I nodded. I had friends from law school who felt like Jacob did, who absolutely hated the law. I didn’t. That wasn’t the same as saying I loved it. Suzannah loved it. She loved it because she loved confrontation and she loved being right—and law allowed her both of those things on a daily basis.
I didn’t love it, but it had always felt like the right path. And when I doubted it, I thought of my law school graduation. My parents had driven to L.A., proudly treating my then boyfriend, Griffin Winfield, to dinner after. At dinner, my father made a toast saying that he was glad I was going to have an easy life. Griffin had given him a look, as if deciding how rude he wanted to be. Then he decided he wanted to be very rude. He told my father that climbing the legal ladder was hardly easy. Though he hadn’t understood what my father meant. My father meant that law provided a path. If you worked hard, you’d be rewarded. You’d have a career you could count on.
Griffin didn’t agree with that either. He thought it was talent that separated out the most successful lawyers. Though that was the main thing he didn’t understand. My father never measured success the way he did—reaching the tip-top of something, as if there was an objective tip-top. My father measured it by how well you figured out what you wanted for your life—what you needed to be happy.
And this was where my mixed feelings came in. Recently, I had to admit I didn’t feel happy. Maybe I was distracted by the wedding planning, or our move to Europe. All I knew was that I needed a change. And I was hoping London was going to provide it.
“So you want to stay in L.A.? For your work?” Jacob said.
“There may be a world in which I do that,” I said.
“The world in which you tell me what made you walk out on your dress fitting?”
We reached the main strip of Graton, which wasn’t really a strip at all, just two restaurants across the street from each other. But they were great restaurants, farm-fresh food from the gardens behind them. Spaghetti nights on Monday. With all the great food in Los Angeles, I still missed spaghetti on Monday.
“You tell me first,” I said.
“About my botched wedding?” He shrugged. “My fiancé would say that she felt like I prioritized my work over her. We were getting married at City Hall, the week before we headed out here. Just a couple of friends and family at this restaurant in Tribeca afterward. Then, the morning of the wedding, she said that she didn’t want to get married the way we were getting married. That she wanted a wedding that counted more, with a fancy dress and a ten-piece band and an expensive cake.”
“You don’t buy it?”
“She hates cake.”
We passed through the entire town and were heading up the hill in the direction of my parents’ house.
He paused. “We weren’t in a good place,” he said. “And it’s hard to get married when you’re not in a good place. It feels fake.”
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.