Saving Grapes - Madeline Kirby Page 0,11

so I don’t remember anything about him.”

“Do you ever wonder?”

“Sometimes. But then I think, if he was worth knowing, would he have left us? He’s never tried to contact me, so maybe I’m better off without him.”

“Maybe Chuck –“

Ben stood, cutting Thom off. “I need to get to work. Sorry, I’ll talk to you later.” He put his plate in the sink and practically ran out the back door, grabbing his hat and jamming it onto his head as he went through the mudroom.

Thom sighed and started cleaning up the breakfast dishes. He’d pissed Ben off, but he felt like it was a question that needed asking. He knew Ben’s mother’s rejection had hurt the younger man. Chuck and his family had been supportive and caring, but he just had a feeling that knowing his father, or at least knowing about him, might be a good thing for Ben. Nothing Thom had heard about Ben’s mother sat well with him, although she must not be all bad to have raised a fine young man like Ben. But if she had always been ‘difficult’, maybe Ben’s dad had left for a good reason. Maybe he hadn’t been able to take Ben. There was no way of knowing without prying even further, and Thom figured he’d done enough of that for now.

Ben forced himself to concentrate on what he was doing. He was trimming new growth at the base of the vines and he didn’t want his frustration leading to mistakes. Did he think about his dad? Of course he thought about him! Wondered what he was like, and why he left. He’d stopped asking when he was a kid because his mom would always get angry when he did. For a long time he had wondered if it was something about him, because that’s what kids did, wasn’t it? But as he got older he understood that it had to have been something between his parents. For a while he had wondered whether his dad was a criminal, in prison for some heinous acts and his mother had changed their names to avoid the scandal.

Over time, though, as Ben watched his mother grow more and more zealous in her fundamentalist church and more stridently vocal about the evils of “the gays”, he started to wonder if maybe the man just hadn’t been able to live with the bat-shit crazy. But why had he left Ben, then? Why wouldn’t he take his kid out of a bad situation?

Looking back on it, he’d been pretty stupid to fool around with Danny at his mother’s house. He should have known the risk of getting caught, and that the consequences would be extreme. Maybe that’s why he did it, though? Maybe he had wanted to get caught – to get it all out there on the table. To shove it right in her face so she couldn’t look away or pretend she hadn’t understood what he was trying to say. That sure worked, didn’t it?

Ben sighed and moved to the next vine. This was the silver lining, though. If the whole fiasco hadn’t happened, he wouldn’t be here, and he liked it here. He felt like he was doing good work and learning a lot. He was getting to know his Uncle Chuck and his aunt and cousins. Most of all, he was glad he’d met Thom. There was an age difference, but not enough to matter to Ben – ten years at the most, he figured.

Thom hadn’t given any real indication that he was interested in Ben, or attracted to him, but sometimes Ben thought he’d caught Thom looking. Sometimes Thom looked uncomfortable and embarrassed, maybe even shy, and Ben though he might be getting to the older man. He wasn’t sure what to do about it, though. He spent the days outdoors, getting dirty in the vineyard. It wasn’t like he could put on his tightest jeans and spike up his hair and wiggle his ass in Thom’s direction without looking like a complete idiot. How did you give a guy a come hither vibe when you both spent all day sweating in the dirt, crunching numbers in the office, and if you were lucky, getting 30 minutes to kick back and drink a beer before you had to drag yourself off to your solitary bed before you fell asleep on the porch? Maybe after the harvest he’d be able to do something about the situation – Thom had said they’d