The Bordeaux Betrayal

her fox back, too. I cleaned up my driveway from that one.”

“Let me handle this, Lucie. She’s my daughter.”

“By covering for her and bailing her out? No. Sorry, but she has to take responsibility for what she’s done.”

“She won’t come. She won’t listen to me. Why should she listen to you?” Amanda sounded stiff.

“Because if she doesn’t listen to me she’ll have to deal with the sheriff. He’s a lot less tolerant than I am.”

“You’d call the sheriff?” She seemed stunned.

“I would. Look, if this goes any further…if she’s done something out in the field and someone gets hurt tomorrow, she’s in big trouble.”

There was a silence on Amanda’s end.

“God, Amanda,” I said, “don’t tell me she did something to the jumps and fences?”

Quinn set down his wineglass and stared at me, his lips compressed in a thin line.

“I took care of it.” Her words were clipped. “Everything’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“Took care of what? Why didn’t you tell me about this right away?” Whatever else Kyra had done, it was far more serious than defacing the stone pillars. Worse, Amanda seemed to be trying to minimize it. I could feel my anger growing.

“Because I checked everything,” Amanda said. “You don’t need to worry.” I pointed my index finger to my head like a gun and pretended to pull the trigger. Quinn looked grim.

“What’d she do, Amanda?” My voice was tight with disbelief. She really intended to let her daughter off the hook.

“She, uh, rigged one of the fences so it would come apart when a horse went over it.”

I closed my eyes. That was how my mother had died. “I’m canceling the hunt.”

“It’s not necessary, Lucie. I talked to Kyra. It was only the one fence and it’s fixed. She didn’t do anything else.”

“I absolutely want her to come over here tonight. We can talk about whether or not the hunt goes on after she explains herself and apologizes.”

“I’ll talk to her, but I can’t guarantee she’ll come.”

“Then the sheriff will be by and it won’t matter what she feels like doing.”

“You’ve made yourself quite clear.” Amanda sounded terse and unhappy as she hung up.

“She’s mad at you, isn’t she?” Quinn said when I snapped the phone shut.

“Yes, dammit. Stupid, stupid kid. Someone really could have gotten hurt. Amanda was acting like it was no big deal.”

“We’ll take care of that tonight.” He still looked grim.

I called Claudia next. That conversation went better.

Quinn and I finished our wine as the sun turned into a hard orange ball that hovered just above the horizon. Higher in the sky a line of clouds like beads on a necklace changed from blood-colored to violet, then washed out into flannel gray as the sky darkened behind them.

Quinn picked up our empty wineglasses when all that remained was a line of gilded brightness separating the sky from the mountains. “What are you going to do now?”

“See my grandfather off for his big reunion tonight,” I said, “then wait for Kyra and Amanda to show up.”

“You think they will?”

“They’d better.”

“You doing anything for dinner?” he asked.

“Probably something involving a can opener and the microwave. Or cheese and crackers. I’m beat.”

“What if I bring takeout over to your place, say, in about an hour? Chinese, maybe,” he said. “You might need some backup, especially if the kid refuses to admit what a jerk she was.”

I sat up in my chair and looked at him in surprise. “That sounds nice—even if the kid doesn’t admit she was a jerk. I can handle her on my own, you know. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“I’m not worried about you,” he said. “I’m worried about her and Amanda. I’ll bet you they start going at each other.”

“I don’t think it will get violent.”

“I know it won’t,” he said. “That’s what I’m there for.”

My grandfather, looking like a gracefully aging matinee idol in his double-breasted dinner jacket, was waiting in the foyer when I walked through the door twenty minutes later.

“Tu es magnifique!” I said.

He grinned as though I’d just confirmed a well-known truth. “Merci beaucoup.”

“Someone’s coming to get you?”

“My colleague,” he said. “You met him and his friend the other day.”

“I’ll wait up for you. I’d like to hear all about your reunion.”

“I’ll be home after breakfast,” he said. “You may want to get some sleep.”

I heard a car pull into the driveway, the tires crunching on the gravel. “How do you do it?” I asked. “I know people who are twenty, thirty years younger than you and couldn’t keep up with half of what you do. You’re amazing.”

He caressed my cheek. “I have always looked at whatever came my way in life and tried to find the good in it. It brings one energy and joie de vivre.”

“Even during the war?”

“Especially during the war.”

I smiled at him and felt like my heart would break. “I love you, Pépé.”

“I love you too, mon ange,” he said.

I walked with him to his friend’s car, his posture as erect as a soldier’s. As he climbed into the back passenger seat he said, “I have been thinking. Perhaps tomorrow we could visit your mother’s grave?”

“Of course,” I said. “Whatever you wish.”

He held his hand up in a small salute as the car pulled out of the driveway. I went inside and tried not to think about how much I would miss him when he returned to France in a few days.

Quinn brought enough Chinese takeout to feed our entire crew when he showed up a few hours later. We ate dinner in the parlor in front of a fire I’d made in the fireplace. Last spring when the men cleared additional acreage so we could plant more vines, a couple of the guys split the logs into firewood and everyone was told to take whatever they wanted. They stacked half a cord for me near the carriage house next to my dwindling old woodpile.

“Did you use that new wood for this fire?” Quinn asked as a log crackled and popped, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney.

“Most of it’s the old, seasoned logs. Maybe I accidentally brought in one or two new ones.”

“Still too green,” he said. “You might end up with burns in your nice new carpet if more sparks shoot off in the wrong direction. You should know better, country girl.”

“I guess I’m distracted about tonight,” I said as I put the small white takeout boxes back in the bag he’d brought them in so he could bring home the leftovers.

“Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” He moved so he was lying on his side with his chin propped on one hand, watching the fire.

I sat on the rug across from him with my back against the sofa. “I hope so.”

“Another two weeks and we’ll be ready to blend the Cab,” he said.

All evening we’d kept the conversation on neutral ground, talking mostly about work. Nicole’s name hadn’t come up once.

“Are we going to have three hundred samples until you achieve perfection?” I asked.

“No more than two-fifty. I don’t like to go overboard.”