"Your father?"

"Yes," I whispered harshly. "All of them."

"Is that what you think? That Charlotte and I were wrong about you, but Ford Hawthorn was right? Your mother? Jessica?"

"I . . ." I pictured Walter in his old-fashioned black swimsuit teaching me to swim, saw him leading me through the maze as we counted steps and learned turns, saw Charlotte wringing her hands when she knew I was hurting, thought about all the wise advice she'd imparted to me through the years, all the love she'd readily given.

"Perhaps," Walter said, "you're also asking because you wonder which category your wife belongs in.”

Walter had always known everything, before I ever told him. I don’t know why I thought this situation would be any different. "I . . . yes. I just, I don’t know if I can trust her."

He regarded me for several moments. "Well," he sighed, "I suppose you never actually have to find out if you never truly take the risk. I suppose you could haunt the halls of Hawthorn Vineyard like a ghost, clanking around in chains of your own making and scaring little children at the windows."

I let out a small laugh that ended on a sigh.

"Do you know why I call you sir? Why I've always called you sir?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"As a reminder that you're worthy of respect, and you always have been."

"Thank you, Walter," I said, choked with gratitude for his presence in my life.

"What does your heart tell you?"

I looked down, thinking about the ring I’d found in the drawer. My Dragon. My Love. I didn’t know what to believe anymore. I love you, she’d said, and yet I’d thrown her out. Despair and doubt swirled in my gut. I’d called her a conniving schemer, made accusations that didn't even seem rational anymore, not given her any chance to explain more fully than she had. And yet, if I was willing to believe her, that seeing me in the bank that day was really just a stroke of fate, could I really blame her for not coming into my office that first day and telling me her father had been responsible for my overly harsh sentence? Hadn’t I started out mistrusting her, too? Hadn’t we both decided our relationship would only be temporary? And if I truly listened to my heart as Walter was suggesting, didn't it tell me it would be just like Kira to see sharing money with me as a way to make up for the injustice her father had done in my case? As if that had been her fault at all.

From the moment I'd met her, she'd fought me tooth and nail. Not to bring me down, though—to elevate. To restore in me a semblance of hope, of joy. The party, her costume, all telling me she believed in me, that she wanted me restored in the eyes of others and in the eyes of myself. She had seen my worth, and she had told me in a hundred different ways.

Oh Jesus. What I knew to be the truth flowed through my veins like hot molten guilt, eating away at my insides. I’d been a mess that day, willing to believe everyone I trusted had or would eventually betray me. Seeing her with Cooper and then hearing her confession had been the confirmation of that fear. In some sick sense, I’d wanted to believe the worst of her. Kira was like a brightly shining light, and I had been living in cold darkness for so very, very long. It felt as if my soul had been peeking out, desperate to feel the warmth of her love, and yet so afraid of the agony of withdrawing back into darkness again when she inevitably left and took the sunshine with her. So instead, at the first doubt, I'd turned away from her before she could turn away from me. I'd been unwilling to believe she loved me, even when she'd said it and even though she'd demonstrated her love for me again and again. Yes, I had been ridiculously irrational . . . cold and cruel, sinking so low as to use her deepest insecurities against her. She was a beautiful, tender, twenty-two-year-old girl, and I'd watched as her spirit had broken right in front of me—that bright light I loved so much had grown dim before my eyes. Torment spiked through me. I’d thrown her out without a cent to her name. God, for all I knew, my wife had been sleeping in her damn car. No wonder she’d gone to Cooper. What other choice would she have had? Shame and self-hatred gripped me with an intensity that almost left me breathless.

When the time had actually come for me to make a choice, to trust her or to push her away, I had pushed her away.

Surrender, my boy.

Only, in the end, I hadn't been able to. Not fully. I had failed her. I had failed myself.

And then a realization came to me that did steal my breath. She could very well be carrying my child. We’d made love twice with no protection whatsoever. "I pushed her away," I said miserably. "I said cruel, heartless things to her. Even if I . . . she’ll never forgive me. I don't even know if I can forgive myself. There's no hope."

Walter, the man who had acted as my hero again and again, regarded me silently for several moments before he closed his tired-looking eyes. I went to stand, to leave the room so he could sleep, when his voice came from behind me. "I think you'll find, that where there is real love, there is always real hope."

**********

I got home later that afternoon, the men Harley had rounded up still hard at work in the vineyards. I went down and greeted them all, intending to update Harley on Walter's prognosis. It looked good. He'd need a stent put in, but his doctor assured us the surgery was straightforward, and that Walter would most likely be home in just a few days. But when I asked about Harley, one of the guys told me he'd shown up for a short while and then left saying he'd be around later in the day.