He sat at the kitchen table, eyes fixed on the mug of cold tea he hadn’t touched. The walls were still painted the soft green Marianne had picked. Her sunhat still hung by the back door. Her boots were in the corner, dusty but untouched. He was failing her.
All those years he’d left the vineyard to her, dismissing it as her hobby. She’d studied it, nurtured it, made something beautiful out of it. And now? He was watching it crumble under his own incompetence—and the careless feet of tourists who didn’t care what they stepped on, as long as it looked good in photos.