Page 60 of Before We Say Goodbye
“That’s it.”
“Go long.”
Cam took off down the long gravel drive and then twisted at the last moment. Cam caught it perfectly. Who would have thought he’d raise two sports boys? But wasn’t that the way the world worked?
Mike didn’t have the athleticism that Cam did, but he had the determination. He joined in, and they stood in a triangle, tossing the ball back and forth. “So what’s your mom teaching you today?”
“Math.”
“Math? That’s great. Every winemaker must be a mathematician. Just this morning, I was using divisionandmultiplication. What I want to know is which one of you will work in the lab and which one will work in the vineyards.” He already knew the answer, but he let them sort it out.
“I’m doing both,” Mike said. “Like you.”
“Yeah, your mom says I work too much. The duties would be best split.”
“I’m working the vines,” Cam said.
Otis agreed. The kid liked the outdoors more than anyone he’d ever met. “Would that be okay with you, Mike? I see you as more of the man in the lab, the one making the calls in the cellar. The fermentation artist. Typically, that means you’d go out and sell too. Go see the world, dine in some of the—what’s wrong?”
Mike had caught the ball but hadn’t thrown it back.
“I don’t like to think about you not being here.”
“Oh, I’ll be here.” Otis approached and lifted up Mike’s chin. “I’ll be on the terrace with your mother, sipping lemonade. Believe it or not, there will be a day, likely decades from now, when I want to step back, watch you boys do all the hard work. Besides, you’ll both have a couple of sprogs running around. I want to focus on being a grandfather. Who else is going to teach them to throw spirals?”
“You can’t throw spirals,” Cam said, grabbing the ball from Mike.
“Fair point.” Mike’s shoulders were still slumped. Otis pulled him in. “Don’t worry. Your mom and I aren’t going anywhere for a long time.”
A tear fell down his cheek. “I hate dying.”
“Hey, why are you even talking like that?”
He raised his gaze, his eyes dull with heartache. “Mom said that Bubbles won’t live as long as us.”
Otis felt his son’s pain. “Yeah, that’s true. Dogs have shorter lives, but death isn’t a scary thing. I’d like to think that, in some ways, it’s just the beginning.”
“What does that mean?”
Otis knelt and wiped Mike’s face. “We can’t know what’s out there, but something tells me this little life we’re all living here on earth is only a small part of the plan.” He sounded like Rebecca, but he really did believe it. “In the meantime, that’s why we must work hard to do something special. Because our time on earth is limited.”
Once the boys returned to their schoolwork, Bec and Otis sat on the terrace to catch up. Otis sat in his favorite wrought iron chair, whichfaced up the hillside. “I’m worried about money, Bec. I see our little guys so happy here. Thriving. I don’t want to lose the ranch.”
“We’re not going to lose the ranch.”
“Do you really believe that or are you just saying that to manifest it?”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it?”
Sometimes he wanted to explode when she refused to validate his fears. “You know what I mean. There’s reality, and then there’s you saying what you want to happen. Back here on earth, I’m looking at logistics.”
“We did it once, we can do it again.”
“I’m worried that those days were short-lived, that ... I feel like a fraud. For a minute there, we had it figured out. Was it all an illusion? What if our fruit doesn’t taste the same? What if people don’t believe in me anymore? What if our distributors don’t want the new wines when they come online? There are new players in town now. Napa is taking over. Hell, people are even buying Oregon wine these days. Can you believe that?”
The phone rang inside. A minute later, Cam called, “Dad! It’s Paul.” Otis pushed himself up and went into the kitchen. The boys hovered over their books at the table.
After a hello, Paul said, “You know Ledbetter’s in town, right?”
