“I’myour family, Dad!” I jab my heart, hard, with my thumb. “Me! Your daughter!”
Dad sighs and runs his fingers through his waves. “I understand why you’re upset. This is all coming as a big shock to you, and it will take sometime to get used to the idea.” He says this withzero irony, even though it’s almost verbatim what he said when he told me he was going to Italy in the first place.
“God, Dad, could you be any worse at communicating?!” I clench my jaw to keep from crying. I’m so goddamn tired ofcrying. “Maybe I wouldn’t be so shocked if you’d actually talk to me.” The tears come anyway.
“I’m sorry, Zoe Nicoletta. I’ve handled this all wrong.” Dad rubs his hand over the day’s stubble, morose for the first time since I arrived. Of course, I caused it. Or his crushing sense of fatherly duty to me, anyway.
“Why, Dad? Tell me why you want to stay.” I sniff, wiping my eyes on the back of my sleeve. “Really fucking explain yourself for once.”
Dad breathes in deeply through his nose. “I will—try, Zoe Nicoletta. It doesn’t come easy to me, but you deserve the best I can give.” He clasps his hands together, the string lights flickering across his thoughtful face.
“Moving back here, to a place where I existed before your mother, it’s woken up a part of me that I’d long forgotten, Zoe. I feel … lighter here. More myself than I have in decades.” He pauses, reallysearchingfor a way to make me understand without making me feel bad at the same time.
“Imake you sad, don’t I?” There it is, the question that’s loomed over me ever since Mom died and Dad stopped looking at me. I’ve never spoken it aloud, afraid it would give the words truth. But I’m too tired right now for anythingbutthe truth—I just want to know. “I remind you of Mom.”
“No!” Dad sits up straight with a flash. “Zoe Nicoletta, you are my dearest thought. You are the sweetness that runs through my life like a river. Yes, I see bits of your mother in you—the way you laugh when something surprises you, how you always look for the moon. But they don’t make me sad. I cherish these glimpses of my beloved when they appear. Mostly, I seeyou, Zoe Nicoletta. My sweet, brilliant, lonely Zoe.” He touches my cheek gently. “But that last part’s changing now, isn’t it?”
He brushes my tears away, not waiting for me to answer. “Great loves change us. One minute, you are yourself, growing straight up into the sky. But then, someone comes along that challenges the sun for your attention. You grow toward them, entwining your life with theirs, sharing the same water, soil, air, and light. You hold them up as best you can, and they do the same for you. Until one of you no longer can stand.” He smiles then, though his eyes fill with tears. “And the other one has to let go. I’ve never been good at letting go, my Zoe, and I’m afraid I’ve never taught you how to, either.”
I open my mouth to respond, but a small sob comes out instead. Dad gathers me in his arms and holds me close. “It can be scary, letting yourself need someone, especially when you’ve lost someone you needed so much before. We both know loss, Zoe Nicoletta, but where we’ve gone wrong is fearing it. The truth is, when I first came out here, I was not okay. Seeing Nonna so weak terrified me, and the guilt of all the years spent not visiting her in healthier days ate me alive. I was so afraid of losing her that I was wasting the time we had left.”
Dad holds me back far enough so he can look at me, his eyes shining and tender. “It was Nonna who set me straight, Zoe Nicoletta. Even in her illness, she could see I was committing the same sins I did when your mother got sick. Wasting her time by counting the minutes we had left together, mourning each one as it slipped from my fingers instead of using that time to love her. What a miserly way to live.” Dad shakes his head, his lips pressed in a grim line. “If I could go back, Zoe Nicoletta, I’d do things so differently with your mother. I’d be there for her, reallybe there, instead of mourning her before she even passed. And I’d be there for you, too. I’d show you that we are strong enough for great love, even when it entails great loss.” His smile is forlorn, laden with the relieved exhaustion that follows when you’re finally allowed to set down a heavy burden.“I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you. I am even sorrier that I taught you to fear love, instead of cherishing it. My only consolation is that you’ve found love, anyway, and together, you and Laine can run Bluebell and keep your dreams alive, too.”
I love my father, I always have. Even at his lowest and most broken, I never begrudged him the pain he felt, or how it took him so far away from me. It’d be like blaming a tree for being struck by lightning, then judging it for its charred, ruined trunk. Sure, it was once a beautiful tree that gave you shade and fruit, but bad shit happens, and this stump of a father is all that remains.
I never expected him to grow back. I never thought he could.
But he did. He has. Heis.
And it’s going to change everything.
Well, that’s the problem with making plans around other people, isn’t it?Laine’s words come back to me, a reminder and admonition all at once.
Laine wants to run her own vineyard, make her own wines, be her own vintner. Something she’s wantedforever. All that’s holding her back from her dreams is her promise to stay at Bluebell until Dad comes home, and now, he never is. Would she accept Bluebell Vineyards in place of the fresh start in Oregon? Can I let her change my mother’s vineyard enough to make it hers, too? It’s a huge request, asking her to change her plans for me to stay on and live season to season at my struggling little vineyard. Dad did that for Mom and look what it got him—a decades-long depression and an identity crisis he’s only just now confronting. I can’texpectLaine to hang up her dreams and stay in Blue Ridge forever any more than I can expect Dad to.
But can Ihope? I take a long pull of my dwindling wine, letting the plummy burn clarify against my tongue, considering what that would really look like.Feellike. Laine, taking over for Dad permanently.
“Won’t you miss the vineyard?”
“The vineyard, yes. You, more than anything. But making wine? No.” Dad laughs softly. “That was more of my refusing to let go, I’m afraid. Your mother begged me to sell Bluebell before she died.”
I choke on my actual breath. “Shewhat?”
Dad nods, swirling his wine. “She didn’t want us to stay at the vineyard out of grief. She wanted us to make new lives for ourselves, follow new dreams. Maybe even here, in Italy.” He closes his eyes and slowly shakes his head. “She knewexactlywhat would happen if we stayed at Bluebell, and I’m so sorry, Zoe Nicoletta, because I chose that life of grief for us, anyway.”
I sit back, stunned. Mom wanted tosellBluebell Vineyards? Just like that, the cornerstone of my whole reality, the basis of every big decision I’ve ever made, sifts through my fingers like sand. This whole time, I’ve been guarding her vineyard with my life, bartering days, weeks, months, and years to keep her dreams safe from the passage of her own time. But I see all of that for what it was now.
My choice.
It was always just my choice.
“At the very least, I should’ve hired another vintner years ago, someone with real passion for the work. I simply could not bear another person taking your mother’s place, though.” Dad reaches over and pats my hand. “The beauty of that work falling to the womanyoulove is not lost on me. Life is funny that way, bella.”
How his words squeeze my heart.
“I’m going to miss you so much,” I whisper, and this time, I take him into my arms and hug him tight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
