legs and scoot out from under them in order to get up. Making my way to the kitchen, I call back to her, “In that case, I’m having a beer. D’you want one?”
“Sure, if you have pretzels or chips to go with it.” As usual, she surprises me with her response. I rummage through my pantry and return a minute later with two beers, an opener, and a bag of Baked Lays. I pop the caps off the beer bottles, and she rips open the bag of chips.
Sitting up on the couch now, she swivels to face me when I drop down next to her. “This looks serious,” I observe, taking a sip of my beer. The bitter ale feels good on my throat, and I realize that I’m uneasy because I have no idea what she might ask me.
“Your dad,” she says, leveling me with a stare. “Tell me about him.”
I shrug and give my usual description. “Hard worker, driven to make this place into something.” I gesture toward the vineyards out the window. “Clearly he succeeded.”
Taking another sip, I wait for Ella to agree. Then I plan to move on. When I hear nothing, I look at her and find her resting her chin on a fist, waiting me out. “Okay, that’s a nice story. Put that on the back of your Buttercup Hill brochure if it’s not there already. How about the rest?”
It’s too nice of a day to be inside doing this. I glance around my living room, searching for some shiny object I can use to distract her from asking questions about my dad. Instead, I lean forward and capture her lips with mine. She acquiesces instantly as I cup her cheek and my hand glides into her hair. There was no reason to look far and wide for a distraction.
Except that a moment later, she pushes me away with both hands against my chest. “Nice try, big guy. What else can you tell me about your dad?”
“You mean the dementia?”
She shakes her head. “No. Before that. What was he like?”
“Why do you want to know this so badly? Are you secretly doing research for a biopic about a winemaker?”
“No, but interesting idea.” She folds her legs beneath her and shakes out her hair, sending the ribbons of curls skating over her shoulders.
I hem and haw and think about ways to avoid this conversation until it finally dawns on me that I want her to know me better. Which means I need to share this part of myself I’d rather keep hidden.
“My dad was tough. Hardworking, unforgiving of weakness, a real ballbuster…but I loved him. Still do. ”
“Does your feeling about not wanting to be a father have anything to do with him?”
I open my mouth to answer but no words come out. “No one’s ever asked me that.”
“I’m asking.”
Running a hand through my hair, I try to harken back to the first time I concluded that I shouldn’t have kids. It was some time around when I came back to Napa to take over for him. “I guess, partly. I just saw how limited he was as a parent when he was running the business. I never wanted to do that to a kid, never wanted to be a half-assed dad. And I have no choice about running the business, so…” I put up my hands. Discussion over, as far as I’m concerned.
“So that’s it? You just sign up to be a working stooge and give up on your dream of having a family?”
“It’s not like that, exactly. I guess I…never really had a dream of having a family, so it’s not really giving anything up. My dad always saw me as a younger version of him, but drawing the line here is a way I can be better.”
I wait for her reaction, assuming she’ll try to argue me out of my stance. Instead, she nods and looks away.
“You’re great with Fiona. I’m sure you’d be an awesome dad, but I understand how an idea can take hold and grow roots. Then, no matter what, no one can talk you out of it.” She nods sadly. “Just like no one could talk me out of wanting to be a mom.”
I can’t tell if there’s more she isn’t saying, so I wait, but she curls up against me again, so I decide that maybe she’s satisfied with my response. I thought it would be hard. I thought sharing my feelings about my dad would make me feel exposed.
With her, it feels like an unburdening. And when I watch her face, soberly taking in every detail, reaching for my hand when I have trouble articulating a feeling, nodding in understanding, not judgement…it feels like love .
So I keep going.
“I didn’t want to be him. Desperately wanted to go my own way, prove I could do it differently. Be less of an asshole in the process, have a family I’d actually get to spend time with, find a world that wanted me for me, not just because of a legacy built by someone else.”
“What kind of start-up?”
I shake my head. “It’s not a great idea. I don’t know what I was thinking back then. Now it sounds dumb, even to me.”
