Page 92 of Sweet Escape

“Maybe you should have. Because you made this place into a fucking mess thatI’mhaving to clean up.”

“Because I didn’t know what the hell I was doing!” he shouts, his arms going wide, emotion rolling off him in waves.

My head jerks back in surprise.

“This place is a fucking mess becauseIwas a fucking mess,” he continues. “I never wanted to come back here. My life was in San Francisco, with your mother. But when she died ...”

All his anger seems to drain away in a single sentence, and he trails off, looking to the side.

We stand in silence for a moment before he speaks again. This time his words are tense. Agitated. Brittle from years of resentment.

“I spent years working this land with my dad because it was my only option. That was the agreement. If I came home, if I accepted their help, then I was back.”

My shoulders fall at his admission. It never occurred to me that there was some kind of ... negotiation to my dad coming back to Rosewood with his three kids in tow. I assumed it was an accepted reality of life. That he’d come home, and the family would all work together.

That’s what family does, right?

“The truth is that I have never really cared about this vineyard. Your grandfather cared about it, and your aunt. Your brother and you.But not me. I never wanted any of it. The only thing I cared about was making sure my kids would be okay when I didn’t know if I could hold things together on my own.”

There’s something that happens when you learn a new truth.

When information is shared with you that you didn’t know before.

It shatters the old picture of what you thought the world looked like, distorting the previous version you’ve always known.

My father sharinghistruth has now radically altered mine.

I loved my grandfather so much. In my memories, he was always kind and loving, somewhat gritty, his hands always covered in dirt. As a kid, I’d ride around on the ATV at his side and he’d share with me everything he knew about vines and grapes and the soil, about fermentation and acidity. Everything he knew, he shared.

That’s the version of him thatIknow.

And while those memories are real, now I have to reconcile what my dad has told me. That the same man I knew and loved used my dad’s grief and loss as a bartering chip to get him to come home and work the land.

“I didn’t come back here so I could take over the vineyard, Memphis. I neverwantedto take it over. I came back here for you. So that you and your brother and sister could have a good life. One that I didn’t think I could give you without help.”

He stands there for a long moment, his chest heaving like he’s run a mile. Then he turns and kicks at a box on the ground, the cardboard denting slightly. The corner buckles and collapses, and the box on top of it tips over, the contents spilling out all over the floor.

“Fuck!” he grits out, staring down at it before he dips and begins to pick things up.

I cross to where he’s crouched, dropping to my knees beside him to help. My eyes snag on a picture in a red frame, and I grab it, my finger streaking across the glass to wipe away the dust. It’s a picture of my mom in a black dress and my dad in a suit, standing in front of a shiny red convertible.

“When was this?” I ask, my brows furrowed.

I can’t remember ever seeing my dad in a suit before. He didn’t even wear one to my grandpa’s funeral. He just wore a button-up shirt and a nice pair of jeans.

My dad stops where he’s picking things up and takes the photo from me, his lips tilting up at the sides.

“This was the night your mom got promoted at her job. We went out to this fancy steakhouse on The Embarcadero with her boss and his wife.” He shakes his head, his finger touching the glass slightly. “God, I loved that dress on her.”

It’s weird to see my dad like this, reminiscing about my mom. Mostly because he so rarely does it.

I begin returning the other items that fell to the floor to the box—a handful of playbills, an envelope of ticket stubs, a few more framed photos of him and my mom or the four of us as a family in front of our house before Micah was born.

I push back one of the flaps and peer inside, taking in a host of memories that are from before my time.

“I thought you got rid of most of your stuff from before Mom died,” I say, repeating back the line he said to me often over the years, any time I asked about things from before we moved to Rosewood.

There are a few boxes of her things in the attic, but this stuff looks like it belongs to Dad.

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