Page 18 of Texas Dreams
Gran nods, satisfied, and takes a sip of her tea. The steam curls upward and disappears into the cooling air. "Your grandfather would have loved this place," she says quietly, her eyes still on the pastures. "All this space and potential. He always said the Hayden operation needed room to breathe, and Kentucky was starting to feel like a pair of boots two sizes too small."
I smile. My grandfather has been gone for nearly fifteen years, but his words still move through our family like water through limestone, shaping everything they touch.
"How are you feeling?" I ask, turning to study her in the fading light. "And don't give me the answer you give the doctors."
Gran's mouth twitches at that, and she sets her tea on the arm of the chair. "Better than I have in years. The doctors said this move would be too much stress, but they were wrong, as usual." She pauses, and something honest and unguarded passes across her face. "Having purpose gives you strength, Charles. This ranch, this family, watching you and Rachel build your lives here." She smooths the shawl across her lap with careful fingers that still bear her favorite rings. "That's better medicine than anything they could prescribe."
The tightness I've been carrying loosens at her words. I study her profile against the fading sky and notice the color in her cheeks, the way she sits straight in her chair without the careful repositioning she used to need.
We sit together as the sky shifts from rosy gold to the deep purple that settles over Hill Country like a quilt. The fireflies multiply, scattered across the pastures in tiny pulses of light, and somewhere beyond the eastern property line, the vineyard lights flicker on, a warm glow against the darkening hills.
I stare at them. The Viognier on my tongue reminds me of Tabitha's pride when she poured it, and that memory leads exactly where I've been trying not to let it go. Sunny moving between those steel tanks with that fierce concentration. The moment her eyes found mine through the glass and held, just long enough to make my breath catch, before she turned away.
"I'm heading in." Gran rises from her chair, slower than she used to but steadier than she was a year ago. She pauses in the doorway and gives me the look that says she already knows exactly what I'm thinking about. "Don't stay up too late brooding, Charles. Whatever you're thinking about will still be there in the morning."
Her footsteps fade down the hall, and the quiet rushes in to fill the space she left behind.
I turn back to the view. Crickets sing in the tall grass. An owl calls from somewhere near the tree line, and another answers from further away. The air carries the scent of spring growth and fresh-cut hay, and the warmth of the day still radiates up from the stone beneath my boots.
I think about the road that brought me here. Six generations of Haydens in Kentucky, and I'm the one who pulled up the roots and planted them in new soil. A year ago, that thought would have kept me up all night. Now, sitting on this veranda with Texas dust on my boots and my horses settled in pastures that already feel like theirs, the only thing keeping me up is a woman with a sharp tongue and blue eyes that could cut glass.
I drain the last of the Viognier and set the glass on the railing. The vineyard lights still glow along the eastern hills, steady and warm against the darkness. One week until those bottles are ready.
I head inside, already counting the days.
