I pushed a hand through my hair. It didn’t matter. Without Percival, I had no ties to this town. Entertaining thoughts of a lasting relationship wasn’t fair to Autumn.
My grandfather’s low growl rose in my head.A man’sworth is in his name. Percival is no longer your last name, but it’s alive in the land. Don’t let your dad destroy it.
I shook off the memory, exhausted at still being torn between my grandfather and my dad after all these years.
Besides, I had to shower, and then I had to bury myself in my wife.
I folded my clothes outside the door for Autumn. In the bathroom, I turned on the faucet and stepped under the frigid spray. I needed the cold shock after tonight. Once the water warmed, I let it pour over me and scrubbed myself off. This was my second shower of the day, and I needed the reprieve of this little curtained cove.
So much had changed since I’d left. Was it me who’d altered the most? Or Dad?
When I’d left home, Dad hadn’t had to worry about feeding me, though he’d quit long before that. Had he noticed I was even gone? Maybe not as much in the years he was drinking.
Seeing him reminded me of the good times, and I hated it. Those days had been me and Mom, but now memories of Dad were invading my brain. Was that what it had been like for him? Had I been a walking, talking reminder of the life he used to have, the one he’d lost when Mom had died?
No wonder he’d let me go without a word.
What had made him sober up?
It sure as fuck hadn’t been me.
I flung the shower curtain back and pressed a towel against my face. Autumn’s sweet scent glided into my nose on a deep inhale. The tension from my earlier circle of thought drained out of me.
None of that mattered anymore. All I had to worry about was a quiet night with my wife.
I stepped out of her bathtub/shower combo. How quickly I had adapted to one showerhead. A delicious cinnamon smell was drifting into the bathroom. After throwing on a T-shirt and an old pair of black basketball shorts that proved I wasn’t always a slacks-and-loafers guy, I went in search of my little teacher and the source of the sweet smell.
She was at the stove, her hips swaying. Her phone was on her dining table by my computer. A twangy country song came from a small speaker by one of the cupboards. This was the private dancing she did. I was glad it was all for me.
I went behind her and slid my hands around her waist. She jumped and giggled, looking over her shoulder. “You just appear, don’t you?”
“It’s a handy trait when you’re the boss.” I eyed the french toast she was cooking. In another pan was sausage, and she had a bowl of eggs already whisked together sitting on the counter. “You didn’t have to go through all the trouble of cooking.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t have many takeout options in Bourbon Canyon.”
“That was the one thing I never looked back on when I moved.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “You looked back though?”
“A few times,” I admitted. If anyone else had asked, I’d have denied it. “College was easy. It was new and I had something to focus on, and there’s a lot to do in Vegas.”
“But you got homesick?”
“Yes. There’re always people. To go from barely seeing Dad to having roommates and classes full of more people than my entire high school? A vast change. Then I got a place of my own with a buddy, but he worked nights and was gone a lot.”
She flipped the two pieces of french toast. “And you were back to being alone.”
“Sometimes my grandpa Percival would visit, but he’d rant up a storm about how Dad was mismanaging the farm and what a drunk he was. Then he got too sick to travel.” The relief I’d felt had filled me with shame. My grandfather hadn’t realized that he was also detailing all the ways I’d failed. I didn’t share his last name. I hadn’t gotten Percival. I couldn’t help Dad. No matter how much wealth I accumulated, it wasn’t Percival, and Grandpa Percival didn’t care, wasn’t even proud. The thought filled me with dread, like he was going to return and indict me all over again.
“You two were close?”
“Yeah.” I thought for a moment. “In a way. His health didn’t allow much, and he and Dad never got along. So our visits were short.” And filled with Grandpa Percival’s anger. “At least he called a few times when I was in college before he died. Dad never reached out.” Not for a long time. By the time he had called me, I’d bottled up so much resentment I disconnected midring.
She looked back again. “That must’ve hurt.”
“Yeah,” I said gruffly. At the time, I hadn’t realized how much I’d dwelled on it. “I can only guess that when he started calling was when he got sober. I’d been gone for almost ten years by then.”
“Do you think he wanted something?”
