People are rarely monsters every minute of their lives.
Sometimes they love you.
Sometimes they damage you.
Sometimes they do both so completely you spend years unable to tell where one ends and the other begins.
My voice softened.
“I know you love me.”
Something broke in her expression.
“But you don’t own me.”
Her eyes filled.
“Claire.”
“And you don’t own Lila.”
Lila looked at me.
For once, there was no competition between us.
No measuring.
No mother’s voice standing between us telling one who had won.
Just two sisters.
My mother straightened.
“What happens now?”
Julian answered.
“Under Article Nine, your voting authority terminated when the unauthorized licensing agreement was executed.”
Her chin lifted.
“You’ll challenge it.”
“I won’t.”
She stared.
“You were his partner.”
“I was.”
“You were my friend.”
Julian’s face softened.
“I was.”
“Then help me.”
“I am helping you, Margaret.”
Her eyes flashed.
“By taking everything from me?”
“No.”
He glanced at me and Lila.
“By finally stopping you from taking everything from them.”
I thought that was the final revelation.
It wasn’t.
Julian looked at his watch.
Then at me.
“Claire, your father left one additional instruction.”
My heart sank.
“I don’t think I can handle another one.”
For the first time, Julian smiled.
“This one isn’t bad.”
My mother suddenly looked away.
That frightened me more.
Julian gestured toward the vineyard.
“Do you know why this property is called Aurelia?”
I glanced around.
“No.”
“Do you know what it was called before the restoration?”
Something in my chest tightened.
“Before?”
“Bellweather Ranch.”
The world seemed to tilt.
I knew that name.
I had not heard it in almost twenty years.
When I was little, my father sometimes disappeared from Los Angeles on Saturday mornings and took me with him.
We drove north.
He bought terrible gas-station coffee and let me choose the music.
Eventually we arrived at a dusty old ranch surrounded by dying grapevines and enormous oak trees.
There had been a stone house with a leaking roof.
An abandoned fountain.
Wild lavender everywhere.
My father loved that place.
When I was nine, I had tied a white bedsheet around myself like a wedding dress and stood beneath the largest oak tree.
My father had laughed.
“Planning ahead?”
“I’ll get married here.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“The fountain doesn’t work.”
“I’ll fix it.”
“The roof leaks.”
“I’ll fix that too.”
“Anything else?”
“I need lights in the tree.”
He had looked up into the branches.
“How many?”
“A thousand.”
“That’s a lot of lights.”
I shrugged.
“It’s my wedding.”
He had laughed so hard he nearly spilled his coffee.
Three years later, my mother told me the property had been sold.
After my father died, I never thought about it again.
Until now.
I looked slowly toward the giant oak above me.
Lights.
Hundreds of them.
My hands began trembling.
“No.”
Julian smiled.
My mother closed her eyes.
“No, no, no.”
I walked toward the old fountain.
Restored now.
Covered in lavender.
But beneath the new stone coping was a tiny crack on the pedestal.
A crescent shape.
I remembered making that crack when I dropped one of my father’s tools.
I turned.
“This is Bellweather.”
Julian nodded.
“Your father never sold it.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“He transferred it to a private property trust.”
“Why?”
Julian gave a small laugh.
“Because every time contractors showed him a renovation plan, he said they were doing it wrong.”
Tears blurred my vision.
Daniel put an arm around me.
Julian continued.
“Your father spent years restoring the vineyard anonymously.
The work continued after his death under instructions in the trust.”
