5. Sadie
SADIE
I was up before the alarm.
I showered, scrubbing at my hands with the pumice soap by the sink. The grease never came all the way out. I didn't do anything with my hair except pull it back wet.
The dress was already on the bed. Navy, plain, the one I wore when I went down to the lake. I'd picked it the night before.
I dressed slowly, carefully. My hands looked wrong against the fabric — callused, split at the knuckles — but I left my ring on.
He was down there now. Probably awake already, going over the Hendry close or walking the cellar. The picking started tomorrow at first light. I had today.
I stood at the mirror. I was going to him. I was taking something with me.
This was the last time I was going to ask him to see me.
The kitchen was dark except for the stove light. I flipped the switch and the room came up around me.
Ilse was already there, standing by the sink with her coffee. She didn't say anything when I came in.
I pulled the flour down from the shelf. The butter. The glass was still standing on the counter where I'd left it. Full. I reached past it for the bowl.
Two cups flour, tablespoon of baking powder, salt. I cut the butter in with my fingers, working it through until it looked like wet sand.
Ilse set her mug down. She watched.
I added the cream slow, just until the dough pulled together. It was soft under my hands when I turned it out. You couldn't overwork biscuit dough or it came out tough. I kept my touch light.
I patted it flat, folded it over, patted it again. Three times. Then I rolled it out to about an inch and started cutting rounds with the rim of a glass.
The oven was heating behind me.
I laid the rounds onto the baking sheet one by one. Twelve of them. I brushed the tops with cream and slid the sheet in.
The smell of butter filled the kitchen.
I set the timer and wiped my hands. Fifteen minutes.
Ilse stood quiet, waiting.
When the timer went I pulled the biscuits out. They were good. Golden and even, the tops just starting to split where they should. I wrapped them in a clean towel while they were still warm.
Ilse picked up her mug and set it in the sink. She looked at me.
"I'll be here when you get back," she said.
I set the biscuits on the passenger seat and started the car.
The drive down took ten minutes. Ridge Road switchbacked through the trees twice before it dropped to the lake road, and then I was running south along the water. The morning was bright, the lake flat and silver.
I didn't rehearse anything. I'd brought something. That was enough.
Stockton Cellars stretched along the shoreline ahead, glass and steel and clean straight lines. I could see the tanks through the windows. I turned in at the gate.
Tom came out of the booth with his clipboard. He'd been working the gate since before I married Roland. He smiled when he saw my car.
"Mrs. Stockton."
I rolled the window down. "Morning, Tom."
"Looking for Roland?"
"Is he around?"
"He's down in the barrel room. Go on. I'm sure he'll be glad to be rescued."
I drove through and parked near the main entrance.
The biscuits were still warm through the towel when I picked them up. Tom's words stayed with me as I walked in. *He'll be glad to be rescued.*
The building was cool and quiet after the bright morning outside. I passed Stockton's tasting room, empty on a Sunday, and took the corridor that ran along the production floor. Through the glass I could see the steel tanks rising to the ceiling, row after row of them catching the light.
The barrel room was downstairs at the far end.
I was halfway there when I heard it — his laugh, the real one, not the one he used on a room. Low and easy and unmistakably his.
Relief washed through me, sharp and complete. He was in a good mood.
The sound pulled me forward.
I heard the pour before I saw anything. Liquid into glass, slow and deliberate, the kind of sound you only make when you're being careful with something good.
Then a woman's voice. "I brought the twenty-five up. You should try it before tomorrow."
I stopped.
The barrel room door was open maybe three inches. I looked through the gap.
Margo stood near the long table they used for assessments, the bottle in her hand, the label facing out. The twenty-five-year vintage. The one from the party with the cards on every table.
She lifted the glass Roland must've been holding and drank.
Then she turned it, slow and precise, and drank again from the other side.
My chest went tight.
She handed it back to him. "That's good. That's — God. Try it again."
