I take another bite of my cinnamon bun to avoid answering. Because I’d done exactly that, hadn’t I? The moment they handed me my diploma, I was on my way home to take over operations for Dad. I didn’t want Laine to perceive me that way, though. Like there’s some fundamental difference in our ambition because I chose to return while she set off to explore. I think it’s easier to leave home when you don’t know how much there is to lose. Your hands can reach for more when they’re not busy clutching the little you have left.
“When I took the full-time position at Le Jardin after graduation, that’s wheneveryonegot mad at me.” Laine crumples the paper napkin between her fingers. “I didn’t mean to break my promise, but why’d they make me promise in the first place? Why couldn’t they appreciate the opportunities I had, give me grace to live my own life?”
“Maybe because they couldn’t imagine living their lives without you,” I offer. “Your plans changed their plans.”
“Well, that’s the problem with making plans around other people, isn’t it? Only person you can count on is yourself.” She smiles at me ruefully, and I return it with a little sigh.
Because she’s absolutely right.
“Why did you miss Chance’s wedding, though?”
Laine sucks in a deep breath. “There was a festival. Le Jardin’s chief vintner made me swear up and down I’d be there, talked it up like it would be the highlight of my career. Date was set for months. Then Chance sethis wedding date, and there was a conflict. He couldn’t move his date, and I’d have lost my job if I missed that festival.”
“Was it worth it?” I ask quietly.
Laine snorts and takes another long, pensive lick off her forefinger this time. “They had me manning a merch table the whole time.”
I wince.
“Chance didn’t speak to me for months. With him and Rachel both mad at me, it made it hard to want to come home at all. I love Mom and Dad, and Into the Woods is in my bones, but I just—didn’t want to feel bad anymore. No matter what I said or did, I couldn’t win.”
She straightens and gives me a tight-lipped smile before I can dare pity her. She doesn’t realize how floored I am at getting this glimpse into how her brain works. Her inability to take constructive criticism, the way that one terrible review decimated her entire self-perception, avoiding home instead of confronting her problems with Chance and Rachel … it all makes sense now.
Laine Woods doesn’t know how to lose.
The thought almost makes me laugh. I could teach her a thing or two about losing. You don’t run a tiny, resource-poor vineyard for as long as I have without seeing your fair share of business ideas tank. There was the sparkling apple cider I begged Dad to make one harvest that tasted like cinnamon-flavored vomit. The haunted house I spentmonthsrigging up in our barn that provided a mere three minutes of spooky entertainment. But then, there were the unexpected wins, too, like the time I held a memorial for Prince, and we truly partied like it was 1999. Mom once told me that anything worth doing in this life is worth failing at. Not every idea is a winner, but they don’t all have to be, either.
They just have to exist.
Laine’s turned her attention to the field as the screams of true enthusiasm ring through the air, whether to avoid the aftermath of giving sucha confession or out of real support, hard to tell. Darla, Benny, and Bella’s team goes first, being the youngest kids’ match of the day with the collective least patience for waiting. The referee is a bored-looking teenager I recognize from the checkout line at the Piggly Wiggly. She quietly delights in taking forever to type your fruit’s code in until you finally give up and put it back.
Well. This’ll be fun.
The teen ref blows the whistle, and they’re off, a horde of adorable kids in matching T-shirts in their team’s colors. Chance is on the sidelines, already in coach mode, clapping at nothing and yelling encouragement. Laine moves to the edge of her seat, watching intently as the children stumble into a loose formation on the field.
“They’re clumping out there,” Laine says, frowning. She cups her hands around her mouth. “Look alive, blue!”
I raise an eyebrow. I don’t know if Laine’s ready for this level of soccer.
The ref’s whistlePHRRRRIIIIPTTTs, and the game gets off to a bumbling start. Someone manages to kick the ball, and the giant clump of red and blue shirts promptly runs in the wrong direction.
“Darla, turn around! It’s the OTHER way!” Laine’s yelling along with the other parents, which only makes the kids more confused. Half of the team’s just standing there, staring up into the stands, waiting for further instructions. “BENNY! Behind you, buddy!” Laine leaps to her feet, making exaggerated pointing gestures to where the soccer ball sits some twenty yards in the distance, completely forgotten. “The ball! Find the BALL!”
Incredibly, the game devolves from there. Laine’s going hoarse from screaming increasingly frantic instructions to the point that someone cracks open a beer and passes it down the row to her, which she chugs and crumples in a minute flat. Finally, Darla gets the ball and dribbles it toward the goal. Laine is jumping up and down on the bleachers now, clappingher niece on with the kind of fervor that leads to aneurysms. “THAT’S RIGHT, DAR-DAR, YOU GOT THIS! KEEP GOING, BABY, KEEP GOING, KEEP—”
PHRRRRIIIIPTTT!“SHOELACES,” the teen ref calls out.
Everybody freezes. These kids may not know the rules of soccer, but they know whatSHOELACESmeans. Laine, however, doesn’t.
“Shoelaces?What the hell is she talking about?!” Laine looks at me with sheer panic. “Darla was about to score!”
“That boy’s shoelaces came untied.” I point, trying to be helpful.
“So?!”
“So … these are six-year-olds,” I say slowly. “They can’t tie their own laces, the ref’s gotta do it. It’s a trip hazard.”
Laine’s chest heaves as she stares at me, bewildered, as though I’ve invented shoelaces and tripping and should perhaps be destroyed for my crimes. She whips back to the field to watch as the ref saunters over to the kid and takes no less than five excruciating minutes to tie his shoes. When she blows her whistle again, some kid steals the ball from Darla, and Laine moans.
