Josie
Fifteen
The truck rattles over the road as I make my way along the lower edge of the vineyard.
The last of the daylight is slipping behind the western ridge, leaving the rows in long, blue shadows that stretch toward the orchard beyond the property line.
Frost warnings still sit in the back of my mind, even though the temperature has started to climb again.
Spring in the valley never holds to one mood for long.
I slow near the end of the block and shut off the engine, looking out over the vines. I remember Eloise’s hand in Alex’s this afternoon.
The image returns without effort, the smallness of her palm wrapped with his fingers as they walked between the rows. She talked the entire time, her voice bright with childlike certainty. Something about how the buds look before they open.
Alex hadn’t interrupted her once. He just listened. Even now it makes me smile, makes my breath come a little unsteadily.
I step out of the truck and close the door behind me, surveying the scene. Eloise crouched beside one of the vines earlier, studying it like she’d been walking these rows her whole life. Alex stood a few feet away watching her, hands in his pockets, completely unhurried.
When Alex said he might come by earlier, I was thinking about the man I kissed after dinner. A man who looked at me, entirely absorbed by the moment.
But today shifted that view.
This afternoon I didn’t just see the man I had dinner with last night. And I didn’t just hear him talk about his daughter. I met her. That adds a whole new dimension to whatever this might be.
Headlights sweep across the rows as another truck rolls to a stop beside mine. Sera climbs out, tugging her knit hat lower. “You planning to sleep out here tonight?” she calls as she shuts the door.
I lean back against my truck. “Considering.”
“That’s always dangerous.”
She walks toward me. “Everything okay?”
“Fine.”
Sera lifts an eyebrow. “You’re standing alone in a vineyard on Saturday night, staring into space. That’s not a fine posture. Are you worried about another frost?”
I look out across the rows again. “Maybe… Alex came by today.”
Sera waits. She’s always been good at that—letting silence sit long enough that people fill it.
I push away from the truck and walk a few steps down the gravel lane before turning back toward her.
Sera holds up her hand. “I have a pot of a meat sauce on the stove. Come over and we can talk at dinner.”
I nod. “Okay.” There’s nothing here for me to do.
I follow her back to our homes. The cottages were built by our great grandfather, who was one of twelve kids. He built them for his sisters. They raised his kids and worked the farm but never married. Sometimes I wonder if the cottages are cursed to house old-maid sisters.
When we arrive, she pours me a glass of sparkling water.
We talk about the frost last night and make small talk while she boils noodles and sets the table.
The kitchen smells like garlic and tomatoes, warm and familiar.
She runs the tap, rinses a plate, and glances back over her shoulder when the room falls silent.
“Usually when you’re this quiet you’ve got something going on,” she notes.
I pick up my glass and turn it slowly in my hand. “It doesn’t mean disaster.”
“No,” she says, turning back to the sink. “Probably you’ve decided to think something to death before you let yourself feel it.”
She dries her hands and comes to the table, taking a seat across from me.
“He brought his daughter with him today,” I tell her.
Sera tucks her leg under her. “Did he tell you he wanted you to meet his daughter?”
“We didn’t talk about it. He texted me that they were coming by, so I wasn’t surprised, but she wasn’t what I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
I look out the window and try to say this neutrally. “I’m not sure she’s used to competing with her father’s other interests.”
“Is that a complaint? Does it seem like a problem?”
“It isn’t.”
That’s the part that’s followed me all day.
The way he interacted with Eloise was lovely.
He’s devoted to her, as he should be. But that has to mean his capacity for caring about someone else will be structured differently.
I don’t resent that. In fact, I think I respect it.
I just don’t know what it means for us, for what will be expected of me.
“Last night was so crazy…” I shake my head. “The temperature alarms were going off, but even so, before that I had a good night. He was easy to talk to and impossible to ignore, and being with him made it surprisingly simple to imagine this as the beginning of something.”
Sera reaches for her glass and takes a sip.
“He’d mentioned his daughter and the fact that his life is pretty full, yet somehow, that version of him still existed in a very convenient frame,” I say. “Two adults. Good chemistry. Enough interest to wonder where it could go. Nothing especially complicated, if you look at it from a distance.”
