Page 57 of Love You Truly

“Why unreliable?” I ask, swiping a bright orange California poppy from where it spikes up from the surrounding grass.

Mallory wears low work boots, a green flannel shirt over a tee, and jeans. She couldn’t look more natural walking among the fields here. It’s easy to picture her the way I remember my dad as he strode around with me in tow, pointing out where he planned to start the food garden and assessing the sunlight and soil to decide where the grapes would grow best.

“They don’t have a great sense of time. They leave when they find an interesting opportunity, and it doesn’t matter what’s happening around them. It’s why they never did much with this property. Running it requires actually being here to make decisions about it. Even if they had a staff of people doing it for them, they’d need to have a plan. They’re not planners.”

“Maybe there’s something reliable about that. Unreliability can be its own little paradigm.”

She turns toward me, shielding her eyes from the sun over my shoulder. “You’re a philosopher now?”

I move so I’m blocking the sun from her face and lower her hand, intertwining our fingers.

“Would it bother you if I was?” I can’t resist and kiss the tip of her nose.

“No, but I want you to understand what it was like here all these years. It wasn’t all cute and sweet with sheep running around. It was disorganized and barely functional with sheep running around.”

I look at our surroundings. They’re not manicured like Buttercup Hill but don’t look disastrous. “How do you see this place five years from now?”

I don’t know what I expected—a vague idea of a few vineyards and flowers? But Mallory’s eyes blaze with a fire I haven’t seen yet. She spins in a circle, taking in the entirety of the place, or at least what she can see of it from here.

“I have drawings. Want to see them?”

“Yes. But first, let’s finish talking about your family. Does it bother you that they wandered unreliably?”

She laughs. “I mean, kind of.” She extends her arms in both directions. “Look at the opportunity they had right here to do something really cool. And they were more interested in farming potatoes in little Irish country towns than taking advantage of the potential here.”

“Maybe some people are better at farming other people’s land. ‘Potential’ can be a daunting concept.”

“Not to me.”

“I can tell.”

She shakes her head. “Literally been waiting my whole life to do something with this place.”

“Almost your birthday. You’ve waited long enough.” I squeeze her hand. “Let’s go see your plans.”

I don’t know why it surprises me that Mallory has mapped out the entirety of Autumn Lake down to the square inch. It’s exactly what my father did, and it makes sense when planning something of the magnitude of two hundred acres.

“Why do you look so shocked?” Mallory eyes me warily.

Rubbing my chin, I try to find the right words. “It’s just a lot of work. When did you have time to do all this? Are you an architect in addition to getting a business degree?”

She smiles. “I hired someone to do the actual plans, but we worked together for the past year on it.”

I bend closer to take in the smaller details. Most of the space is mapped as vineyards, which makes sense because Mallory wants to sell grapes. But there’s also an expanded wine-making operation, two new houses and a café.

“These are houses.” I point at the buildings on the set of plans.

“Yes.”

“Who’s going to live in them?” I ask.

“Seasonal workers if they need a place to live. I want to be sure people who work here can afford to live in the area. It’s getting more expensive, and it’s hard.”

It makes me think about Graham living with his mom on the outskirts of town. Housing was affordable then, but Mallory is right. There’s no way seasonal workers could afford to live there now.

I love that she’s thinking about her employees’ well-being before she’s even hired them. I consider our own employees and realize I don’t even know where half of them live.

“What?” she asks, creases clouding her brow.

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