Page 4 of The Vines Between Us

Chapter Three

HUGO

T he pruning shears bit into the tangled cane with a satisfying snick.

I wiped sweat from my brow with my forearm, careful to keep the rusty blades away from my face.

Six months since Grand-père died, and I still reached for his pruning shears instead of my own.

His were ancient, the wooden handles worn smooth from decades of use, fitting my hand like they belonged there.

"One more row, old man," I murmured to the empty vineyard. "Then I'll call it a day."

The early June sun beat down mercilessly on my back as I moved down the row of Merlot. These vines were the healthiest on Domaine Tremblay—twelve hectares of struggling potential that had been my inheritance, my burden, and my salvation.

I'd promised Claude I'd keep it going. Some days, like today, that promise felt impossible to keep.

I paused, letting my fingers trace the rough bark of a vine that had been producing fruit since before I was born. Claude had taught me to feel the life in these plants, to understand them as living beings with histories as complex as our own .

"This one survived the frost of '87," he'd told me once, kneeling beside me when I was barely tall enough to reach the lowest branches. "Just like you're surviving, petit. Sometimes the harshest winters produce the sweetest fruit."

He'd been talking about my parents then, though I hadn't fully understood at five years old.

The car accident that took them remained a blur of fragmented memories: flashing lights, a policewoman with kind eyes, Claude's trembling hands as he signed papers to become my guardian.

My father had been Claude's nephew—his only living relative—and Claude had never hesitated to take me in.

"Why did you want me?" I'd asked him once, around age ten, after a particularly cruel comment from a schoolmate about my "not-real" parent.

Claude had set aside his grafting knife, giving me his complete attention as he always did for important conversations. "Non, Hugo. It wasn't about wanting. It was about recognizing."

"Recognizing what?"

"That you were mine already." His eyes had crinkled at the corners.

"Some people find their family through birth.

Others through a stroke of fate. When I saw you sitting in that hospital chair, legs swinging, clutching that little toy tractor.

.." Claude's voice had grown thick. "I recognized you as mine.

As if I'd been waiting for you without knowing it. "

The irrigation system had failed again this morning. Third time this month. I'd jury-rigged it with parts cannibalized from the eastern section, but it was temporary at best. The bank wouldn't extend any more credit, not with Claude's debts still hanging over the property.

"You should have told me sooner," I whispered, a conversation I'd had with Claude's ghost a hundred times since his death. "I could have helped you earlier."

But Claude Tremblay had been too proud, too stubborn, too determined to handle things himself.

By the time I'd discovered how bad things were—the unpaid bills, the mounting debts, the neglected vines—the cancer had already taken hold.

The last six months of his life had been a blur of hospital visits, chemotherapy, and late nights reading viticulture journals aloud at his bedside while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

I reached the end of the row and straightened, my back protesting after hours bent over the vines.

From this vantage point, I could see most of Domaine Tremblay—the sloping vineyards, the weathered outbuildings, and the cheerful yellow villa that had been my home since I was five years old.

Beyond the property line stood the familiar silhouette of Domaine Moreau, its once-manicured grounds now as neglected as an abandoned child.

Unlike my first experience with loss, I remembered everything about Claude's death.

Every laboured breath, every whispered encouragement, every moment his hand grew weaker in mine.

When my parents died, I'd been too young to understand permanence.

Claude had appeared like magic, this laughing giant with soil-stained hands who promised I would never be alone.

But this time, I remembered everything—every lesson Claude taught me, every story he told, every tradition we built. And somehow, remembering made the absence harder to bear.

Henri had tried his best after Claude fell ill.

The two old men had been inseparable for as long as I could remember—"best friends" was what Claude always called their relationship.

Henri had visited the hospital every day, bringing Claude's favourite cheeses and reading to him when Claude's eyes grew too weak to focus on the page.

After Claude died, Henri seemed to wither like an unwatered vine.

He'd stopped tending to his own vineyard, stopped coming to the village, stopped everything except sitting in his study with a glass of wine, staring at old photographs.

When Henri died three weeks ago, I wasn't surprised—just heartbroken all over again.

