“Well, I guess I’ll head up to bed too.” My father set his coffee mug in the sink and kissed my head. “The fire is almost out in there. Are you going to be up for a bit or should I take care of it?”

“I’ll take care of it. Night, Daddy.”

“See you, John,” Henry said. “Thanks for everything.”

My father gave us a wave and headed for the stairs, and then it was just Henry and me left in the kitchen. “Glad you came?” I asked him.

“Definitely.” He came around the island and set his glass mug on the counter. “Everything was delicious. Thank you so much for coming to get me. I’d have gone home and eaten Fritos for dinner.”

I grinned and shook my head. “How can you be so picky about wine and eat such terrible food?”

“Good question. Probably because I’m good at making wine but bad at making food.”

I smiled, turning off the faucet. “Want a little more coffee? There’s probably half a pot left.”

He hesitated. “Are you going to have some?”

“Sure. Grab the whiskey from the bar, would you?”

While he retrieved the whiskey bottle, I poured us each a mug of coffee. He added a shot to each glass, and I spooned some of the leftover whipped cream on top. “There. Perfect.”

“Do you want to sit down?” he asked, glancing down at my shoes. “You’ve been working in here for a while.”

“Definitely. Let’s go into the family room.”

The fire was low but still crackled in the fireplace, giving the room a cozy glow. I took a seat at one end of the couch, and Henry settled at the other end.

Tugging off my boots, I tucked my legs beneath me. “Looks like it’s still coming down out there,” I said, glancing out the sliding glass doors toward the patio. “But I like having a white Christmas.”

“Me too,” he said, sipping his coffee. “You must have missed that in California.”

“Well, we usually spent the holidays in Aspen if we didn’t come here.” I felt embarrassed saying it. It sounded so pretentious to me now.

“That must have been nice.”

“It was nice,” I said, “but being home for the holidays is better.”

He nodded, and I realized I had no idea where home was for him.

“Where did you grow up?” I asked, bringing my cup to my lips.

“On a farm in Iowa.”

“Really?” For some reason, it made me smile, picturing him as an Iowa farm boy.

He looked amused. “Does that surprise you?”

“Kind of. And I don’t know why it should—you’re still kind of a farmer.”

“Oh, I’m definitely still a farmer.”

“Is your family still in Iowa?”

He sipped his coffee before answering. “No. My brothers are spread around the country—one in Indianapolis, one in Fargo, one in Seattle—and my parents are both gone. I’ve got some cousins there, but I don’t see them too often.”

“Does the farm where you grew up still exist?”

“It does, but my dad sold it, and it was incorporated into a large-scale operation.”

“Why’d he sell it? I mean, why not give it to you?”

“I was still in college at the time, and I wasn’t really interested in farming corn and soybeans anyway. Actually, I wasn’t interested in farming at all. I thought I’d major in biology and go on to medical school.”

Intrigued, I tilted my head. “What made you change your mind about medical school?”

“I took a viticulture class at Cornell and fell in love with it, much to my mother’s dismay. I think she’d quite looked forward to bragging about her doctor son.”

I grinned. “Any regrets?”

“None. What I do still involves a lot of science, and I much prefer wine to people. Well, most people.”

“Me too. Sometimes I wonder if I was more tolerant of jerks when I was younger, or if there are simply more jerks around now.” I sighed. “Or maybe I just attract them.”

Henry smiled kindly. “I don’t know about that.”

“I’m telling you, Henry, I can’t name one single person in my life—that I’m not related to—who supported me like I’d have supported a friend in my situation. And I trusted them. I thought they cared about me. I must be the world’s worst judge of character.” I shook my head. “Well, duh. Look who I married.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Henry said quietly, the logs on the fire snapping softly. “You see the good in people. That’s a nice quality.”

“I guess. I feel so stupid, though.” I set my mug on the end table and wrapped my arms around my knees. “Everyone knew Brett was cheating on me—even I knew it. But we all pretended we didn’t.”

“Why?”

“My so-called friends claim they didn’t want to upset me. And why did I pretend?” I felt my throat catch and hoped I wouldn’t embarrass myself by crying in front of Henry. I didn’t even know why I was telling him this stuff, but something about the warmth of the fire, the late hour, and the silent house seemed to invite confession. “I guess I was scared. I didn’t want him to leave me. I didn’t want to be single with two kids at thirty-seven. I didn’t want my kids to grow up in a broken home. So I pretended to be happy.”

“That had to be really hard.”

“It was.” I hesitated before asking the next question, but some gut instinct told me to ask it. Maybe he wanted to confess too. “Did you pretend to be happy?”

Henry stared into his cup without saying anything. For a second, I was scared my gut had been off and it was too personal a question for him to answer. He’d told me last night he was a private person, hadn’t he?

I backtracked. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry into—”

“I’m not good at pretending,” he said, interrupting me. “With me, what you see is what you get, and I won’t lie. Maybe that was my problem.”

I rested my chin on my knees. “How so?”

He tilted his coffee this way and that. “We couldn’t have kids, and she wouldn’t adopt. I wasn’t going to tell her that was okay with me. I was angry at her for that. I wanted a family. We argued, and I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“I’m sorry.” I thought about telling him I understood because I’d faced infertility too, but decided against it. This wasn’t about me.

He shrugged. “There were other issues too.”

“Of course. Any marriage has its problems.”

“But not being able to have kids really changed us, and it fractured the relationship beyond repair.”

“Did you try counseling?” I asked.

He nodded slowly. “We did. But I think it was too late by then.”

“Brett refused to try counseling, although I’m not sure it would have helped us either. His girlfriend was already pregnant—not that I knew it then.”

Henry’s jaw dropped, then he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “You deserve a lot better, Sylvia.”