Chapter 20 Mason
Mason
We drive along the water to one of the highest points along the cliffs at the northern end of the cove. I park along the grass, backing the truck up to the edge. Then I tell Sierra, “Wait there.”
I climb out and come around to her door. I open it for her, offer her my hand, and when she steps down, I walk her around to the tailgate.
From here, we have a sweeping view over the entire cove, and the glittering lights of the small town in the middle of the shoreline. Lights flicker on the beach below Orchard Cove, where people are waiting for the fireworks: cell phones, lanterns.
“Wow,” Sierra breathes. “It’s beautiful.”
“The fireworks should start soon.” I open the tailgate.
“Just give me a sec.” I hop into the back of the truck and unroll the two sleeping bags I brought to create a nice, padded surface on the hard bed of the truck, then drape the cozy wool blankets overtop in case we get cold.
I brought pillows, too, several of them.
And a couple of tall cans of Sea Haven Orchard Blush, a rosé cider with blackcurrant and wild cherry, which I pull out of a backpack.
When I offer Sierra a hand, her smile is like a beam of sunshine. She takes it, and I pull her up, catching her by the hips. I tug her to me and we stand there, pressed together, already breathing too heavily.
“This is cozy,” she says.
“Have to show you a good time,” I tell her, gazing down at her from hooded eyes. “So maybe you remember me when all those city slickers let you down.”
She laughs abruptly.
Then she pulls away.
We sit down, and her smile fades. She slips off her shoes to get comfy, so I do the same. The silence is heavy, almost uncomfortable between us, and not at all what I wanted.
But some things need to be said.
“June isn’t selling to me, Sierra. She rejected my offer. Said she’s keeping Pier Seven. She wants to open her own restaurant there.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. So, I didn’t win after all.”
She takes this in.
Then she slides her hand onto my knee. “I’m sorry. I really am.” She sighs. Wraps her arms around herself.
The breeze coming off the sea is cool, and I drape one of the blankets around her shoulders. As usual, she’s not wearing much. A little tank top with inviting cleavage and denim shorts.
She glances at me. “I know how much you wanted it. And what it meant to you.”
“Yeah, well. Can’t always get what you want.”
With that, I fish the portable speaker out of the backpack and put on the Rolling Stones song. And she laughs again: that sound, the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.
“Where did your love of music come from?” she asks me as I crack open an Orchard Blush and hand it to her.
“I guess . . . when I grew up, there was just always music on.” I open my own cider and tap her can in a cheers.
We both take a sip and I get comfy on the pillows.
“My dad would always be working in the cider house and the bar, and there was music on. My mom would be at the house or in the orchard with my little brother and then my little sister, and I’d be with her, or with different people who came to work at the orchard, or their kids, and there was always music.
On the cider house patio, in the cidery where my grandpa was working, and in our house. My dad played guitar, too.”
I pause, clear my throat of the sudden lump that forms.
“It’s so quiet now that they’re gone.”
“Yeah,” she says, kind of sadly. “I can imagine. That must be hard.”
I swallow again, try not to get too emotional about it.
“As soon as they died, I moved back home. I’d been living in a house that I still own next to the bar, where Jace lives now, but I threw myself into continuing the renovations my dad had started on the family home, and I took over his position as general manager of the cidery and the bar.
Layne had been renovating the old cider master’s cottage out back for a couple of years as a hobby project, planning to move in there one day.
He was renting a place, but he got rid of it and he and Kaylie moved back into the house, too, temporarily.
There was no discussion about it. It was just what had to be done.
Grandpa was there alone, and I think we all knew we needed each other. ”
“Of course you did,” she says gently.
Then a silence falls. Not uncomfortable. Just kind of depressing.
At least there’s music now.
“I think the silence is one of the hardest things,” I say after a moment. “There’s this whole piece of the family, a whole generation, just . . . missing. And one day when my grandpa passes away, it’ll just be me and Layne to carry on the family and the business.”
“What about your sister?”
“Yeah. Haven, too. If she ever comes back to live here again.”
“Do you think she will?”
“I hope so. I understand that she wanted to go to university and try to make it on her own in the big city. She was always driven like that. But I hope there’s a piece of her heart that will always feel at home here.”
