19. Bas #2
“I left it a while ago, Mom. You know that.”
“I can’t keep up,” she muttered.
“I’m Sebastian, but everyone calls me Bas. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Engel.”
She grunted rather than acknowledging my introduction.
Her mother was asleep in the rear seat shortly after we left the parking lot.
“Where I grew up is a lot different from where you did,” Gemma said when her mother’s snoring filled the silence.
I’d been trying to think of the right thing to say to that since we arrived at the hospital. I still hadn’t.
“I’m embarrassed for you to see it,” she murmured almost too quietly for me to hear.
I reached for her hand and weaved our fingers together. “If you think I’m going to judge you over the house you grew up in, you don’t know me as well as I thought.”
The house was worse than I’d expected, and I’d prepared myself for something dismal.
The paint had all but peeled off, and the porch sagged.
A truck that hadn’t run in years sat in a yard that hadn’t been mowed in months.
It didn’t appear that anyone was home, although Gemma’s brothers were older than she was, so it was doubtful they even lived here.
Once inside, I understood the fall. The stairs looked as though they’d give out under someone’s foot. If her bedroom was on the second level, it was likely she’d fall again, particularly if she’d been drinking.
“Toby will be home soon. You can leave,” her mother told her after Gemma got her settled in her chair. “Oh, there he is now,” she added when a truck pulled into the driveway.
Gemma met him at the door and told him what had happened. He listened to all of it and nodded.
“Tobias, this is Bas Whitmore. Bas, my brother Tobias.”
He looked familiar. “Did you ever work at Whitmore?” I asked.
“One summer. Best money I ever made.”
“I really need to get back to work,” Gemma muttered. “If you’ve got this.”
I was about to say we could stay, but it was apparent she wanted to leave as soon as possible.
“I do,” Tobias said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get the call. I left my phone in the truck.”
“She’s my mother too,” Gemma said. “I’d have come either way.”
We were almost to the driveway when another vehicle pulled in fast and stopped crooked in the yard. The man who got out was thinner than Tobias and looked a few years younger.
“What are you doing here?” he barked at Gemma.
“Mom fell. The neighbor called.”
The guy gave me a slow once-over, head to boots, with his lip curled. “This your latest sugar daddy?”
Tobias approached. “Karl. Leave her alone.”
“Fuck off, Tobe. She shows up here once a year in a car that costs more than this house, with some rich guy—”
I started toward him, ready to shut him the fuck up when Gemma’s hand closed around my arm.
“Don’t do this. Please. Let’s go.”
The man Tobias had called Karl and I maintained eye contact all the way to my truck. He was still standing in the same spot when we drove away.
She was silent for most of the way. When we were close to Healdsburg, I asked if she was hungry and if she wanted to stop somewhere to eat.
“I’d rather go to Whitmore,” she said.
Not home. Whitmore. First, I’m her boss, then Whitmore is just the place where she works.
At the house, she told me she didn’t feel like eating and went upstairs to lie down. I made myself a sandwich and ate it standing over the sink like I did before everything changed.
When I joined her in the bedroom, she was lying on top of the mattress, still fully clothed, and facing away from me. When I lay down behind her and put my arm over her, she held my hand.
“I’m sorry you had to see all that. Now, you understand why all I wanted was to get the hell out of there.”
I scooted closer to her and rested my head on her shoulder. “Gemma, you don’t have to apologize—”
“The minute I turned eighteen, I swore I’d never sleep under that roof again, and I haven’t.”
“What about your father? Is he around?”
“He left when I was five and never came back. I don’t know if he’s alive.
I doubt it.” She sighed. “I don’t remember him.
My brothers do, and from what I’ve heard, they probably wish they didn’t.
One of the neighbors let on that he was abusive.
” Her voice cracked. “What she said was that he used to get drunk and beat the shit out of them and my mom.”
“I’m sorry, Gemma.”
“Why? None of this was your doing.”
“I know. I only wish it had been better.”
“Karl is the youngest and the biggest asshole, although Bert—he’s the oldest—gives him a run for his money.
Tobias has always been decent to me, not that we’re close.
” Her shoulders shook, and she tried to scoot away, but I wouldn’t let her.
“I hope you know what he said—” She tried to talk through her tears, but broke down more.
“Every single opinion I have of you is based on knowing you, Gemma. Nothing anyone could ever say about you would change what I think or how I feel.”
“I thought about running away when I was younger, but I had nowhere to go and no way to support myself. When I did leave, I went straight to San Francisco and got a job in a restaurant. It wasn’t in a great part of town, but the woman who owned it was nice and said there was a room I could stay in on the second floor. ”
“What came after that?” I asked.
“When she died, the place closed. I hadn’t been there that long, but at least, I had experience.
I got another restaurant job at a nicer place and kept moving up from there.
Eventually, I was hired for a catering gig with Lombard.
I worked my ass off. I was always the first to arrive and the last to leave.
I did everything that needed to be done without complaining.
The owners noticed and offered me an apprenticeship.
Less than a year later, they gave me a permanent position with better pay. It was my dream job.”
“But you left it.”
She nodded. “I did.”
I almost asked why, but if Gemma had wanted me to know, she would’ve told me.
“That’s why the Wicked Winemakers’ Ball is so important to me. I know it’s going to be a huge success, and then I’ll return to San Francisco a winner, show them how good I am. That’s why I agreed to do it. This is my one chance to get back what I lost.”
My God, she planned to leave the valley right after the ball and return to the city. That was why she didn’t want to be forced to stick around as my date for another couple of months. She wanted to get out of here as fast as she’d wanted to leave home when she turned eighteen.
I felt sick to my stomach, and it was hard to breathe. The woman I’d foolishly hoped would live here at Whitmore with me, even become my wife and raise children with me, had no intention of staying a minute longer than she had to. What a fucking idiot I was. More than that, I was pathetic.
“What about you?” she asked. “What did you want when you were growing up, Bas?” That she asked surprised me.
What I wanted now was very different from what I’d wanted then, except I couldn’t tell her what all those things were now that I knew there wasn’t a chance in hell they’d happen.
“I want to make my own wine someday,” I said instead.
I didn’t tell her I already had and it was sitting in barrels in the cellars.
She turned to look at me, no longer crying, back to the Gemma I loved being with. She was smiling because she had no idea she’d ripped my heart out.
“You will, and it will be amazing. I want to be the first to taste it.”
“You will be,” I lied.
“I’m holding you to that.”
She was quiet again. I shifted to my back and let her lay her head on my chest. Once I was sure she was asleep, I’d leave. I had no idea where I’d go, only that I couldn’t be here right now. Maybe I’d go sleep in one of the cottages. Not hers, though.
“Did you always know you’d stay here?” she asked a few minutes later.
“I guess I knew I’d come back more than stay.”
“You went to Davis, right?”
“I did. I worked here during my breaks, but then after I graduated, I took a year off and traveled.”
“Where did you go?”
“Everywhere. All over the world.”
“Iceland?” she asked.
“Nope, never got there. Why do you ask?”
“Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of going there to see the northern lights. There was a picture in a library book that I was sure wasn’t real.” She paused. “I’ve never told anyone that.”
“Nobody?”
“Nope, only you.”
She’d told me the one thing she’d never told anyone, an hour after telling me she was leaving. An hour after tearing the dream I’d had to shreds.