Bitter Truth (Hawthorne Vines #1)

I sit across from my brother for a long moment, just looking at him, and wondering how big the burden is that he’s trying to carry all by himself.

As irritating as my brother can be, he’s also one of those people who will bend over backward for just about anyone.

Maybe he’s more like a tree than I realized.

“You’re not alone in whatever it is, Memphis,” I tell him, my voice just loud enough for him to hear me.

His lips tilt up in a barely visible smile then. But it’s one that has something sad, almost heartbreaking about it.

“Yes, I am, Murph.”

We sit like that, in silence for a long time, before he turns around, facing his computer again, effectively dismissing me.

So I stand and make my way to the door, hoping that, eventually, he’ll let me in.

Even just a little bit.

Chapter Eight

WES

As far away as the opening is, it still feels like it’s barreling closer at a faster pace each day. And even though I’ve been working on the menu nonstop, it feels even more like an amorphous blob today than it did a few days ago when Memphis suggested the tasting dinner for the entire staff.

I think he’s envisioning a soft opening, but for only the Hawthorne family and employees. The idea is great, but it makes the true opening feel like it’s looming.

I spend a long day creating a grocery list for Memphis based on a menu that isn’t complete yet because he wants me to start visiting local farms to source my ingredients. Afterward, I decide to wander the vineyard, like I have on so many other nights since moving here. I take one of the bottles of wine that I still haven’t paired yet and begin the walk out to my favorite bench. Apparently it’s Murphy’s favorite bench too, and I do my best to convince myself it has nothing to do with why I’m here again.

I could be doing any number of other things, but this one place on the property keeps calling me back.

When I was struggling with anxiety during my last year in Chicago, I would walk the city in the middle of the night. People used to warn me about walking around in certain neighborhoods that maybe weren’t the safest, but I did it anyway.

Not because I had anything to prove, but because something about walking empty streets at night helped to clear my head. I was able to think things through on the gritty sidewalks of the city in a way that little else could provide.

In Rosewood, I can either walk the vineyard or the highway, and I figure walking along a dark highway at night is a recipe for disaster. So I run the highway during the day, when it’s warm and bright. And at night, I can make these vineyard pathways my new city streets.

I think about my father for a long while, my thoughts flickering back over the one or two memories I have from my childhood before he disappeared.

They’re less like memories and more like feelings, I guess, shadows of a life that doesn’t feel like it was mine. Someone big and strong tucking me into bed. Being wrapped in a warm blanket at a campfire.

I can’t even be sure these memories are of the man from The Standard, or if they’re even real things that happened. But there was something truly comforting about those memories—real or imagined—and I think that’s why I’m here, in Rosewood. I’m searching for that safety again.

I exhale into the night, my breath visible in the cool air.

Gabriel Wright might be the reason I’m here, but he wasn’t the catalyst for why I needed somewhere to go in the first place.

No, that was something a lot more disastrous.

Coming up in the culinary world, I never had grand dreams for myself and my future as a chef. Even though my mentor was Bernard Hines, one of the most respected chefs in the industry … Even though I’d won a James Beard Award as an Emerging Chef … Even though I had my pick of offers for where to work whenever I was ready to break out on my own.

It was hard to envision big, life-changing dreams, though, when I could barely afford my rent.

So when a high-powered couple began talking to me about becoming head chef at their new restaurant, I was ready to jump at their offer. Alejandro and Bridget Santiago were well-known restauranteurs. Working in one of their restaurants meant joining the ranks of others who’d launched their careers with them, with incredible success. The chefs who worked under the Santiagos were names I heard on TV and had authored more than a few titles on my bookshelf.

But more importantly, they were chefs with huge salaries.

And that’s what I wanted.

More than anything, that’s what I wanted. A chance to lift myself out of the hole that I was born in. A chance to pull my brother out, too. And the Santiagos represented that to me.