Page 45 of The Voice We Find

The lobby is nearly empty now. The only people remaining are wearing lanyards or participating in clean-up activities.

“August said to tell you good-bye,” Gabby says quietly.

“He did? When?” I can’t keep the disappointment from my voice. “I wouldn’t have kept talking if I’d known he needed to leave.”

Truthfully, I was hoping we might go do something together afterward. Grab some lunch, talk through the service, take another step forward in our growing friendship. But Gabby’s expression tells me there’s something I’m missing.

“It’s not you,” she says. “August ... well, this isn’t really his scene.”

“Ah.” It’s clicking into place now. “Because small talk makes him uncomfortable.” He’s mentioned this to me a time or two. Or twenty.

She seems to consider me for a moment, and I’m just about to repeat myself, when she says, “Actually,allof it makes him uncomfortable.”

“All of what?”

“Anything having to do with his faith in God. It’s been that way since the accident.”

Sorry I missed you when you left this morning. You doing okay? I’m headed home now if you want to call. I’ll be around all day.??

By the time I’ve parked back at the winery, thoughts of August make up roughly ninety-two percent of my brain—many of them pertaining to what his sister told me after church.“It’s been that way since the accident.”

What did that mean? And what did God and the church have to do with his parents’ accident? Isn’t faith what people turn to most amid a crisis?

The minute I think it, a grainy, recycled image of the wine cellar downloads into my brain without permission. I shut it outimmediately. Whatever August is going through now is far worse than anything done to me.

But as I walk the path to the pool house, I imagine how different my life might be today if I’d grown up hearing sermons like the one preached this morning, or if I’d sang songs about a God whose love is unconditional and full of mercy. How different things would be if my home had been a place where competition and comparison hadn’t led the way ... or where love hadn’t been as easily won as it was lost.

How far my family has strayed from the legacy Gigi had prayed for. I touch the cross at the base of my neck.

After Gigi’s first husband died in his early thirties, leaving her with a child to support, she came up with a plan to harvest the small crop of grapes on the hillside of her property. It was a last-ditch effort seeing as she was months away from losing her farm altogether. After dozens of wine critics turned their nose up at her request for a tasting, one lone soul had finally agreed: a fellow widower who was as impressed with my grandma’s tenacity as he was with her wine making. Eventually, she married Christopher Bentley, and between the two of them, they planted, harvested, bottled, marketed, and sold their wine to local vendors, stores, and restaurants for more than thirty years, until the day Papa passed quietly in his sleep.

The winery that started as a dream seeded in desperation had flourished into a profitable business with a reputable name, which is why Gigi put conditions on the inheritance she passed down to her daughter in her trust—a sore spot with my father, to be sure. I was too young to remember the specifics of all the disagreements between Gigi and my dad, but it was clear there was no love lost between the two of them when she died. His final protest against her removing his name from her beneficiaries and excluding him from the board of trustees was his boycott of her funeral.

It was my nine-year-old hand that rubbed my mother’s back as she wept and tossed white roses onto Gigi’s grave. I’d also asked the preacher to sing her favorite song: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

Shortly after Gigi was gone, I began to dread Sundays at thewinery. As kids, Jasper and I were usually tasked with things like restocking inventory, cycling the service laundry, pressure-washing mossy pathways, and attending the weekly business meeting disguised as a family meal. When it came to the game of winning our father’s favor, I was rarely, if ever, the victor.

Thankful those days are over, I’m already planning to get in my comfys and open this journal as soon as I’m in the pool house—

“Sophie.”

At the sound of my name, I stop mid-stride to find my sister-in-law gliding across the back patio of what was once my childhood home—minus the latest renovations. Her ombre wrap dress ripples in the breeze, drawing my full attention.

“Hey,” I reply, trying to sound casual even though I’ve never felt casual around Natalie a day in my life. “How are you?”

She grips the railing, facing the glorious view of the vineyard and rolling hills beyond me. She leans in and pitches her voice low. “Your parents are here. They got in last night. Your mom said she’s been trying to get ahold of you all morning. I figured you’d like a heads-up before lunch.”

A brick of nerves lands hard in the pit of my belly. My parents are here? Now? Four weeks ago I felt ready for this. I’d had an entire day of travel to mentally prepare for conversations long overdue. But today? I lift my phone and see that, sure enough, it’s still set on Do Not Disturb. I panic scroll through my missed notifications. My mom has called three times and texted twice. And even though my nerves have just been set on fire, I notice the one notification that isn’t there.

“Do I have time to run to the pool house and—”

The back door opens behind Natalie, and my words freeze.

“Natalie? Have you heard from So—Oh.” My mother spots me and lightly touches her fingertips to her lips. “Sophie.” She blinks rapidly. “You’re home.”

For the briefest moment, it’s as if I can see Gigi staring back at me through my mother’s eyes, and I feel the most overwhelming urge to break into a run and throw my arms around her neck. Totell her I’ve missed her. To tell her I love her. To tell her why I had to leave home all those years ago even after she begged me to stay.

But then my mother blinks, and the spell is broken. Outward displays of affection are simply not the Wilder way. And my mother is nothing if not a model of proper behavior.

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