I grabbed the wine bottle and poured myself a generous glass. I needed to call Felicity. Needed to ask her—but I couldn’t. Not now. Not when she was about to go into labor any second.
But Isabel’s story ate at me. Was she right? Had something happened between Felicity and Snapper? When? During one of Snapper’s rare trips home? How long ago?
The mental images running through my head made bile rise in my throat.
I was halfway through my second glass of wine when I heard another vehicle in the driveway.
This time, it was Snapper’s truck.
I wasn’t ready to face him with Isabel’s poison still fresh in my mind.
But he was already climbing out, already heading for the porch. And he was carrying something wrapped in cloth.
I opened the door before he could knock.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
His expression shifted to concern. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? Because you look—” He stopped. “Can I come in?”
I stepped aside to let him pass, just like I had my lastvisitor. He moved into the kitchen and carefully set whatever he was carrying on the counter.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Something I need to show you.” He unwrapped the cloth that covered a wine bottle. It was old, dusty, and the label was faded but still legible—Christmas Blessing Wine, 1955.
“Oh my God.” I moved closer, my hands hovering near it but not quite touching. “Where did you find this?”
“In the rare room. In the caves.” He watched my reaction. “After you left, I went back to the house, and Bit reminded me that Tryst had found it.”
I stared at the bottle, my mind racing. “There’s actually a bottle. A real bottle.”
“Just one, as far as we know.”
“This is incredible.” I reached out, then stopped myself.
“We could have it analyzed,” Snapper said. “Modern technology can determine the exact composition. We wouldn’t need to find the missing formulas. We’d have everything we need.”
“Really? That’s possible?”
“Yeah. But, Saffron...Once we open it, it’s gone. Opening it means destroying it forever.”
“We can’t.”
“It might be our only option?—”
“No.”I stepped away from the counter, from the bottle, from him. “This is part of your family’s history. Part of mine too. Once it’s poured down some lab drain, it’s gone. We can’t undo that.”
“But then we’d have the formula?—”
“Maybe. What if the technology isn’t perfect? What if it can’t capture exactly what they did? What if there’s some step, some technique that isn’t in the chemistry of the wine itself? I can’t be responsible for destroying the only evidence that this wine ever existed.”
He moved closer. “Saffron, listen to me?—”