“And today ruined your clean, neat picture.”
I glance at her. “Yes. Although ruined is probably the wrong word.”
“Changed, then.”
“Changed,” I agree. “Because he didn’t show up alone.”
Sera rests her forearms on the table. “Meaning?”
“Meaning I wasn’t just looking at a man with potential anymore. I was looking at a father. I was looking at a life that already exists in a complete form whether anyone joins it or not.”
She thinks a moment. “That sounds less like disappointment and more like you got hit with reality.”
I sigh. She nailed it. “That’s exactly what it was.”
“And?”
I let out a slow breath. “And children change the terms. There’s nothing abstract here. His life already has a center. It’s Eloise, as it should be, but what happens if I want to be the center?”
Sera nods.
“If I keep moving forward with him, I’m stepping into a shape that’s already there.”
Sera tilts her head. “You’re not afraid of the shape,” she says. “You’re afraid you might actually want it.”
I look over at her. “That’s not fair.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “But it’s probably closer to the truth than everything you said before it.”
The room goes quiet again.
Sera folds her hands around her glass. “Say the rest.”
I look at her and then away again. Damn her for being so perceptive.
“It did something strange inside me to watch Eloise with him,” I say at last. “She trusted him so completely that it made me see the part of him no one can fake for very long.”
Sera doesn’t speak, just raises her eyebrows.
“She moved through their visit like she had no reason to question whether he would pay attention, whether he would be patient, whether he would follow through.” I pause. “I think that’s what unsettled me. We didn’t grow up around that kind of certainty.”
Sera’s gaze sharpens.
“Our mother treated relationships like a public performance,” I continue. “There was always drama, always someone to blame.”
After my father’s affair came out, Evie exiled him from the family, and then our mother spent years pretending everything was fine. Watching Eloise trust her father that profoundly made the contrast impossible to ignore.
Sera looks down at the table. “True, but Mom’s a terrible example to hold up for anyone.”
“It was always about appearances,” I say again.
“How things looked. What she could show people.” I shake my head.
“I know we’ve talked about this, but I never wanted to be her.
The safest way to guarantee that was to stay independent, so nobody ever got close enough to exact the same kind of damage. ”
Sera waits.
“So when I stood there today watching Eloise trust him,” I tell her, “it wasn’t only attractive. It was destabilizing.”
Sera leans forward. “Or maybe it forced you to admit something.”
“What?”
“That you actually want the stability you’ve spent years pretending you don’t need.”
I rub my thumb over the edge of my glass. “It would put me in a dangerous position.”
Sera nods slowly. “Yes.”
“Because what we’ve never said is the lesson Mom taught us—if you actually want it, you can lose it.” I hold Sera’s gaze for a second before looking down at the table. “That’s the part I didn’t want to say.”
Sera sits with that for a moment and then sighs. “And there’s always Evie.”
“True. She’ll sabotage this, if I let her.” I take a sip of my water. “If I stepped into something serious with a man who already has a daughter, who already has a whole life built beyond her reach, she would hate every second of not being able to center herself in it.”
Sera leans forward. “Josie, she is not the authority on what a family gets to look like. She’s managed to destroy her family, and she’s on the way to destroying all of ours. But we don’t have to let her. You don’t have to let her.”
I nod. “No. But I do owe it to myself not to step blindly into something that could be serious.”
“That’s reasonable,” Sera says.
I rest my hands on the table. “And I can’t pretend Eloise is incidental.”
Sera shakes her head. “No.”
“She isn’t a detail,” I say. “She’s a huge part of this.”
Sera nods slowly. “So what now?”
I look down at the remains of dinner. “Now I make sure I’m honest with myself about what this is. I stop pretending Alex is just a man I happen to like. He’s someone worth having a future with.”
“And?”
I let out a small breath. “I’m also not rushing. But I’m not going to back away just because what I saw today made the stakes real.”
Sera smiles and pats my arm. “Finally,” she says. “That sounds like you.”