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Alana reared back. Her face felt tight, like Freya had slapped her.

Freya’s face showed no remorse. “I don’t trust you to help or take care of us. Why would you, after you left? You didn’t care about us then, so why the hell would you care about us now?”

“I was hurting, Freya,” she attempted to explain calmly. But she could feel it, that rage building up inside. “I didn’t know how else to heal.”

“So you thought the best thing to do was abandon us?”

“I didn’t know what the best thing to do was at the time. I made a poor mistake, and I’m sorry about that.”

Freya shook her head. “It’s too late for apologies, Alana. You broke my trust that day. You broke my heart.”

For the first time in a long, long time, Alana watched her sister tear up and cry. Freya was always the strong one, the bulldog of the family. She rarely showed emotion besides anger or disdain. Freya was good at getting things done, at never letting her emotions get the best of her. It was why she’d pushed away boys in high school. Emotions are messy, she once said. I don’t need them.

Yet now, in the sparkle of this miraculous night, Freya finally showed her emotions. And they were centered around how much Alana had hurt her.

Freya’s face twisted into disgust. “Don’t give me that look. I don’t need your pity.”

Alana shifted closer to her. “Then what do you need? What can I do to fix it?”

She pushed back, creating distance. “You can leave.”

Her blood went cold. “E-excuse me?”

“What, like you’re surprised? I know you, Lana. You run from any sign of conflict or hurt. As soon as you have your first fight with Leo, or something happens to Papa, you’ll want to escape this place. You’ll leave and expect us to pick up the mess.”

Alana gazed out at the fields, the crowds that’d begun to dwindle. She saw Leo toward the parking lot, shaking hands with guests, Bear barking at his feet. His smile was big. What if something did happen between them? Was Freya right? Could she work it out?

She believed she could. She had thought about her unfinished conversation with Leo, and although it scared her to put her heart on the line, she wanted to choose to trust the magic. She wanted to stay, to be with Leo, to be with her family that needed her.

But what if Freya was right? What if they didn’t need her? What if she would always be a constant disappointment?

She tucked her hands inside the sleeve of her crewneck. “Is that really what you want?”

“Yes,” her sister said without hesitation. “Don’t drag out the inevitable.”

Alana chewed on the inside of her cheek, then nodded once. She stood up and stepped down the porch steps, wiping a single tear with her sleeve. She then turned back to her sister.

“You may think this will fix everything, but I know you too,” Alana said. “You work in extremes and see things in black and white. Numbers on spreadsheets, or business plans where you sign across a dotted line. You need things to be finite, and you can’t possibly live in the gray or see things for what they are. I know you’re hurting from losing Mom, and somewhere in that brain of yours, you think me leaving will put you back in a place of controlling that grief. But someday it will come out, Freya. And I’m afraid you’ll have pushed everyone away when that time comes.”

She joined Leo and her father and said her goodbyes, putting on a performance, like she always did. Because that’s what the eldest daughter was always called to do. To smile, to take care of what was broken, and to mend whatever needed fixing.

If Freya needed her to leave to fix what was broken, then she would leave and never look back.

Early the next morning before the sun began to rise, as Leo lay beside her fast asleep, she slipped out of bed and into her clothes. She had packed a small duffel and hidden it underneath the couch in the living room of the big house, so she made the silent journey across the vines. She traced her hands along the leaves, whispering to them, singing to them.

“Thank you for another harvest,” she whispered. “Thank you for bringing back her spirit one more time.”

Then she peered up at the sky. “I miss you. Every single day, every single moment. I wish you were here. I wish you could sit me on the couch and tuck me in with one of your blankets and put on one of your records and tell me everything is going to be okay, and that I am doing the right thing. Thank you for showing me how much this land means to me. Thank you for believing in love…and for believing that I was worthy of it.”

The leaves rustled underneath her touch, despite the lack of breeze. It was colder outside, those mid-September nights shifting from humid summer to the cool of fall. When she reached the end of the field of Lemberger, she noticed a single cluster of grapes they must have missed. She smiled as she picked them off, snacking on them as she made her way into the house and gathered her things. She gave it one last look, kissed the doorframe, and left.

Half a mile down the road, Alana remained on a curb, waiting for some sort of vehicle to ride by. There wasn’t a single sign of life in that whole hour. She frowned at the barren twigs and seeds from the grapes by her feet, wondering if the magic was making this harder for her.

Alana stared down at the time on her phone. It was five thirty-seven in the morning. She told herself to wait until sunrise before making a call. After all, she did make a promise.

She dialed one of the four numbers set as her emergency contacts.

“Alana?” Tess grumbled, sounding half asleep. “You okay?”