I took a deep breath in. “The details don’t matter, then.”
She shook her head. “The details matter,” she said. “It’s the big picture that confuses us.”
What were the details of today? What was the big picture? The big picture was that my mother made sacrifices. We all did, didn’t we? Hers caught up. But now she was trying to let them go for what she had gotten in return.
My mother leaned forward. “Ben works hard to understand you,” she said. “It doesn’t mean he’s good at it. But it’s important that he tries. Sometimes all you need is a man to remind you he’s doing the best he can.”
My initial thought was that Ben did more than the best he could. He succeeded in knowing what I needed, often before I did. Except then I thought about the enormity of what he had kept from me, his daughter, her mother’s feelings for him, his feelings for her. An entire other life he was living. If he really understood me, wouldn’t he know that what I needed most—what I wanted in my new family—was what I had in my first family? What we still had? It was a mess and we fought and battled and lost it and made bad decisions for one another. But we put it on the table. We put one another first. Ben had done the opposite.
My mother pointed toward the care package. “Jacob dropped this. He left it outside your father’s door. I don’t know how he got back there. It doesn’t matter. Jacob left this.”
“He did?”
She opened the wrapping. “He wanted to make sure your father was okay. And, like a man, he brought everything we didn’t exactly need.” She held up a box of licorice as an example. “Doing the best he can.”
She was quiet.
My mother put her arm around me. “Can we go home and go to sleep? I feel like I could sleep for five days straight. And I probably should. I should probably rest up so I can be back here in five hours.”
I nodded. That I could do for my father. I could take his wife home and get her some rest.
“FYI. The last time I felt this shitty, I was pregnant with you.”
I smiled. “Are you going to tell me what Dad said to you? When he whispered in your ear.”
“Do you think that’s what turned everything around? You think it’s as simple as that?”
“I’m just nosy.”
She pushed her hair behind her ears, considering what he said, whether she was going to share it. Then she smiled.
“Your father said the same thing he said when he got into my yellow buggy.”
“What was that?”
She shrugged. “So, where are you taking me?”
She shook her head, taking a stick of licorice, taking a large bite. Then she stood up to go, care package in hand, my arm over her shoulder as we headed out the hospital door.
“It’s not all a happy ending. We’re going to have to get you a new tent,” she said.
I looked at her, confused, at which point she rolled her eyes, like she couldn’t believe she had to explain this.
“A new tent for your wedding. Rain damaged it. Rain and wind and everything else that a tent like that is supposed to stand up to, but doesn’t.”
She leaned in, as if listening to my heart, as if listening to how that made my heart feel.
“Not tonight, though.” She shook her head. “Nothing is open tonight.”
The First Contract When I got back to the vineyard, I went down to the winemaker’s cottage, the back of it burned off, Bobby sitting on the porch. He was sitting alone, drinking a beer. At 5:55 in the morning.
He didn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on our vineyard, the sun not yet lighting it. The fog still dusting the vines, laminating them in frost and half-light.
Bobby stared straight ahead, glassy-eyed and confused, the stare of someone who had been up all night. “You may as well sit down,” he said. “There’s half a beer left, and I don’t think anything is going to collapse.”
He moved over and handed up the bottle of beer. I had a sip, taking a seat.
“Long night,” he said. “We got half of the grapes. We can use half of them.”
“It could have been worse, then,” I said.
“It also could have been better,” he said. He paused. “Mom back?”
“Yeah. She went upstairs to go to sleep.”
“Good. She must be exhausted.”
Then he took his beer back, even though I was mid-sip, which was when I noticed he had Band-Aids on his fingers, over the nails.
Bobby shrugged, looking down at them. “You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”