Chapter 4

At 3:30 Cora and Pilar went down into the cave with a flashlight, because the cellar lights only ran along the barrel rows and the founder's room had its own switch that neither of them wanted to touch.

The ledger sat on its shelf in a leather sleeve, the way it had sat since 1971. Four hundred pages. Every barrel Harlan Whitlock ever filled, every blend Cora had ever built, every bottling, every drought, every frost, every year the valley burned and the fruit came in tasting like smoke and they made something out of it anyway.

Cora opened it to the index and ran her finger down the years.

2004 - Harlan's Reserve - page 118.

She turned to page 118.

Page 117 was there. Page 119 was there. Between them, a ragged strip of leather and paper, torn close to the spine, taped back in with two pieces of clear tape that had yellowed and curled at the corners.

The page itself was gone.

"That's the blend page," Cora said. Her voice came out flat. "That's my father's handwriting and mine on the same sheet. My initials in the margin."

"I know what it is."

"That page is the only place where it says I made that wine."

Pilar said nothing, which was her way of agreeing.

Cora closed the ledger and carried it up the stairs into the barrel room, where the candles were already lit and the tables were already set, and that was where Desmond found her at 5:20, straightening his cuff in a midnight-blue tuxedo with no tie.

He looked good. He always looked good.

"There you are." He smiled. "Big night."

"Is it."

"I'm going to say some things up there. Some of them about you." He checked his watch, a vintage piece the estate's board had given him. "I need you to sit still and let it happen."

"Why?"

"Because somebody has to be the reason, and you've never once corrected anybody." He said it kindly, which was the worst part. "If you stand up tonight and make a scene, then by Monday you're the woman who sold her father's land. June grows up in this valley hearing that. Think about what you want her to hear."

Ten years old. Braces on her front teeth. Asleep upstairs in a house that had been in her mother's family since 1971.

Cora said nothing.

Desmond kissed her cheek and walked out toward the noise.

She waited until the door closed. Then she took out her phone and called Delphine.

"Bring the folder tonight. Both consents. And the transfer."

Pilar appeared in the doorway with her coat still on.

"The page isn't lost," she said. "I know where it went."