She took the moment alone to pull out her father’s letter.
Dearest Ice Sweet,
You can hold onto something so tightly that your nerves go numb and you no longer notice your deathgrip on it. Not until it is too late, or near enough.
Adrianne and I spent three years trying to save the vineyard. We sunk every penny we had into it until every belonging was sold and we’d spent almost every ounce of our life’s blood. We often lived on beans and rice to stretch the money. By the time you were two, the last threads were unraveling.
Adrianne was too busy raising you to ever take to the fields again for those grueling sixteen-hour days. When her parents took ill, she went home to Bainbridge Island, Washington to take care of them. I struggled to save that which was past saving. I stayed on. Sheer
