August stood outside of Leila’s door, trying to clean himself up.
He re-buttoned the top buttons on his shirt and straightened his sport coat before combing out his hair with his fingers. After watching her walk away from him in tears last night, he hadn’t been able to drive home.
Instead, he’d gone down and sat in his truck, dissecting every wrong move he’d made, turning the mistakes over and over in his mind until he’d watched the sun come up an hour ago, and then he hadn’t been able to take it anymore.
He knew Poppa had told him to let her be, but he had to explain everything. He had to see her.
Raising his hand to the door, he knocked quietly, holding his breath to stave off a shout. He was desperate to get in, but he also knew he couldn’t force her to listen. He might have lost her for good this time.
“Lei?” he called softly, knocking again. “Please talk to me. Please let me explain.”
Silence met his request, so he sat down on the red bench underneath the living room window. The shades were drawn, and the house sat eerily quiet. Maybe she was still asleep. It didn’t matter. He’d wait as long as it took to see her.
August closed his eyes. He couldn’t get Leila’s heartbroken expression out of his head. That was all he saw—her eyes red and swollen, her mouth twisted with pain. The image would haunt him forever.
Opening his eyes, he tried to focus on the mountain vista in the distance. What could he do? What would his father do? He couldn’t even ask the question. His dad never would’ve put himself in this situation.
After a while, Poppa came lumbering out of the vineyard on the other side of the cottage, his shoulders bent slightly. “She’s not there.”
August waited to speak until he came closer. “Is she okay?”
The man stared at him a long time, the breeze ruffling a tuft of his white hair. “She’s not okay right now,” he finally said. “But she will be.” He took a seat next to August as though settling in for a long conversation, but Leila was the only person August wanted to talk to right now.
“I’d like to see her.” He started to stand, but the man grabbed his arm and prompted him to sit back down.
“Now’s not the best time.” He said the words with a blend of kindness and sternness. “She needs some space. We had her spend the night at our house, and she was still sleeping when I left.”
“Right.” August let his shoulder slump. Fatigue had started to set in, making his eyes itch, but he wouldn’t sleep until he’d explained himself. “None of this was supposed to happen.” He kneaded his forehead. “I thought I could convince Forrest to buy another place, out on the Western Slope. I was so sure he’d go for it.”
It was a hell of a time for Kingston to decide he cared more about aesthetics and location that he did about making money on this place. “I wanted to help Leila find a way out. Things just got so messed up.” The harder he’d tried, the worse this situation had gotten.
“I understand.” The man didn’t seem to be looking at him any differently than he had yesterday. “Leila knows it too, deep down.” The man’s expression hinted at a smile. “I suspect you two found it a little too easy to pretend to be in love.”
“I do love her.” But it had taken him too long to figure out his feelings. August reached into the inside pocket of his sport coat, where he’d stashed Nonna’s ring. He’d made a habit of carrying the small box with him, maybe to let it bring him hope, but he wouldn’t need to hold on to the box anymore. “I wanted to give this back to you.”
He placed the ring box into the man’s hand. “I know Leila said it was all a lie, but I never lied about how much I care for her.” He stood. “Forrest is sending me to New Mexico. I’m leaving later today.”
Poppa pushed off the bench with a groan and stashed the ring box in his pocket. “You’re sure that’s what you want to do? Run off to New Mexico?”
“Forrest didn’t exactly give me a choice.” After Leila had walked away, Kingston had told him either he went to New Mexico or he lost his job, his stock options, his ability to work in the wine industry. They might’ve been empty threats, but he’d made his point.
“Seems to me this is not Forrest Kingston’s choice to make.” Leila’s grandfather shuffled past him with a clap on his shoulder. “He’s not the one living your life, Auggie. That’s up to you.” Poppa continued down the sidewalk, but then paused and walked back to him. “You should keep this.” He pulled the ring box out of his pocket and handed it back to him. “Hold on to it a little longer.” The man moseyed away, whistling as he disappeared back into the vineyard.
Poppa’s words sat heavy long after he’d walked away. August ran them over and over in his mind as he tucked the ring into his pocket and hiked back to his truck. He’s not the one living your life. That wasn’t exactly true. Forrest Kingston had been running his life for almost a decade. Only August hadn’t had much reason to care until now.
He climbed into his truck and drove down the switchbacks, thinking through every assignment his boss had sent him on. He’d never questioned, never pushed back. He’d never had a reason to. The constant traveling, the endless assignments, had kept him content. But they weren’t enough anymore.
Driving faster, he turned onto the ranch’s driveway, but instead of heading for his cabin, he went straight to his mom’s house.
She was sitting in her favorite Adirondack chair, reading and enjoying her cup of coffee like she did most mornings.
After parking behind her car, he got out and dragged himself to the chair next to hers.
“Looks like you had a rough night.” She slipped off her glasses and set them on the table between them as though she knew they’d be here for a while.
“I screwed everything up,” he told her as if she didn’t already know. He had no doubt his sister had relayed every painful detail of the scene with Forrest. “I lost her, Mom. I should’ve been honest with her. I should’ve told her everything instead of trying to fix the problems on my own.”
