Page 49 of Impurrfections

“I liked you. I thought we connected. And all the time, you were laughing at me.”

“No! Jesus, I was so far from laughing.” That made me choke. I stepped in, leaned my shoulders against the tile wall, and let the door shut, enclosing us in this small, dim, echoing space. “You treated me like an ordinary person, like someone who wasn’t losing their shit all over. You helped me clean the cut on my arm?—”

“I barely looked at it. I hate blood worse than you do.”

Another lie I’d told. I felt my face heat. “I don’t, um, actually hate blood. I couldn’t tell you why I was acting so weird without it being a whole big thing, and blood was an easy excuse.”

“Uh-huh.” The dog whined and nudged Shane’s knee with her nose. He bent and rubbed her ears, murmuring softly.

“Are you really going to keep her in here?” That was an easy question, not fraught with anything except old memories I could refuse to look at.

“Yeah. I don’t know what she might get into roaming loose in the whole building.”

“I could get a hook, maybe, for the door. It doesn’t lock.”

“If she learns to pull it open, I’ll take you up on that.”

I nodded.

Shane dragged the outsized dog bed at his feet toward the corner of the room and called the dog to come try it out. He selected a chew toy from an array dumped in one of the sinks and offered it to her. She sniffed the bed and toy dubiously, but eventually lifted the bone-shaped chew from Shane’s hand and carried it with her into the bed, settling down with a long, soft groan.

“You don’t think she’s going into labor?” I asked.

“Nah. When my mom was pregnant, she’d make that noise for the whole last month.” Shane stayed squatting beside Foxy, petting her, but after a silent minute, he looked up at me, his eyes shadowed in the low light. “If the blood didn’t bother you that day, what did?”

“Ah.” I chewed my lip. “That takes a bit of history.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” But even in the dimness, I could see his expression shut down.

“I will. I just…” I took a slow breath, trying to reach the right level of detachment to get through this story. “Back in the sixties, my grandparents got married in France. It was an alliance between two wealthy families. My grandfather assumed he’d be the one to take over the family wine business, but his older brother left the priesthood and came back to serve as heir. Grand-père was not the kind of guy to play second fiddle to anyone, so he took his share in cash and came to America, bought a vineyard from a guy who knew his grapes, but not marketing. Started Lafontaine Winery. Made more money.”

“As rich folk do.”

“Yeah, I guess. He and Grand-mère were obsessed with the business. They had one kid, my father, who married my mom after she got pregnant with me. That was a family dirty secret, but I can do math. Papa was never around much. He flew all over doing marketing things, loved going to Europe. I lived with Mom. Until she died when I was five.” My throat closed.

“Seriously, dude, I don’t need the long, hard story.”

I shook my head. “It’s relevant.” Two dry words that let me go on. “Papa inherited a lot of money from Mom because her parents passed just before she did. My grandparents expected him to put it into the business. He used it to finally escape them, go off to France, live whatever life he wanted.”

“Did you go with him?”

Another headshake. Five words. “He left me with them.”

Shane straightened to look me in the eyes. “With the people he ‘escaped?’” He made air quotes around my word.

“Yeah.”

“Well, that’s fucked.”

I laughed, becauseyeah, it was, I was. Thanks, Shane, for the perfect summation.By the time I stopped laughing, my chest was tight. “I ran away at seventeen. I told you that. It was all true. But my grandparents died of COVID two years ago, within a month of each other. They left everything to me, despite my running off. They’d disowned my dad, and they were obsessed with the family name. Maybe they figured I’d be eager to come back to the vineyard and run it, since it was making good money. Except they didn’t make living there contingent in the will. Their lawyer dropped that ball. I inherited it all free and clear, no conditions.”

“You mean you own even more than this place?”

“A vineyard and winery, a manor house. I gave those away already.”

“Seriously?”

“To the guy who spent twenty-five years doing all the hard work on the vines and the wines and never got invited to sit at my grandparents’ table. He deserved to own the vineyard. Which leaves this venue.” I sucked in a breath. “When I first heard it was coming to me, I was going to bulldoze the place, flatten the building to the ground. But my dad challenged the terms of the will.”

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