Chapter 8
SADIE
Iam elbow deep in a barrel sample at the Crush Pad when Beck Beaumont tells me, with zero subtlety, that his brother has not smiled like this during a harvest season in longer than anyone can remember, and I nearly drop the wine thief.
I've got a glass in one hand and my nose half in it, working through the sample the way years of training taught me to. This is the Iron Oak Cabernet, next year's vintage, the one the label always sells out of first.
Dark fruit first. Then something green and stemmy underneath it that tells me they picked block four a day too early.
Tannins still sharp, not yet folded into the fruit the way they will be in a year. I roll a mouthful over my tongue, hold it, spit into the bucket, and write three lines of notes before I say a word out loud.
"Block four needs another week," I say, capping my pen. "Whoever picked that row was rushing."
Beck raises an eyebrow like I just read his mind. "That was the vineyard crew, racing a storm that ended up passing us by."
"Tell them patience is a virtue."
That's when I notice Rhett standing at the edge of the crush pad, one boot up on a crate, watching me like he forgot he had somewhere else to be. It occurs to me, a second too late, that I'm elbow deep in his favorite wine on the whole property.
He doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.
The look lasts one second too long to be nothing, and I feel it land somewhere low and warm before I make myself look back down at my notes.
"Careful," Beck says, grinning, and I realize I'm still holding the wine thief at an angle that's about to lose me half the sample. "That's next year's reserve you're about to donate to the gravel."
I steady the glass tube and pull a sample, buying myself a second before I have to look at either one of them. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you don't." He leans against the tank, arms crossed, entirely too pleased with himself. "I've watched that man run this ranch through droughts, lawsuits, and one very ugly rodeo injury without cracking a smile. You've been here two weeks."
"We're business partners."
"Right. That's why he rearranged the whole crush schedule around your truck's oil change last Tuesday."
"Well, somebody has to keep him from working himself into an early grave. Might as well be my transmission."
I did not know that. I shove the thought to the back of my mind somewhere I refuse to examine too closely and change the subject to tannin levels, and Beck, mercifully, lets me.
By late afternoon the whole valley starts gathering under the Old Oak for the Harvest Blessing.
Folding chairs. Kids in boots two sizes too big.
The smell of mesquite smoke drifting up from the barbecue pits Knox has been tending since noon.
Evelyn stands at the base of the tree in a dress the color of good Cabernet, waiting for the light to turn.
I find a spot near the back, close enough to watch, far enough to disappear if I need to.
I don't need to. Nobody looks at me twice. For the first time since I drove back into Red Oak Ridge, I feel like part of the crowd instead of the story everyone's telling about it.
Evelyn raises her hands, and the valley goes quiet the way it always does for her, like she's still got every one of these people wrapped around her finger and every one of them is grateful for it.
"Every harvest starts the same way," she says. "With thanks for the land, and for the hands that work it."
Old ranch families and vineyard hands stand shoulder to shoulder with the tourists who wandered in for the free wine and stayed for something they didn't know they were looking for.
A toddler fusses somewhere behind me. Nobody shushes him. Evelyn just waits, patient, like the blessing has all the time in the world.
"This land has seen droughts. It's seen floods.
It's buried people we loved and it's given us reasons to celebrate more times than I can count.
" She pauses, and for a second her eyes sweep the crowd like she's looking for someone specific.
I feel it land on me before it moves on.
"It has never once let us down when we took care of it first."
She says something about the rows, the rain that came at the right time, the roots that go down farther than any of us can see.
I've heard some version of this blessing every year of my childhood, back when it was my own family's land she was blessing right alongside the Beaumonts', two vineyards and one prayer.
It still gets me, right behind the ribs, every single time.
That's when I see Rhett.
He's crouched near the edge of the crowd, and a little girl from one of the ranch families, no older than four and fearless in the way only four-year-olds are, has her arms locked around his neck like she's been climbing him her whole life.
He hoists her onto his shoulders in one smooth motion, and she shrieks with the kind of joy that carries across an entire vineyard.
Rhett laughs.
Not the dry, one-syllable sound he gives Beck when he's trying not to encourage him. A real laugh, easy and unguarded, one hand braced on her ankle to keep her steady while his head tips back just enough.
I have not seen that laugh since before everything broke, and it lands on me like the whole valley tilted a few degrees.
He catches me watching. His laugh softens into something quieter, something aimed at me now instead of the sky, and I look away first because I don't trust what my face is doing.