He let his head rest against the chair and stared up at the swirls of clouds in the royal blue sky. “The look on Leila’s face…” A soul-crushing despair weighed him down. That had been the worst part, seeing her lose all faith in him. “The Valentinos are being pushed out because of me. And Lei? She’ll never forgive me.”
His mother had always been a good listener—something he’d forgotten. She often sat quietly, letting another person’s words have the space they deserved. It hit him now how much he’d missed talking to her, how big a mistake it had been to keep her on the fringes of his life all these years. He added that to his growing list of regrets.
After a lengthy quiet between them, she sighed and angled her body to his. “I think it’s past time I told you something, Auggie.” The gravity in her tone mirrored the solemnity in her eyes. “Your father left me once.”
“What?” He bolted upright, immediately defensive of the man who’d been his biggest hero. His father had left? No. Impossible. He hadn’t heard right. “What did you say?”
“We’d only been married for three years.” Her eyes went blank, like she’d traveled back to a place she didn’t want to go. “We’d just bought this land and had barely finished staining the logs on the house here.” Her hand absentmindedly touched one of the log beams behind them. “I’d started talking about wanting to have a baby. He was getting ready to turn thirty, after all. But…I think it was too much for him—the house and the baby talk and the fact that he had a milestone birthday coming up.”
August fought to keep listening, fought to keep his denials to himself, to keep his mouth shut so she could continue.
“I noticed him distancing himself from me for a couple of weeks.” Her inhale sharpened, as though the memory still hurt. “And then one day, I came home from the grocery store, and he was packing up his car. He said he couldn’t be tied down, that he wasn’t ready for everything I wanted.”
“Jesus, Mom.” His stomach buckled, making him nauseous. His father—the man he’d idolized—had walked out on his wife because he hadn’t wanted to be tied down? He didn’t even know how to process that. “What did you say to him?”
“What could I say?” She blinked a few times, likely to keep tears at bay. “I loved him. I saw how conflicted he was, how he was struggling.” She sat up taller and leaned closer. “But, honey…if I had forced him to stay, I would’ve lost him. Love doesn’t force. Love offers freedom. So I let him go, and I told him that I would be here, that he could come back. I told him I would always keep a place for him in my heart.”
How had she offered his dad the option to come back after watching him walk away from her? August scrolled back through all of his memories of his father, the man who had held his family close. The man who had always put his wife and kids first—above everything else. “I can’t believe he left. I can’t believe you let him come back.”
She smiled now, as though the weight of the memory had been lifted. “He didn’t even last three months before he drove back into this driveway.” For all the pain her smile held, it still showed a glimpse of joy. “I heard a car coming and somehow I knew. I walked out the door just as he turned off the engine and I simply opened my arms. He walked into them and we never looked back.”
“It was that easy?” Emotion tightened his throat. It sure as hell didn’t seem that easy to right past wrongs, to make up for mistakes.
“It wasn’t easy, but we worked at it. And we made it.” She rose from her chair and walked to the porch rail, looking out over the lake. “I think maybe—because of the way we lost him—we put him on this pedestal.” His mother turned to face him again. “He was a good man, a strong man, a family man, an honest man. But Auggie, he wasn’t perfect. And he wasn’t always the man you remember him to be. He had his struggles and his failures. He made mistakes sometimes.”
“I can’t seem to remember any of them.” He’d been a lucky enough kid to have a father whom he could look up to. In his eyes, in his memories, his father had been perfect. He was the man August had always compared himself to, and he knew he would never measure up. “I wanted to be like him, and then after he died, I failed. I failed to be strong. I failed to help you.”
His mother simply held his stare, listening again in her wise way.
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes.” Not only recently with Leila and her family, but over the years with his own. “I’m sorry I disappeared. I’m sorry I was too much of a coward to come back.”
“You weren’t a coward.” His mother pulled her chair closer to him and sat back down. “You have so much of your father in you, Auggie. You feel things as deeply as he did. You are every bit as loyal and devoted as he was.”
How could she think he was loyal and devoted when he hadn’t let people into his life? “I wish I could see the similarities.” Then maybe he’d know what to do, how to make things right with Leila.
His mom took his hand. “One thing about your father, he never let his mistakes dictate how he lived his life. He overcame them. He owned them and he allowed each of them to make him into a better man.”
That was why August remembered him as being perfect. “After he came back to you, he made his family the most important thing in his life.”
“Exactly. He promised me he would never turn his back on me again, and he never did.” His mom wiped away a tear. “Your father left us far too soon, honey, but I know for a fact if I would’ve had the chance to look into his eyes before he took his last breath, I wouldn’t have seen one single regret there. He lived a big, beautiful life full of joy because those mistakes he’d made taught him how to love people well.” She waited until his eyes met hers. “And you can use yours to make sure you don’t have any regrets either.”
“Thank you for telling me about Dad.” Hearing his parents’ story had given him a new perspective. “I don’t know if Lei can forgive me for how things have gone. But even if she doesn’t, I’ll make this right.” He didn’t have any doubts. There was no way he was leaving for New Mexico later. Instead, he would go back to California and take on Forrest.