Page 5 of Love You Truly

It takes all my self-control not to laugh in his face. “What kind of opportunity is that?” I ask calmly. I’ve seen his car coming and going from our property over the past few months, and I can’t understand why my parents put up with him. But they’ve always liked the guy, and they’ve never seen him as the twat he is.

After we got divorced, he kept up a relationship with them, visiting monthly and sending them holiday and birthday gifts. It annoyed me because it meant I had to see him occasionally in passing, but it seemed harmless enough.

My parents are good people, but they have a blind spot when it comes to sussing out disingenuous turds, and unfortunately, this town is full of them. There’s always someone trying to sweet-talk them into selling a parcel of their land, and they always smile and nod along.

Fortunately, what my parents lack in cynicism, they make up for with stubbornness. They’ll never sell, plain and simple. Our land will always be our land, and it’s worth millions.

“My parents aren’t here. They’re still in Europe,” I tell Felix, even though I know he knows because I told him the same thing last week.

My parents, who live in a small house at the other end of our property, have been working at a farm in France for the past month. You’d think there would be enough for them to do on our own piece of land, but they’re volunteering to pick produce for other people in exchange for room and board. They do it nearly every year during harvesting months, which landed them in Croatia picking olives last fall and in South America last spring. Different countries every time. My parents are more interested in doddering around on other people’s farms and milking their cows than they are in talking business with people around here.

When I was younger, their granola hippie ways pushed me to go in the opposite direction, chasing fashion trends, burning up every credit card reader in town, watching makeup and hair tutorials, and styling my look before I knew what a look even was.

Thinking back, it was childish. It resulted in people seeing me as a hollow fashion plate, and I may need to change some minds when the calendar page flips on my birthday.

For years, I ran business ideas by my parents, trying to convince them to grow grapes on our land or lease some of the acreage to other wine growers. We’re lucky enough to live on prime property in a sought-after appellation. We wouldn’t have to sell any of the land, but we could still run a robust business and turn more of a profit.

But my parents would never hear of it. For all their counterculture ways, they were traditional in one very inconvenient area—they believed that I should get married, have babies, and let my husband be the “career mind” in the family. I trotted out every Equal Rights Amendment piece of evidence to the contrary and made a strong case for “doing it all,” but my mother had her doubts.

“I don’t know why you’d make things harder on yourself than they need to be,” she’d say when I floated my ideas about the business side of Autumn Lake. They wanted grandkids from me, not business ideas.

Then I met Felix. He too liked the idea of “being a part of the storied Rutherford family,” as he put it, and he told my parents exactly what they wanted to hear. He’d be the squeeze-bottle ketchup to my crisp French fries, the lid to my boiling pot. They ate it up like a Thanksgiving feast.

When I married Felix, I convinced myself that maybe I could have it both ways. My parents would see that I took their desires seriously and partnered up with a man. And I lived with the delusion that my new husband would take my dreams seriously and help me achieve them like the blob of ketchup he was.

Wrong and double wrong.

He was in it for himself, and as soon as I realized that he’d never really love me, I sent him packing.

Except that here he is.

“I’m here to see you. I decided it’s time we talk turkey.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It means that you have a birthday coming up, so we need a plan for how to run this place once we inherit.”

I almost laugh because the idea of me including him in any sort of plan is nonsense.

“We? You sure you don’t have your pronouns confused? You’re not inheriting anything.”

It happens so slowly, with such deliberate pleasure on Felix’s behalf, that I almost don’t see it. His face morphs into the most satisfied, shit-eating, buffoon of a smile. One second, he looks like his same boring self, and the next, he’s grinning like the Joker.

“Of course I am. Unless you’ve been lying about your age.”

“I haven’t lied about anything. I’m turning thirty-three, and I’ll inherit Autumn Lake. You will get your flabby ass off my property, and after that, my day will improve.”

He stares at me as though he’s waiting for me to flinch. Or let him in on the joke. Then his grin gets so big I’m afraid he might crack his lips and bleed all over my driveway, which would be irritating and messy.

“You don’t know.” He slaps his forehead. “You really don’t know.”

He’s right. I really don’t know why I haven’t turned on the water hose yet.

But something in the self-satisfied way he’s still hovering makes me a tiny bit nervous. We filed the divorce papers, right? I’d remember forgetting to do something like that. So what’s he going on about?

“I give up, Felix. What don’t I know?”

“That your parents love me. They know how good I am for you, and they know I only want the best for you.”

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