“I’m sure that’s true.”
“Thank god I’ve never really had to worry about her.
She’s the good kid of the family. Never had a rebellious streak like I did, and Layne did, too.
She was a straight-A student, never gets in trouble.
But maybe since she’s been gone . . . it’s been harder.
’Cause there’s another piece of the family missing, you know? ”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Then she’s young,” Sierra says. “Plenty of time to come back home, get knocked up, make you some little nieces and nephews. And maybe by then, Kaylie will be all grown up and she’ll make some babies, too.
You’ll have little grand-nieces and -nephews .
. .” She laughs at the look on my face. “Oh my god, your face.”
“I was not ready for that.”
“I’m sorry.” She snort-laughs. “I know she’s only ten. Too much?”
“Way too much. Christ. I feel like my baby sister just went off to the big city and that was hard enough. And that was seven fucking years ago. Shit. Am I getting old?”
“You’re only as old as you feel, Mason,” she says brightly, teasing me.
She sips her pink-hued cider, licks her lip, and fuck, she’s beautiful. I could stare at her all night.
If I’m lucky, maybe the fireworks will take a while.
“Where did your love of music come from?” I ask her.
And she says easily, “My grandpa. My mom’s dad. Grandpa Alex.”
“The coolest human on the planet?”
She smiles, maybe delighted that I remember how she described her grandpa the first day we met.
“That’s him. He was like my safe place, you know?
My happy place. All of that.” Her smile fades a little.
“I guess I really needed one. I grew up in Carlton, this really small town that you do not need to feel bad that you’ve never heard of.
It’s in the Okanagan Valley, and I don’t want you getting any foolish ideas that I lived in some gorgeous corner of wine country.
This place is trash. But it’s where my mom grew up. ”
“I see. And all this time, I thought you were a city girl, born and bred.”
“Nope. My dad was, though. My biological father, I mean. Mom met him while she was in high school. He was older, just out of school, and was just passing through her town with some friends. And she decided to put off her plans to go to Vancouver for university to go backpacking in Europe with him. And like I told you, that’s where she got pregnant with me.
They came back to Carlton and had me, but I guess he never liked it there, and he left when I was three.
I have no solid memories of him from those early years. ”
She pauses, takes a sip of cider, and I wait for more.
“My mom was a very unhappy single mom who resented being stuck in Carlton because of me. Or at least, that’s how it felt to me.
She leaned a lot on her parents to take care of us, but my grandma died when I was seven, and it was hard.
When I was nine, Mom got married to my stepdad.
He was a divorced, older man who already had a seventeen-year-old daughter, Kimberly.
Kim was nice as an older sister, but we weren’t super close.
And she went away to university within a year of the marriage.
She was the driven one in my family. By the time I was twenty, she was a doctor, settled in Ontario and married, and my mom and stepdad moved out there to be closer to her when she had kids.
I think my mom has lived vicariously through Kim’s successes over the years, and sometimes that’s made it easy to forget about mediocre me.
Kim is definitely her favorite daughter. ”
“You don’t know that,” I offer.
“Oh, I know. I’ve made my peace with it, more or less.
” She bites her lip a little. “I guess they thought I’d just stay in Carlton.
I kinda shocked them all and became a source of perpetual stress and gossip, I’m sure, when I picked up and moved to Vancouver by myself. And I guess the rest is history.”
When she goes silent, I prod gently, “And why did Grandpa Alex become such a happy place for you?”
She sighs. “Because I truly hated growing up in that town. I was bullied. I didn’t have a lot of friends.
There wasn’t a lot to do in Carlton, but there was a drug problem, and the last thing I wanted to do was hang out with most of the kids at my school.
So, my grandpa was the best part of my day.
He was a refrigerator repair man, and we had appliance parts strewn all over our yard.
That was one of the reasons I was bullied.
But I didn’t care. While so many kids were experimenting with shit like meth and overdosing on fentanyl, I was with my grandpa in the garage.
Safe. Loved. Listening to music while he worked. ”
She goes silent again for a moment, like she’s lost in a memory.