Chapter 6 #2
He nodded. Not a polite nod — a considered one, the way someone nods when they're processing information rather than waiting for their turn to talk.
"The terroir on that east block is special.
The way the hillside channels the morning fog — you get this natural cooling effect that extends the growing season by two, maybe three weeks.
I've been jealous of that microclimate for a decade. "
Something shifted in her chest. Not attraction, exactly — though he was handsome, and he smelled like sun and crushed herbs, and his voice had a low, unhurried quality that made her want to keep listening.
Something simpler than attraction. The experience of being spoken to as a person who knew things.
As a winemaker. Not as a wife, not as a wronged woman, not as the woman deciding what to do about her marriage. Just as herself.
They talked for an hour. He told her about his family's estate — his parents had bought it in the eighties, when Napa land was still affordable for a family that wasn't wealthy.
He'd taken it over five years ago and shifted the focus to Spanish varietals.
He'd visited Priorat three times. He thought most Napa Cabernet was overrated and said so with a grin that dared her to disagree.
She disagreed. They argued about it pleasantly.
He refilled her glass without asking if she wanted more, which normally would have annoyed her, but in this context felt like the gesture of someone comfortable around wine rather than someone managing her intake.
She told him about the soil report, the high pH in the east block.
He told her about a gypsum amendment his father had used on similar soil in the nineties. She took mental notes.
He never asked about her husband. He never said the word Montclair except in reference to the property. He looked at her when she talked, and he asked follow-up questions, and when she made a dry joke about Napa's obsession with cave-aged everything, he laughed in a way that reached his eyes.
At the end of the hour, he handed her a card. Simple. His name — Teo Reyes — an email address, a phone number. "If you want to compare soil data, call me," he said. "I've got ten years of reports on the adjacent parcels."
"I will," she said.
She drove back to the cottage with the windows down. The air smelled like dry grass and oak and the first distant hint of grapes that wouldn't be ripe for weeks. She parked on the gravel and sat in the car for a minute with the engine off, listening to the silence.
#
Inside the cottage, she showered and changed into old sweats.
She made tea. She sat on the bed with the Moleskine open on her lap and looked at the list she'd started that morning.
It had grown. Soil amendment. Trellising.
Cooperage call. Tasting room contractor.
Maya — Stonehill visit. Teo — soil data comparison.
She read the list twice and then set the notebook down and stared at the ceiling.
She hadn't thought about Everett all day.
The realization arrived slowly, like something surfacing in still water.
She traced back through the hours — the vineyard walk, the soil report, lunch on the porch, Maya's text, the taqueria, the call with Darcy, the vintner's gathering, Teo's voice talking about microclimate and gypsum and Spanish varietals — and Everett wasn't in any of it.
Not once. Not a single moment where his face had floated up behind her eyes or his name had snagged in her throat.
She waited for the relief to settle. It was there — clean and bright, like the first breath after being underwater.
She'd spent an entire day as herself. Not as Everett Montclair's wife, not as the woman who'd been cheated on, not as the woman deciding what to do about her marriage. Just Linnea. A winemaker with good vines and a list of things to do tomorrow.
The relief held for maybe thirty seconds.
Then the grief came.
It rose from the same place — that spot below her ribs, the one that had been a tight fist and was now, apparently, something worse.
Because if she could go a whole day without thinking about him, if she could stand in the shade of an oak tree talking to a stranger about terroir and feel more like herself than she had in years — then what had the last eight years been?
What had she given up? What had she let him absorb along with her wine label and her ambition and her Saturday mornings?
She pressed her palms against her eyes. The tears came quietly. Not the hot, angry tears of the first week. These were different. Slower. Sadder. The kind that came when you realized the thing you were grieving wasn't the marriage you'd lost but the person you'd been before it.
Her phone glowed on the nightstand. No missed calls. No texts from Everett. He was honoring the boundary she'd set, or he was strategizing, or he was sitting alone in that enormous house wondering what she was doing. She didn't know. For the first time, she didn't care enough to guess.
She turned off the light. The cottage was dark and quiet. Through the window, the vine rows were dark outlines in the moonlight — her vines, still growing, still producing, still alive despite five years of neglect.
Like her.
She closed her eyes. Tomorrow she had a call with the cooperage in Oregon. Tomorrow she'd drive to Stonehill and taste Maya's Grenache. Tomorrow she'd look at those tasting room sketches and see if the woman who drew them still had something to say.
Tonight she let the grief sit beside the relief and didn't try to choose between them. They were both true. They were both hers.
She slept.