Season of Change. Melinda Curtis

SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

      CHAPTER ONE

      LIFE WAS A numbers game.

      Count the years, count the money, count the marriages, count the mistakes.

      Slade Jennings was thirty-two years old, had millions in the bank, one failed marriage, and one horrendous mistake.

      He knew what he looked like walking down the street—success. Wrinkle-free khakis, wrinkle-free button down, Italian designer tie. Rolex. Titanium and onyx pinky ring. Dark-as-midnight hair, expensively cut. Eyes the color of money, always on the lookout for the next deal. Slade had come from humble beginnings and wasn’t going back.

      Except, he had. Gone back to his roots, that was, damaged though they may be.

      That was what you did for friends who were also your business partners. You went with the flow, even if that meant returning to your hometown, to the house you’d grown up in, to the house where both your parents died, the scene of the horrendous mistake.

      Harmony Valley’s bridge club called the house at 1313 Harrison Street the Death and Divorce House. In Slade’s lifetime there hadn’t been any divorces. But there had been plenty of deaths. His mother gave in to melanoma in the master bedroom. His father hung himself six years later in the closet of the same room. It was the culmination of everything that was wrong with Slade’s life—he’d lost his career, his bank account, and then his family. That was eight years ago. The house on Harrison represented failure, which was why it was vital Slade present only success to the world.

      While in Harmony Valley, Slade was living in the Death and Divorce House. To stay elsewhere seemed like a betrayal. But stay in the master bedroom? No. He slept in the bedroom of his youth.

      He’d returned to town earlier that year with Will Jackson and Flynn Harris, his childhood friends and the two programming geniuses behind a successful farming app. Slade was their sidekick and the partnership’s moneyman, the one who managed the bottom line, watched their backs, and made sure they didn’t get screwed in any negotiations.

      So, why weren’t they back in Silicon Valley leveraging their achievement?

      Because Will and Flynn burned out designing their first app. They were all local boys, if not best friends when they were growing up, as close as brothers now. When they showed up to decompress after five years of sharing a cramped apartment with the thinnest walls on the planet, they’d been asked by the town council to start a business to help save their hometown.

      An explosion fourteen years ago at the grain mill had wiped out Harmony Valley’s main employer. The ripple effect forced those too young to retire to move closer to jobs and all but a handful of businesses to shut down. Located in the northernmost corner of Sonoma County, Harmony Valley was becoming a remote retirement village. The population had dwindled below eighty, with the average age of residents above seventy-five.

      Given that Slade preferred Harmony Valley become a ghost town when all the old-timers died, he’d voted against the partnership starting a business here. Then he’d protested their choice of business—a winery. They were three guys who drank beer. What did they know about making wine? Outvoted, he’d still stood by his friends through arguments with blustery octogenarians, a mountain of legal and financial paperwork, and the ups and downs of construction.

      Today, the shell of the winery was finally completed. The winemaker they’d hired, Christine Alexander, granddaughter of a town-council member—would the nepotism never end?—was due to start work today and provide Slade with her input on the guts of the winery. Juice presses, tanks, barrels, and whatever else she needed to make great wine. Really great wine people would drop a C-note to drink. Because if they were going to make wine, it’d be the best wine around.

      Slade checked his Rolex. Christine was late.

      He sat on the porch of the old farmhouse they’d converted into an office and tasting room, and loosened the knot of his tie.

      Summer was in full swing. The air was hot and dry. Barely a breeze swayed the palm trees lining the hundred-yard newly graveled drive. The sixty-foot-tall eucalyptus trees that marched along the river were silent, as well. Occasionally, a cricket offered complaint.

      Something shook the house, a slight tremor that had Slade leaping up.

      Eathquake!

      The horse weathervane on top of the main winery building rocked, spun, then quieted. The ground settled and Slade drew a deep breath. As a native Californian, he was used to small, infrequent tremors. That didn’t mean they didn’t send his body humming with adrenaline faster than a shot of espresso.

      His phone buzzed, announcing a text message from Flynn: Did you feel that?

      His reply: Yes. Winery is fine.

      A big black SUV turned into the driveway.

      He’d thought Christine owned a small, newer-model Audi. At least, that was what she’d driven up in for her job interview last month. He shifted the tie-knot back into place and walked down the circular drive to meet her.

      Only it wasn’t Christine.

      It was his ex-wife, Evangeline, a native New Yorker. Two shadows bobbed in the backseat, his twin ten year-old daughters, Faith and Grace. He was simultaneously overjoyed and overwhelmed. No one had told him they were coming. Not that it mattered. He practically flew down the drive to meet them.

      Evangeline toggled down the window and gave him a scornful look. He hadn’t seen her since Christmas, but she was as stylish as ever in a bold tiger-print blouse and chunky jewelry. Her black hair was short and blunt cut, framing her strikingly angular face, making her too-white smile seem fanglike. “I thought you’d be at the house. We saw Will in town and he told us you were here.”

      Slade was used to burying his emotions behind a facade of savvy sophistication. He hid them now, deep in his chest in a tight, burdensome lump.

      Months ago, Evangeline had called and—amid a rant about how she resented the revised visitation agreement—had told him she would abide by it and let the girls stay with him while she and her new husband, provider of the four-carat monstrosity on her slender finger, took a delayed honeymoon to the South of France.

      Evangeline didn’t like sharing the girls, which was why when Slade agreed to increase child support, he also brought down the judge’s gavel on enforcing his newly expanded parental rights. Evy was always agreeing to drop them off, but never following through. If she was here, husband number three must be something. And that something was spontaneous, because they weren’t due to visit for another two weeks.

      With effort, Slade shifted into “polite conversation” mode. “Did you feel that earthquake just now? It wasn’t very big.” When Evy shook her head, he leaned farther in the window to greet the twins. “Hey, girls. Holy...”

      They looked like miniature, identical Gothic vampires. If his mother wasn’t already dead, she’d have risen up and splashed them with holy water.

      “Don’t judge,” Evangeline scolded sharply. “It’s a phase. Today Goth. Tomorrow princesses.”

      He forced himself to smile. “Took me by surprise is all. Did you leave their things at my place?” The Death and Divorce House was dim and filled with bad memories. He slept there, but only because the past wouldn’t let him bunk anywhere else. If he’d believed Evy would follow through this time and honor his visitation rights, he would have made other arrangements to stay in town or at