Page 39 of Before We Say Goodbye
“You wouldn’t dare.” He slid to his knees and rested his hands on her thighs. “You’re mine and no one else’s.”
“Ah, there’s the Otis I like. Tell me again, what is it that you want?”
He attempted to slow the sexual craving rising up from within. “Fifty acres on a hillside. Centennial grapes. A farm that we tend. Animals. Two rug rats. How about you?”
She took a moment to solemnly consider the question. “For a while I thought that I was stealing your dream. That I needed my own. But I realize now that we’re the same. I want to help you tend to our farm, to do my part to make the wines sing. I want to live off the land, to build a sanctuary where we have a giant garden and fruit trees of every kind, maybe even a U-pick farm. I want to make my own honey and jam and bread and sell it at the market. You do your vines and wines, and I’ll do the books and manage the rest of the farm. I don’t want to worry about money anymore.”
He glided his fingers on the back of her neck. “Me either, lovey.”
Bec cast her gaze up toward the North Star. “I can see it now. For the first time in my life, because of you, Otis Till, I think—no—Iknowwe can make it happen.”
For the first time in his life, Otis did too. Even if that sense of knowingness existed only up there on a balcony overlooking the Mosel River on this one night, the feeling was real, and he would revisit that memory and this place as often as he could, for the rest of his life.
Bec slid her fingers down his chest and abdomen and farther, igniting a carnal awakening from deep within. “Now take me, Otis, you lost soul you. Put a baby in me ... and don’t wake up the whole town with your howling. Then, when we get back home, let’s go make this thing happen.”
The howling came soon enough. With his clothes piled on the floor, Otis stood at the railing and beat his bare chest and howled into the night like he never had before, calling up to the moon, demanding that the universe make way for their dreams.
Chapter 11
Lost Souls
In late January, Otis burst through the door with a case of wine in his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, today is a good day.”
Bec and Camden huddled over the table, drawing with crayons. “Hi, Daddy,” they both replied.
Otis set down the wine and kissed the tops of their heads. He pinched Cam’s cheek and said in a baby’s voice, “Guess what Daddy has in this box? Your birth vintage. Can you believe that? When you’re old enough, once you’ve cut your teeth in the cellar, we’ll pull a cork together. What a day that will be.”
Otis looked to Rebecca. Bags collected under her eyes. “You okay?”
She looked away. “Yeah, just tired.”
Otis knew it was more than that. Maybe seeing the wine would turn her around. “Can we take a look?”
He pulled back the shipping tape and drew a bottle from the box. “Here we have it, the first vintage of Lost Souls.”
Bec had been instrumental in the design. They’d studied countless labels, noting how Carmine Coraggio and Inglenook and Martini and dozens of others used a painting or drawing of their château or their vineyards. Others, like Mayacamas or Foppiano, focused on a logo. Otis and Rebecca opted for simplicity with a white label and black text.
Lost Souls
1973
Murphy Vineyards
Sonoma
“You did it, baby.”
“Are you kidding me?Wedid it. This bottle wouldn’t exist had you not been pushing me all along.”
She worked hard to hold her smile. He was losing her. He could feel it, the way she was pulling back. It might not necessarily be about him, but she’d lost herself, or, at least, the part of her that Otis had come to know best.
He slipped his hand into hers. “I know, I know. I’m too focused, but we have to do what it takes right now. Losing your paycheck hurts. I have to work overtime. I’m trying to get to a place—”
“I get it,” she said in a tone that suggested that no excuse would justify how little time he was spending with his family.
He held eye contact with her for a while. What she didn’t get was that she’d been taking out her frustrations on Otis. Her parents had proved to be terrible grandparents. Still, she continued to try with them, always inviting them over for dinner or taking Cam for a visit. Jed’s drinking and drug use had gotten worse, and Bec had become highly invested in convincing him to go to rehab. He was a complete jerk half the time, but Bec kept trying to love him and reason with him. It didn’t help that she and Otis still hadn’t conceived another baby. Sometimes she acted as if another baby would fix everything.
Though she was an expert at hiding her troubles from Cam, Otis saw all of it: the way she got up in the middle of the night, sometimes for hours, the creases on her forehead, her lack of patience with him.
