Eight Hundred Grapes (29)

That I could relate to. It was what made me sad about finding out about Maddie the way I had. It would be locked in with the wedding, what I knew about Ben, what Ben had left out about himself.

“Do you guys still talk?” I said.

He pointed back in the direction of town, pointing out a house over on State Street, a barn to the side. “We live there,” he said.

“You guys are still together?”

He nodded. “Yep. We are still together. Very much so.”

I started doing the math in my head. He had a girlfriend he’d referred to at the bar: a free-spirited, vegan type.

“She’s the one who loves chia?”

“She’s the one who loves chia.”

It was blocking me up, reconciling the two things about her that Jacob had shared. “The one who wants a big, fancy wedding?”

He nodded. “We are all complicated people,” he said.

There was that word again, used as an excuse, used to justify something that felt like love.

He smiled. “As are you, I’m guessing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know Ms. L.A. Law, but you seem pretty connected to Sonoma County. Unless that’s your thing, storming into people’s offices and demanding they not steal your home?”

“Very funny.”

“Just saying . . . building a life so far away from a place you love so much? That’s complicated.”

I smiled, a bit surprised at the insight.

“Lee, that’s my girlfriend, doesn’t like it here so much,” he said. “I was hoping you could help with that? Show her what makes it so great.”

“My father says people either love Sonoma or they feel trapped here.”

“They should put that on the brochure,” he said.

Jacob looked back in the direction of his house, then kept moving.

“So why did you leave? Sonoma, I mean?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Too complicated?” he said.

I tried not to laugh. “No, it’s just, our family saw a bunch of really tough harvests. I wanted a life that felt more stable.”

He nodded, considering. “It’s kind of ironic though, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“Well, you still ended up in a bar, in your wedding dress.”

I looked at him, disconcerted. Why did Jacob think he knew me well enough to say that? Why did it bug me if he wasn’t right?

I sped up, Jacob hurrying to keep up.

“What happened with Ben?” Jacob said. “Tell me. I have a gift for it.”

“For what?”

“For telling people the reasons they shouldn’t be as mad as they are.”

“You talk too much. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have trouble answering questions?”

“Just yours, and that’s probably because they go on and on!”

He smiled, but he stood there waiting for an answer. “So . . . what happened?”

I tilted my head, considering what to say. Which was when I realized why I was so hurt that Ben hadn’t told me about Maddie. It wasn’t just that he’d kept his daughter from me—it was the explanation as to why. “I think Ben doubted me.”

He was quiet. “We all doubt each other,” he said.

“My parents didn’t. My father saw my mom in a car and that was the end of the story.”

“Was it the end of the story?” Jacob said.

“No. What does that say?”

Jacob paused, and I could see him deciding to tell me that he knew there was something going on with my father and my mother.

“That there is no one way,” he said.

We headed down the long driveway, quietly, Jacob looking up at the sky, the clear blue of it.

“It’s been dry,” he said. “All harvest. Not sure your father told you that.”

My father rarely gave me details about the harvest when I wasn’t home, or maybe I shouldn’t be letting myself off the hook like that. I rarely asked him the specifics about his work and he had stopped offering them. Which was starting to feel like a fitting punishment for the fact that soon I wouldn’t be able to ask him anymore.

“It makes me nervous,” he said. “I think we’re going to get soaked, and your father’s most valuable grapes are still on the vines.”

I followed his eyes up to the sky, which was cloudless and calm. “It doesn’t seem that way,” I said.

Jacob started walking again, slowly moving toward the house. “It never does.”

He paused.

“I feel like we’re going to get all the way to your parents’ house without me saying the thing I think would be the most helpful in regards to Ben,” Jacob said.

“You have a thing?”

“I have a thing,” he said.

“Go for it.”

“If you’re not careful, you run out of time.”

I tried to figure out what he meant.

He pointed straight ahead, down the driveway. And I realized what he meant was he had run out of time to tell his thing because we were no longer alone.

On the doorstep was the cutest girl in the world. Wearing heart leggings. The girl who looked exactly like her famously beautiful mother.