Page 21 of Love You Always

“Hello…our wedding location? We’re supposed to taste the food, see everything. You have it on your calendar, right?”

He nods. “Sure, sure. Yes. When is that again?”

“In a week. One week from today.” I’ve only told him eleventeen times.

He doesn’t answer because a country music fan has spied him and sidled up for a selfie. She wants me in it too. I’m America’s sweetheart. How can I possibly say no?

CHAPTER 9

Archer

I takethe stairs two at a time, my heart beating out of my chest. I know I should calm the hell down before I barge into my dad’s bedroom, but today is the day his nurse called me to say he’s somewhat lucid. If I’m going to get anywhere with him, I need to strike while the iron is hot.

I’m holding a report from the marshal and there’s no way to interpret it other than as tangible fact—the fire that burned part of Buttercup Hill and Graham’s land was arson.

Investigators have no leads because the cameras on our property just happen to have a blind spot in the area where the fire started, but I have my suspicions. After the big Napa fire a few years ago, my dad made an offhand comment to me about that blind spot.

“Not bad to have a corner where you can do a little dirty work if you need to,” he’d said. At the time, I didn’t make much of it. But now that the dirty work has been done…it’s hard not to make a connection. It’s hard to imagine my dad setting fire to the vineyard he grew into a three-generation family fortune, but none of his actions in the past year make sense. Even being non compos mentis—not of sound mind—doesn’t explain it to us, his kids, who are trying to keep the place running.

Betsy, Dad’s nurse, hears my feet on the stairs and opens the door to his room, already shushing me before I make it down the hallway. “He’s resting.”

Normally, I take everything the nurse says as gospel. I tiptoe around the house I grew up in and only come up to the wing of the house where my dad lives when she tells me he’s lucid. But I need answers. It makes me less patient with his current state.

“Can you wake him up, please?”

The nurse, a gray-haired woman in her fifties with the patience of a saint, shakes her head and rests a hand on my forearm. She never overreacts, never yells. Just calmly attends to my dad’s needs, just like she has for the two years since he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. He gets confused more and more, forgets my name, mixes me up with my siblings. And then there are the business mistakes that have cost our family millions of dollars and jeopardized the very land this house was built on by my grandfather.

Betsy studies me, her cool gaze not bothering with any part of me except my eyes, judging my level of seriousness. And annoyance.

“He’s awake, just resting. Having his breakfast. I don’t want you to agitate him and you seem…frazzled.”

“I’m fine. Can I see him, please?”

I shouldn’t have to ask for permission to see my own father. I hear her talking to my dad in hushed tones, and then I hear his booming baritone barking at her, mostly complaining about how the newspaper is from the wrong day and that there are no sports on the TV. He loves sports, always has, and one of the fewpositive memories I have of my childhood is him coming to watch me play hockey.

That was a long time ago.

She peeks her head out and motions me inside. I find my dad sitting at the desk at the far end of his room, where a breakfast tray sits untouched with toast, berries, juice, and eggs. He has theNew York Timesand theFinancial Timesspread out on the desk, and he sits with his hands holding down the pages as if they might fly away.

“Hi, Dad.”

He looks up and squints at me, and I wait for signs he recognizes who I am. “Jackson?”

I sigh and look at Betsy, who nods, bright-eyed, as though my dad calling me by my younger brother’s name is a positive sign. She ushers me closer to my dad with a wave of her hand and goes about straightening up the room, fluffing pillows on the bed, emptying trash cans that aren’t full.

“No, Dad. It’s Archer.”

“Who?” The harsh rumble of his voice hits differently today. I realize how much we sound the same, accusing and irritable, no matter who’s on the other side of the conversation. His brutal stare says that no matter what I’ve come to say it will only irritate him and create more problems. Again, it’s familiar. Guess he succeeded in making me in his image despite my efforts to be different.

“Your son. Jackson’s older brother.”

He wags a finger. “Don’t try to trick me.”

My heart sinks, watching my own father insist I’m someone else, not the son who’s dutifully taken over his job for the past two years. “Dad,” I say, taking a step closer. He reacts like a frightened animal, holding his hand up and shaking his head.

“You’re not Jackson.”

“No. I’m Archer, your older son.”

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