My phone vibrated on the coffee table, and when I checked it, I saw it was my older brother, Anthony, calling from Indiana. He was probably just calling to say Merry Christmas and thank me for the gifts I’d sent—or at least his wife was. Alison had begged me to come celebrate Christmas with them and their four kids this year, but I’d told her I couldn’t leave work for that long. My two younger brothers, also both married with kids, had invited me to come visit them for the holidays as well, but I’d given them the same excuse. It wasn’t a total lie, but beneath the excuse was a disinclination to spend the holidays envying my brothers their happy families. Maybe it was shitty and selfish, but I just couldn’t handle it right now. Next year would be different.

I hoped.

Feeling guilty, I answered the call from Anthony and talked to both him and Alison, thanking them for the gifts they’d sent and listening to the kids holler with excitement over their new toys in the background. I reached out to my other brothers, Mark and Kevin, and repeated the conversation two more times—expressing gratitude for their gifts, wishing them and their families Merry Christmas, assuring them I was fine and had plans to hang out with friends later. Alison asked if I was seeing anyone, and I said no. When she started in about how young I was and how I needed to get back out there, I cut her off by saying I wasn’t ready, although now that Sylvia was in the picture, that wasn’t exactly true.

While I was on the phone with Kevin, Mack texted and reminded me I was invited to come to their house for Christmas dinner, but again, I responded that I had other plans. Sitting across the table from Sylvia would not be helpful today.

And anyway, it wasn’t a lie—a while back, I’d accepted an invitation from my friend Lucas Fournier, another winemaker in the area, to have Christmas dinner with his family. Lucas and his wife Mia ran Abelard Vineyards, a winery on Old Mission Peninsula, and he and I shared a lot of the same views on small-scale, responsible farming, and adapting old world techniques in new environments. His family owned a winery in southern France, and we’d met when I’d gone there one summer to work the harvest. In fact, he was the one who’d told me about the job opening at Cloverleigh Farms. Over the years, he and I had gotten to be pretty good friends, and Renee and I used to socialize quite a bit with them . . . until Renee could no longer handle being around their three kids.