Read Chapter 10: A Glass of Respect

The morning came gray and damp, the kind of cold that settled into bones before the sun had a chance to argue. Élise pulled on the oldest clothes she owned—a pair of wool trousers and a faded cotton shirt—and walked to the eastern rows where the pickers had already gathered.

They stopped talking when she approached. Eight faces turned toward her, eyes sliding away almost immediately, the way they always did. She was still the outsider, the Parisian, the woman who wore heels to inspect drainage ditches.

She did not blame them.

"Show me how you cut," she said to the nearest picker, a weathered woman named Mireille with hands like oak roots.

Mireille blinked. "Madame?"

"The cutting. Show me."

A murmur passed through the group. Julien stood at the far end of the row, his clippers hanging loose in his grip, watching her with an expression she could not read. He did not intervene.

Mireille hesitated, then reached for a cluster of grapes and demonstrated—a snip at the stem, a careful cradle of the fruit, a placement in the shallow basket strapped across her chest. Élise nodded and took the clippers from her hand.

The first hour was torment.

Her fingers fumbled. The stems resisted her cuts, and more than once she sliced through fruit instead of stalk, sending juice running down her wrists. The thorns—she had not known grapevines had thorns, not like these, not these vicious little hooks that caught on her sleeves and dug into her palms—left thin red lines across her hands like a map of her incompetence.

By the second hour, her back screamed. By the third, her hands had gone numb.

But she kept cutting.

The pickers worked around her, sometimes glancing at her, sometimes exchanging looks she chose to ignore. She filled her basket slowly, clumsily, spilling more than she saved, and yet she kept going. When Mireille offered quietly to take her basket, Élise shook her head.

"The grapes do not care who picks them," she said. "Only that they are picked."

Mireille said nothing. But she did not offer again.

By midday, the mistral had died to a whisper and the sun had burned through the gray. Élise's hands were a mess of scratches and one deeper cut across her thumb that had bled onto at least thirty grapes before she noticed. She wiped them on her trousers and kept working.

At the end of the row, she saw Julien watching her again. He had stopped pretending to work. His arms were crossed, his hat pulled low, and there was something in his stillness that felt less like hostility and more like measurement.

She ignored him.

The afternoon stretched long. The pickers moved through the vines with a rhythm she could not match, but she followed them anyway, row after row, until her vision blurred and her legs trembled beneath her. The sun sank toward the hills, painting the vineyard in gold and amber, and still she kept going until the last basket was filled and loaded onto the cart.

Mireille touched her arm. "Madame. You should wash those hands."

Élise looked down. The scratches had swollen into angry red welts, and the cut on her thumb had reopened, painting her palm in a thin wash of blood. She flexed her fingers and winced.

"I will," she said. "Thank you."

The pickers began to drift toward the shed, where a long table had been set with bread and cheese and a vat of cold water. Élise followed, her legs heavy as stone, and plunged her hands into the water. It stung fiercely. She kept them there until the burning stopped.

When she looked up, Julien was standing beside her.

He held a single glass, filled with dark ruby wine. The glass was smudged with dust, the kind of glass that had been used a thousand times in this vineyard, in this shed, by people who did not care about crystal or ceremony.

He held it out to her.

"For the harvest," he said. "Last year's vintage. It will not be ready for another year yet, but it is the first wine Joséphine and I made together, and we always drank a glass to start the harvest."

Élise dried her hands on her shirt and took the glass. The gesture was unexpected. She looked at his face, searching for mockery or condescension, but found none. His eyes were steady, almost warm.

"Thank you," she said.

She raised the glass and drank.

The wine hit her tongue and she stopped breathing.

It was not good. It was not even passable. There was a sharp, vegetal note beneath the fruit, a bitterness that lingered at the back of her throat like old tea, and a dull, dusty finish that coated her mouth. She swallowed and forced herself not to grimace, but Julien was watching her too closely.

"You taste it," he said.

She looked at him. "Taste what?"

"This is the wine that won the regional competition in Avignon in '52. It was praised by the jury. The head of the commission wrote that it was 'a triumph of the Provençal earth.'"

Élise looked at the glass, then at him. "Then the commission had no palate."

Silence.

Julien stared at her for a long moment, then took the glass from her hand and drank the rest himself. He swirled it in his mouth, frowned, and spat it onto the ground.

"I knew you would notice," he said quietly. "No one else has."

"What is wrong with it?"

He set the glass down on the table and crossed his arms. "That is the question I have been asking myself for six months. The wine is flawed. It has been flawed since the last pressing, but no one else has tasted it. Or if they have, they have not said anything."

"You thought I would not notice either."

"I thought you would not care enough to say so." He paused. "I was wrong."

Élise wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. The taste lingered, sour and strange. "What causes it?"

"I do not know. The grapes are healthy. The pressing was done the same way we have always done it. The cellar is clean, the temperature is stable." He shook his head. "I checked everything. I checked it twice. There is nothing that explains it, and yet—" He gestured at the glass. "You tasted it. It is not right."

"And you bottled it anyway."

"The competition wine, yes. The rest of the vintage is still in barrel. I have been delaying the bottling, hoping the flaw would age out. It has not."

Élise looked at the vineyard stretching beyond the shed, dark shapes against the fading sky. The thorns on her hands throbbed. The weight of the day pressed down on her shoulders, and the taste of the wine still sat on her tongue like an accusation.

She thought of the ledger. Of the entries that made no sense. Of the note from the boy, claiming the cup held the answers. Of the shed's hidden compartment, still unexplored, still waiting.

"Last year," she said slowly, "when was the wine pressed?"

"October. The second week."

"Who was here?"

Julien frowned. "The usual crew. André oversaw the pressing. He was still the foreman then."

"And when did André disappear?"

"Thirteen days after Joséphine's funeral." He paused. "The pressing was two weeks before she died."

Élise looked at him. Something cold settled in her stomach, heavy as stone.

"The wine was pressed while André was in charge," she said. "And you are telling me the wine is flawed, and no one can explain why."

"Yes."

"And the cellar was clean."

"Yes."

"And you checked everything."

"I did."

Élise walked to the shed door and looked inside. The press stood silent in the corner, dark and hulking in the shadows. The barrels lined the far wall, sleeping.

She turned back to Julien.

"Then check it again," she said. "But not the wine. The press. The hoses. The filters. Check everything the grapes touched."

"Why?"

"Because if no one can explain it, and André vanished thirteen days after the funeral, then there is someone else who wanted that wine to be wrong. And they are still here."

Julien was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Today," she said.

He looked at her torn hands, her bloodied knuckles, the exhaustion written across her face. For the first time, something like respect flickered in his eyes.

"Tonight, then," he said.

He picked up the glass and wiped it clean with his sleeve. When he handed it back to her, it was empty, but the gesture felt heavier than wine.

"Tonight," she agreed.