Page 8 of The Vines Between Us
"Hugo? Are you still there?"
"Yes, sorry." I gathered myself. "Thanks for letting me know."
"Will you go see him?"
Would I? The question echoed in my mind long after I'd ended the call. Alexandre Moreau. The boy who'd kissed me among the vines, who'd whispered promises under summer stars, who'd left without a word and never looked back. The man who'd become a stranger.
I stepped onto the back terrace, eyes drawn inevitably to Domaine Moreau in the distance. Our properties shared a boundary, a dirt road that wound between the two estates. Once, I'd walked that road daily, eager to see Alexandre. Now, I avoided it whenever possible, the memories too sharp, too painful.
But if Alexandre was truly back...
"Don't be a fool," I muttered to myself, turning away from the view. "He's here to sell the place and leave again. Nothing more."
After my parents died, Claude had encouraged every question, every tear, every outburst. "Grief needs air to breathe," he'd say, pulling me into his lap no matter how much dirt covered his vineyard clothes.
Now, with Claude gone, I found myself adopting his rituals instead of creating my own. Using his pruning shears. Making his special tisane each night. Walking the vineyard boundaries at dawn as he had done for fifty years.
I'd learned to grieve as a child under Claude's gentle guidance. Learning to grieve as an adult, without him, felt like navigating a foreign country without a map.
I spent the evening in Claude's study, reviewing the dismal financial records. The bank had given me nine months after Claude's death before they'd start foreclosure proceedings—a courtesy extended because of the Tremblay name and history in the region. That grace period was nearly up.
I closed the ledger and leaned back in Claude's chair, surrounded by the books and mementos of his life. His collection of antique corkscrews. The framed photograph of him holding me as a child, both of us grinning at the camera. The shelf of journals where he'd recorded decades of vineyard observations.
On the wall hung the only photograph I had of my parents—their wedding day, my father in a dark suit, my mother radiant in white. Unlike the grief I felt for Claude—raw and overwhelming—my parents' absence was a different kind of ache, the phantom pain of something I couldn't fully remember having.
"What would you do, Claude?" I asked the empty room.
The phone rang, startling me from my thoughts. An unfamiliar number.
"Allô?"
"Hugo Tremblay?" A woman's voice, crisp and professional.
"Yes?"
"This is Camille Laurent from Crédit Agricole. I'm calling about your loan application."
My grip tightened on the phone. The expansion loan I'dapplied for weeks ago—my last desperate attempt to secure enough capital to modernize the irrigation system and maybe, just maybe, keep the vineyard afloat.
"Yes, of course."
"I'm afraid the committee has reviewed your application and decided not to proceed at this time. Given the current financial situation of Domaine Tremblay and the outstanding debts, we don't feel—"
"I understand." My voice sounded hollow even to my own ears. "Thank you for letting me know."
I set the phone down carefully, as if it might shatter like my hopes. That was it, then. The last avenue closed. Unless a miracle appeared in the next few months, I would lose everything Claude had built.
Sleep eluded me that night. I tossed in the bed that had been mine since childhood, mind racing between financial calculations and unwanted memories of Alexandre. Around three in the morning, I gave up and wandered onto the terrace with a glass of Claude's prized 2010 Merlot.
In the moonlight, I could just make out the silhouette of Domaine Moreau's main house. A light burned in what I knew to be Henri's study. Alexandre, awake at this hour too. What was he thinking about? The inheritance he'd never wanted? The years he'd spent away? Me?
"Doesn't matter," I told myself firmly. "He made his choice long ago."
I understood abandonment intimately—first by death, then by choice when Alexandre left. What I couldn't fathom was choosing to stay away from someone you loved. My parents hadn't chosen to leave me. And Claude had chosen me every day until cancer took him away.
Yet as dawn broke over the vineyards, painting the landscape in gold and rose, I found myself walking the boundary road, pruning shears in hand as if I had legitimate business nearDomaine Moreau. Just a neighbour checking his fence line. Nothing more.
I hadn't intended to cross onto Henri's property, but my feet carried me there anyway. The vines were in terrible condition—worse than I'd realized from a distance. Unpruned, undernourished, desperately in need of attention. Henri had truly given up in his final months.
