“Come on, you need to get out of here. Let’s go to my house for a beer and some dinner. Frannie has a roast in the oven.”

“No way. I’m not intruding on your Saturday night with your wife.” But my mouth watered at the idea of a roast. I hadn’t eaten a home-cooked meal like that in forever. But Mack, a single dad of three girls, and Frannie had just gotten married a couple months ago—right about the time Renee, my ex-wife, had served me with divorce papers and left for good.

“Are you kidding? I’ve got three kids, DeSantis. There is no Saturday night that does not involve intrusion. And what else are you gonna do tonight, huh?”

I hesitated. The truth was, tonight’s itinerary looked something like this:

1) Eat some shitty leftovers straight from the carton.

2) Watch some terrible porn that didn’t even turn me on.

3) Jerk off anyway.

4) Go to sleep.

But I couldn’t say that. And I didn’t want to be anyone’s Saturday night charity project. “Actually, I’ve got a lot of work to do. I’ll be here for a while.”

Mack wouldn’t give up. “Listen, Henry, I’ve been the divorced guy. I know all about the crappy takeout food and talking to your TV and feeling like everybody else in the fucking world is having a better time than you.” He gestured toward the barrels. “Although, in your case, it might be true.”

Laughing, I pulled the baton out, replaced the air lock valve, and moved on to the next barrel. “I actually enjoy my work.”

“But you’ve been in here nonstop since the harvest,” he went on. “I’m beginning to think you’re sleeping here.”

“I go home eventually.” But the truth was, I preferred the bright, open spaces of the winery to the dark, empty rooms of my house. As head winemaker, I always had something to do here. We were a small operation, but I was involved in every single step of the process, both out in the vineyard and here in the cellar. And we did everything by hand, at my insistence, which meant a lot of extra patience and skill and time, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. At home, all I did was sit around and wonder where the fuck I’d gone wrong.

But that wasn’t Mack’s problem.

“What are you still doing here anyway, if Frannie’s got dinner in the oven?” I asked.

“I had to bring a bunch of Christmas presents from Santa to my office to hide. The girls are constantly on the hunt for them.”

Hiding presents from Santa—just one more rite of fatherhood I wouldn’t get to experience.

I buried the thought before it got to me. “They still believe in Santa, huh?”