Page 69 of Before We Say Goodbye
Lloyd opened his hands. “Otis, you don’t want to go down this path. Be a good partner.”
That felt like a threat; Otis stepped forward. “You want me to be a good partner?”
“Otis, stop it,” Rebecca said.
“How aboutthisfor a good partner?” Otis timed the punch perfectly, and Lloyd was too clueless to know Otis had nothing left to lose.
The man’s head smacked against the back wall and blood dripped from his mouth.
Rebecca screamed, as did someone else from behind.
Otis reared up to hit him again, despite Lloyd not retaliating.
Then Rebecca’s pleas to stop filled the air, and he caught himself. He lowered his fist and dropped his head. His chest heaved.
“There is nowe,” Otis whispered.
He turned and started out of the kitchen, passing by Marshall and Olivia, and his own mother and father. His boys looked at him like he’d lost his mind. He touched their heads and whispered that he was sorry.
As he reached the front door, he turned back and screamed one last time, “There is nofucking we!”
Chapter 16
Ring the Bell
Ten o’clock the next day came and went, but neither Rebecca nor the boys hammered the bell. Absolute silence penetrated the farm. Otis and Scooter and two other men had been pruning canes all morning. The guys had figured out pretty quickly that Otis wasn’t in the talking mood, so there’d barely been any chatter, only the snap of snipping shears.
Otis kept reliving the look on his father’s and the boys’ faces. He understood the way Bec felt now, all those years of standing by him, allowing him space to grow, hoping he’d come around, only to realize that Otis was Otis, and perhaps she’d made a mistake in marrying him. His fear and disgrace weighed him down like armor. He’d finally screwed up beyond repair.
At eleven o’clock, Otis couldn’t take it any longer.
He marched back to the house. Bec’s car was gone. He wound through the rooms, calling, “Hello?” She’d taken Cam and Mike. He looked into the primary bedroom, wondering whether she’d packed a bag. Who could blame her? Her bag was still under the bed, though.
Back downstairs, he went to the terrace and looked up at the bell, that shiny stupid fucking bell that had rung every day since he’d returned from his stint at the hospital. The bell that had called him backto his family reminded him what mattered. The bell that had connected him with his boys.
The bell that hadn’t rung today.
A hollowness spread through his core. Tears falling down his cheeks, he reached up for the chain and began to ring it himself.Clang, clang, clang.Each chime shot out over the ranch and up and around the hills, filling the air with his failures, all the shit he hadn’t said, all the shit he hadn’t done. It sang of how his father would never be happy with him, and how Otis had failed his children, and how he’d failed himself, and Rebecca. The runt that he was had been given a chance. No, endless chances. This perfect being had come into his life, and he hadn’t been and still wasn’t the man she deserved.
Ringing the bell harder and harder, he shook the pergola, his head shaking with it, tears spraying and splattering to the floor. His own curses shot out into the daylight along with the clang, a madman who’d finally cracked.
Otis swung that chain till the hook that held the bell ripped out of the ceiling and crashed to the floor. He was full-on crying as he picked it up and flung it down, then again, screaming obscenities and wishing he weren’t here, wishing the heart attack had taken him away.
When he finally collapsed, he looked up and saw them—his family. He hadn’t heard them pull up. Now all six of their eyes watched him from inside the car.
Right then he knew exactly what it felt like to be a failure.
Strolling next to his mentor through the vines, Otis glanced over. “I don’t know where to go from here, how to get back.”
Carmine didn’t respond. He’d been silent for a while, listening to Otis speak about how they’d lost so much with the phylloxera infestation and how Bec and Lloyd were willing to compromise everything by making white zinfandel to climb back on top.
A wet chill bit the clean air. Carmine and his crew hadn’t even started pruning yet. The sheep, ripe with wool, stood quiet in a fenced area ahead.
Carmine wore a weary sweater that had been torn apart by moths. It looked like he hadn’t shaved in weeks. “Take it easy,ragazzo.” He grabbed Otis’s neck and pinched his trapezius muscles, strong hard hands digging into the tissue. “You take yourself too seriously. You take it all too seriously.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Otis tried to pull away, but Carmine pinched him harder, not letting him go. Otis stopped fighting and let the man’s fingers dig in deep. Soreness rose through his arms.
“You know what I see?” Carmine asked. “A man who feels like he’s in control. A man under the illusion that he’s steering. Where’s your faith?”