Her hand tucks under my chin and she swivels my face to look at her. “Hey. Don’t assume I’m going to reject your idea before I’ve even heard it. Try me.”
Our faces are inches apart and I could close the distance and kiss her. That would end the discussion and I’d be spared seeing the look of disappointment on her face when she realizes I’m not as smart and innovative as I thought I was when I packed up and moved to LA. I like the idea that she thinks I’m a somewhat savvy winemaker and would really prefer to leave it at that.
“Come on, tell me,” she urges quietly. Her accepting, patient eyes make me want to make her happy.
“Fine. It’s basically a wine encyclopedia in an app. Kind of like the ones where you scan a leaf or a flower and the app tells you what kind of plant it is and where it grows, this would give you all the tasting notes for a bottle of wine based on scanning the label.”
I wait for signs of boredom or disinterest, but she nods. “Go on.”
“The app would tell you the best window to drink whatever bottle of wine you scan, and there are ecommerce opportunities with food pairings, so you could order grazing boards or full menus to go with specific wines and have it all delivered. There’s more to it—other co-branding opportunities and revenue streams, but those are the basics.”
Ella’s expression goes blank. She shakes her head, and I worry that I’ve lost her in the details or maybe she realizes it really isn’t a very good idea.
“Holy shit,” she says finally. “I want that app.”
“You do?”
“Um, yeah. It’s a great idea. You didn’t find investors for that? I’m surprised.”
Pulling in a long deep breath, I debate whether to tell her the one bit of information I’ve withheld from everyone in my life, especially my siblings. Ella reaches over and picks up my hand. The warmth of her fingers intertwining with mine dissipates whatever resistance I have. If anyone is going to know my deepest secrets, I want it to be her.
“I did have one offer. A good one,” I admit.
“That’s amazing.”
“But I couldn’t take it.” It hurts to say the words out loud. I explain how discouraged I’d been after every investor had reconsidered, how disheartened I’d felt that night at the party in the Hollywood Hills. I neglect to mention her part in it—how I’d almost folded my cards after she blew me off, how she somehow came to symbolize everything I’d never achieve in LA. But I don’t want to pollute what feels so good now with detritus from the past.
The truth is that after she’d blown me off, I’d had a firm talk with myself and considered leaving LA, but I couldn’t do it. Somehow the rejection by her and all the investors fueled me to seek out one more meeting with a venture capitalist who was even more flush with cash than anyone else I’d met with. It felt like a hail Mary, the kind you throw when you have nothing left to lose. She’d been the final push that got me there, and the next day, I reached out to a contact of a friend of a friend and got the meeting.
“My dad had a stroke. This was before the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, but the end result was the same. I had no business pursuing some dream in LA when my dad needed me here to run the business for him. I had to come home, and the investor insisted that I be in LA to build the company with him or there was no deal.”
I’d been looking at my lap while the words rushed out, trying to convey the information without having to think too long and hard about it. It was painful then and it’s just as painful now, only now the situation with my dad is so much worse.
I feel Ella’s hand softly graze my cheek and look up to find her looking as crushed by my story as I feel. Her eyes search my face as if trying to find evidence that there’s more to the story, a happy ending that I’m holding out on her. I shake my head.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Thank you.” I can barely get the words out, suddenly choked up by how much she cares. It’s such a relief to have the truth out in the world finally, even if she’s the only one who knows it. Especially because she’s the only one who knows it.
“So that’s it? You just had to walk away?”
“Yeah. It’s been a fire drill twenty-four-seven since I’ve been back. Keeps getting worse every day, somehow, so there’s no time to work on it.”
“There has to be a way. It’s too good of an idea to let it go to waste.”
I lean toward her and kiss her temple. She’s so good and sweet, so optimistic. It’s hard to be the one to tell her there’s no Santa Claus, but I need to make her understand.
“I have a responsibility to my family. I needed to take over for my dad, so here I am. I’m him.”
“You’re not him. You’re doing his job, but you’re a completely different person.”
She hasn’t even met him, but she says it with such certainty that I want to believe her. I want her to be right. I don’t want to be my dad.
But it may already be too late to prevent it.