I gathered my tools and headed back toward the villa, my thoughts drifting as they often did to those golden summers of my youth. To Alexandre .

We'd been inseparable once, Alexandre and I. Every summer from when we were children until that final summer when we were eighteen. I'd loved him with the desperate intensity that only first love can inspire. I'd thought he loved me too.

Then he'd disappeared. Gone to university in Paris without much more than a simple goodbye.

Fourteen years of silence, not even returning for holidays or harvest. Claude had made excuses for him—Alexandre's studies were demanding, Paris was far away—but I'd known the truth.

Alexandre had gotten what he wanted from our summer romances and moved on to bigger, better things.

"People leave in different ways, Hugo," Claude had told me that autumn after Alexandre didn't return. "Some, like your parents, have no choice. Others choose to go. The pain feels the same, but there's a difference."

"What difference?" I'd asked, raw with heartbreak.

"Those who choose can also choose to return." He'd squeezed my shoulder. "Give him time."

But fourteen years had passed, and Alexandre had never returned. Not until now.

I'd moved on too, or tried to. Agricultural college in Montpellier.

A few relationships that never quite took root, with men who never managed to reach the depths of feelings that Alexandre produced within me.

Never quite measuring up to what I had, what I felt, with Alexandre.

A job at a prestigious vineyard in Bordeaux that I'd abandoned when Claude fell ill.

Now here I was, thirty-two years old, alone with a failing vineyard that I couldn't give up and debts I couldn't possibly repay.

The villa's kitchen welcomed me with its familiar scent of herbs and old wood.

I dropped my tools by the door and washed my hands at the sink, the cool water a blessing on my sun-baked skin.

Claude's ancient radio sat on the windowsill, tuned to the local station as always.

I switched it on out of habit, letting the afternoon news fill the empty space.

"...and in local news, the funeral of Henri Moreau, former owner of Domaine Moreau, was held three weeks ago in Saint-émilion. The prestigious vineyard's future remains uncertain, though sources say his grandson Alexandre Moreau will be returning to the region to settle affairs..."

The glass I'd been filling slipped from my fingers, shattering in the sink. Alexandre. Here. After fourteen years.

I fumbled for my phone, finding Madame Fontaine's number with trembling fingers. She answered on the second ring.

"Hugo! I was just about to call you. Have you heard?"

"Is it true? Alexandre's back?"

"Arrived today, according to Marcel at the hardware store. Apparently, he's staying at the domaine."

My heart hammered against my ribs. "For how long?"

"No one knows. Bertrand Dupuis is supposed to meet with him tomorrow morning—something about Henri's estate. You know how bad things got over there."

I did know. I'd watched Henri's vineyard deteriorate alongside his health, powerless to help when I could barely keep my own operation afloat.

"Hugo? Are you still there?"

"Yes, sorry." I gathered myself. "Thanks for letting me know."

"Will you go see him?"

Would I? The question echoed in my mind long after I'd ended the call. Alexandre Moreau. The boy who'd kissed me among the vines, who'd whispered promises under summer stars, who'd left without a word and never looked back. The man who'd become a stranger.

I stepped onto the back terrace, eyes drawn inevitably to Domaine Moreau in the distance.

Our properties shared a boundary, a dirt road that wound between the two estates.

Once, I'd walked that road daily, eager to see Alexandre.

Now, I avoided it whenever possible, the memories too sharp, too painful.

But if Alexandre was truly back...

"Don't be a fool," I muttered to myself, turning away from the view. "He's here to sell the place and leave again. Nothing more. "

After my parents died, Claude had encouraged every question, every tear, every outburst. "Grief needs air to breathe," he'd say, pulling me into his lap no matter how much dirt covered his vineyard clothes.

Now, with Claude gone, I found myself adopting his rituals instead of creating my own. Using his pruning shears. Making his special tisane each night. Walking the vineyard boundaries at dawn as he had done for fifty years.

I'd learned to grieve as a child under Claude's gentle guidance. Learning to grieve as an adult, without him, felt like navigating a foreign country without a map.