The blessing wraps with the whole valley raising glasses of last year's Beaumont Reserve. Someone hands me a bottle before I even find a glass.
Old habit. I check the cork first, thumb brushing over the crest branded into the wood. Every bottle that leaves this property carries it. Small detail. The kind that makes people pay double without knowing why.
Then the foil. Gold, catching the last of the light.
The horse. The oak. The star sitting right at the top, the one every bottle carries, the one nobody in this valley has to look twice to recognize.
My own family's crest is stitched into every Collins label too, the same one it's always been. It used to mean something different before everything fell apart. I let myself have exactly one moment of pretending none of this is complicated.
One moment. That's all I allow.
By the time the sun drops behind the bluffs, the crowd thins toward home, and I head into town instead, craving something that isn't a Beaumont dinner table.
The Cork and Spur is half full, string lights strung across the patio, somebody's playlist doing its best George Strait impression through the speakers.
I order a glass of something that isn't ours or theirs, and the bartender pours generous, the way small towns do. I swirl it once out of habit before I even taste it, catching legs that tell me the alcohol's a little hot for the varietal.
Somebody cut corners on this one. I drink it anyway. Not every glass needs to be perfect. Some just need to get me through a Friday night.
My phone's sitting face-down on the bar, and I flip it over out of habit, half hoping for a text and half dreading one. It's my mother. Bank called again. Can it wait till Monday?
I don't need to do the math. I've been carrying the number around for two weeks now. Twelve thousand short, and Monday isn't far enough away to fix that. I flip the phone back over before the number can sit with me any longer than it already has.
Underneath my elbow, tucked in my bag where I stuffed it three days ago, there's a listing for a two-bedroom outside Fredericksburg.
A sommelier friend forwarded it, half joking, half not.
Just in case harvest doesn't save you. I haven't deleted it.
I tell myself that's practical, not planning an exit. I don't fully believe myself.
I'm three sips in when a woman slides onto the stool beside me like she's been waiting for the seat to open.
"You must be Sadie Collins."
She's polished in a way that doesn't belong on a bar stool in Red Oak Ridge. Tailored blazer. Nails done. A smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes.
"Depends who's asking."
"Camille Ashford." She offers a hand, cool and brief. "Water rights consultant. I do a lot of work out this way."
"Never heard of you."
"You will." She says it easily, like a fact instead of a threat, and orders a soda water from the bartender without looking at him. "I've been looking into the Collins property line. Old surveys, easements, that sort of thing. Fascinating history out here."
Something in my stomach goes cold and still. "Why would you be looking into the land under my family's winery?"
"Due diligence." She smiles again, and this time it's sharper. "Water doesn't respect fence lines, Ms. Collins. Neither do old contracts, half the time."
"That's not an answer."
"No," she agrees, unbothered. "It isn't."
She turns her glass a quarter turn on the bar, unhurried, like she's got nowhere else to be tonight and no reason to rush this. "Small towns are funny. Everyone thinks they know exactly who owns what, right up until somebody pulls the paperwork."
Her eyes flick over me, quick and assessing, the way I imagine she looks at a deed before she decides whether it's worth her time. "You've been gone a while, haven't you?"
I didn't tell her that. I don't ask how she knows it.
"Small town," she says again, like she read the question on my face anyway. "People talk. Especially about the Collins name."
I want to ask what that means. I want to ask a dozen things. Before I can pick one, she's already sliding off the stool, tucking a card into the space between my glass and the bar.
"I hope you enjoy your season at Beaumont." Her eyes flick toward the door, toward nothing in particular, like she's already three steps ahead of this conversation. "While it lasts."
She's gone before I can answer, out into the parking lot and into a car too clean for a dirt road town, and I sit there with her card between two fingers and a full glass I no longer want to finish.
I pay my tab and head for my truck, Camille Ashford's voice still looping through my head. While it lasts. Like she knows something about my season here that I don't.
My phone buzzes in my pocket before I make it across the lot.
A voicemail. Unknown number.
I stop under the string lights, thumb hovering, and press play.
"Hi, this message is for Sadie Collins. This is Ashford Water Holdings calling regarding an inquiry into historical water rights and irrigation easements tied to the Collins Cellars operation. Please return our call at your earliest convenience to discuss further."
I stand there in the parking lot with the phone still pressed to my ear long after the message ends, the string lights swaying overhead, and the only thing I can think is that whatever Camille Ashford is circling, it already has my family's name written all over it.