hanging on the back of a chair and got my cane. My night vision hadn’t adjusted as well as his and I yelped when I got caught on the thorns of one of the rosebushes.
He came out of the summerhouse. “What are you doing here?”
“Impaling myself in the dark. What do think I’m doing here? I came to see what you’re looking at.” I tugged the sleeves of my sweatshirt so they covered my hands. It was cooler than I expected. “Did you bring your telescope?”
In the near darkness his face was darker shadows and planes, his eyes black pools of negative space. “I thought you didn’t want me stargazing out here.”
He hadn’t forgotten the argument.
“That was a misunderstanding and you know it,” I said.
“It’s still at my place,” he said. “Packed up.”
“You could bring it back, if you wanted.”
“Is that so?” he said. “Thanks. I’ll think about it.”
I didn’t like the way he kept staring at me. “If you don’t have your telescope, what made you come here tonight?”
“Wanted a view of the harvest moon. There’s only one each year. Tonight’s the night. Too many trees at my place for a good view.” He walked back to the summerhouse and opened the door. I heard something scraping inside. “Grab that door, will you?”
He hauled one of my mother’s weather-beaten Adirondack chairs outside and positioned it so it looked out over the valley.
“You staying?” he asked. “Or were you just checking up on me?”
“I’ll stay.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I’d like to. Unless you’d rather be alone.”
“Don’t complicate things. I asked, didn’t I?” He went back inside and got another chair.
“There are lots of harvest moons,” I said.
“Nope. There’s only one that’s closest to the autumnal equinox. That’s the real harvest moon.” He set the second chair close to the first. “Have a seat. Moon’s behind that cloud bank. When it moves away, you’ll see it.”
I set my cane down and sat next to him, leaning against the weather-coarsened wood. He pulled a cigar out of his jacket pocket, unwrapped it, and rustled in another pocket for matches. I watched the familiar ritual as his match flared and he bent his head, puffing until the cigar was lit. The tip glowed like a mini-moon and I breathed in the familiar scent of his tobacco.
He sat back as the clouds slowly moved off and the enormous moon, the color of a ripe wheel of Leicester cheese, hung in the sky above our heads.
“It’s gorgeous,” I said.
“Yup.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed them.
“You know in France, they used to care for the grapes according to the phases of the moon,” I said. “Planting, picking, pruning. Maybe we should try it some time.”
“The French also believe it’s bad luck to have women around at harvest.” He looked at me and puffed on the cigar. “I don’t suppose you’d like to try that sometime?”
I tucked my feet under me and wrapped my arms around my knees. “You are such a Neanderthal, you know that?”
He laughed. “I just don’t buy into that crap, that’s all. Give me science any day. Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about the Cab blend.”
“You think about it nonstop.” But to tell the truth, so did I. Until we got the grapes picked and into the barrels, I’d be as restless and preoccupied as he was.
“Damn lucky for you that I do,” he said. “I want this year to be out of this world. We could screw up everything else, but you know how much rides on this one.”
I didn’t expect him to sound so somber. Most of the time he acted like he had a grace and favor relationship with St. Vincent, the patron saint of winegrowers, who whispered in his ear. But I understood what he meant. Of all the wines we produced, Cabernet Sauvignon was our most valuable—the one whose sales really paid the bills at the vineyard.
“It’ll be great,” I said. “As long as we aren’t picking too late. If we get an overnight freeze while that wine is still sitting in the vats, there goes fermentation until next spring when it warms up again.”
“If we pick early there’ll be too much acid,” he said. “You want people getting heartburn when they drink our wine? It’s a nightmare to fix wine with too much acid.”
“You’re still talking like a Californian,” I said. “Out there you never had to worry about high acidity. If you pick too late your only problem is that the alcohol content goes through the roof.”
His cigar glowed serenely in the dark. “High alcohol content’s easier to take care of than too much acid.”
“Sure,” I said. “You just add water to rehydrate the yeast.”
The minute I said that, I regretted it. I glanced over at him but he was still staring straight ahead, watching the sky. His profile looked like it had been cast in steel.
“I was talking about stuck fermentation,” I said.
“I know you were.” But he sounded brusque and I knew it was because I’d indirectly brought up Le Coq Rouge. “Adding water is not the only way to deal with it, either. You can use a glycol heater.”
“I know.”
Too bad I hadn’t mentioned that instead, though my comment could have hit a nerve for any winemaker. We all wrestled with the dilemma of how much to fiddle with a wine to fix it or improve it, and still consider it the “original” wine. California had problems when their grape sugar stopped converting to alcohol, known as stuck fermentation. In Virginia we had the opposite problem. Our alcohol content was often too low so we added sugar to boost it, a practice known as chapitalising. Both processes meant we were tinkering with the wine—but no winemaker considered them fraudulent.
So if that was okay, was it also acceptable to top off bottles from an outstanding year with a bottle of the same wine from a less stellar year? It was only a small amount of wine and the practice was known as recorking. Had the winemaker diluted the fantastic vintage, or was it still worth the same price? And where did you draw the line at how much was too much?
“I’m sorry,” I said to Quinn.
“Forget it.” He stirred in his chair. “How’d it go with the asshole?”
“You shouldn’t call Ryan that and it went fine. We need him. He knows his stuff.”
“He’s still an asshole.” He puffed again on the cigar. “By the way, Mick left a message at the vineyard earlier. Asked if you’d call him. Something about Amanda and a tent.”
“For the auction. We’ve got so many people coming we might need to move it outside, on account of the Washington wine.”
I wondered why Mick had called the vineyard instead of calling me directly. Maybe he’d tried my dead cell and the mailbox was full. Maybe he just wanted to leave a message and avoid talking to me after the other night.
Quinn read my thoughts. “What’s going on with you two? You back together again?”
“The thing at Mount Vernon was a business-related dinner. That’s all.” I didn’t want to discuss it. “Look, I’d better get inside. We have an early start tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m ready to go, too.”
He stood up and held out his hand. I took it and he pulled me up. His skin felt rough and callused. Nothing like Mick’s, who, I’d heard, had a manicurist come to his home on a regular basis.
“Lucie!”
“What?”
“I asked what time you’re getting there in the morning.”
“When are you getting there?”
He rolled his eyes. “I just told you. Six-thirty.”
“Okay, I’ll be there at six-thirty, too.”