He took it without pausing, without pulling back, like it was the most natural thing in the world. He held it up to the light slanting in from the high window, swirled it once, and set it back down on the table.
He didn't drink.
"The fruit's coming in clean," he said. "Tibbets says we're looking at six tons before noon if the weather holds. I want the third press cleared and the bins staged by eight."
His voice was flat. Easy. Like nothing had happened.
Because to him, nothing had.
I stood there with the biscuits still warm against my ribs. I watched my husband take a glass from another woman's hands and set it down the way he'd set down every glass I'd ever poured for him in nine years.
Margo leaned against the table and smiled, her arms folded. "You're really not going to try it?"
"I've tasted it." He gestured toward the schedule pinned to the board on the wall. "We'll need the second crew on standby if the wind shifts. I don't want to be caught short."
She picked up the glass again and finished it herself.
He kept talking.
I could already hear what he'd say if I opened that door.
She's my assistant, Sadie. She's supposed to know things and do things for me. She's just an employee.
I'd heard it before, standing in my own kitchen, when I hadn't even said her name. He had.
My palms were damp against the towel. The biscuits hadn't cooled yet, the butter smell hanging in the air between me and that three-inch gap.
Maybe that was true. Maybe every bit of it was exactly what he said it was.
But he was so used to her that he didn't even notice.
That was the part that made my chest ache. Not what she'd done. What he hadn't.
He'd taken the glass from her hands and set it aside and kept talking about press schedules and bins, and none of it had registered. Not the intimacy of it. Not the strangeness. Not the fact that she'd drunk from his glass and handed it back like it belonged to both of them.
Being unbothered wasn't the same as being innocent.
The door was cold under my free hand.
I'd been standing outside something for nine years. Outside his work. Outside his days. Outside the easy rhythm he had with everyone who wasn't me.
And I was finished.
He's never had a mouthful of anything I made in his life. She's drinking off the same side of his glass.
I stepped back from the door. Not far—just enough that my shoulder wasn't pressed to the frame anymore.
I could still hear them. Low voices, easy rhythm, talking about barrels and the day's work like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The towel still held the heat of them. I'd made the biscuits before sunrise, standing in the dark kitchen with my hands in the dough, thinking he'd want one with his coffee.
The fabric bunched between my fingers where I gripped it.
The concrete was cold under my boots.
My hands were completely steady.
I stayed where I was.
Their voices carried through the door—something about barrels, about the schedule for the rest of the day. Then they moved, footsteps heading toward the far end of the room. The other door opened. Roland said something about the fermentation building.
It closed behind them.
I gave it another minute. The building stayed quiet.
I walked in.
Long table down the center, glasses and bottles still out from the tasting. Schedule pinned to the wall. The high window threw a clean stripe of light across the concrete.
His bench ran along the left wall, under that window. Sample tags, a notebook, a pen lying across the corner.
I set the towel down on the table.
My wedding ring slid off. I walked to the bench and set it down next to the sample tags.
Then I picked the towel back up and left.
Tom was outside his booth when I reached the gate.
"Did you find him?"
"I did, thanks."
"Good. He's probably buried in work by now."
"He's busy. Don't tell him I came."
I held out the towel. "I made too many this morning. You want them?"
He took it, surprised. "You sure?"
"I'm sure."
"Well, thanks. That's kind of you."
I smiled. "Enjoy."
He waved me through, already unwrapping a corner of the towel. I pulled onto the lake road and turned north.
The drive back was quiet. The water sat flat under the sun, the shore empty. I passed the turnoff for the highway and kept going until Ridge Road opened up on my left.
The road switchbacked twice through the trees, narrow and steep. I took it slow. By the second turn I could see my fence line through the leaves, and then the clearing opened and I was on my own ground again.
I parked in front of the barn. The ridge stretched out behind the house, rows running clean to the tree line. Twenty people tomorrow. I'd need to set the bins out tonight.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and turned it off.
The screen went dark. I set it on the passenger seat and got out.