Tabitha's gaze sweeps over me with a thorough assessment that makes me feel like I'm being appraised at auction. "Oh, that's wonderful." A grin spreads across her face. "You must be that fancy horse breeder everyone's been gossiping about."
I bite back a laugh. My morning started at five with a mare who decided her water trough was a personal enemy, and I still have hay dust in places I'd rather not mention. "Guilty. But I’m not so sure about the fancy part," I admit.
"Well, welcome to Wildflower Valley." Tabitha is already reaching for glasses, lining them up on the bar with practiced ease. "Would you like to try a tasting?"
"I'm not drinking, Tabby. I have to stick with water." Rachel's hand drifts to her belly, and the grimace she makes suggests she's mourning the loss more than she'd like to admit. "But Charlie should do a flight."
"Oh, that's right! Congratulations!" Tabitha ducks behind the bar and resurfaces with a bottle that she presents to Rachel with exaggerated ceremony. "Sparkling grape juice. Sunny started making it a few months ago for exactly this situation. It's almost as good as the real thing."
Rachel takes the bottle and examines the label. "This looks interesting."
"Sunny insisted we have one available at all times. Said nobody should have to sit at a wine bar drinking plain water." Tabitha shrugs like this explains everything about the woman currently cleaning tanks behind the glass. Maybe it does.
The first wine hits my palate and I straighten on the stool. "Mmmmm…" Crisp white, bright with citrus and something deeper underneath, stone fruit, maybe, with a mineral edge that lingers. "This is excellent."
"That's our Viognier." Tabitha's pride is unmistakable as she nods toward a wall I hadn't noticed, cluttered with award medals and framed certificates. "Sunny's been refining that varietal for years, and it's really hitting its stride. The limestone in our soil gives it that mineral backbone you're tasting."
Sunny'svarietal. Of course it is.
My gaze betrays me again, sliding back to the glass wall where she's moved on to the next tank. I force my attention to the second pour, a rosé with more complexity than I expect, but it doesn't last. Every time Tabitha starts explaining a new wine, my eyes find their way back to the production room like they're on a compass and she's magnetic north.
She works the way I've seen the best horsemen work, with no wasted motion or hesitation. When she reaches for a tool on the upper shelf, her hand finds it without looking. When she shifts between tanks, each step has purpose. Everything about the way she moves says she could do this blindfolded and still not miss a beat.
She knows I'm watching. I'm not exactly being subtle about it, and the frown she fires through the glass every few minutes confirms she's keeping track. But here's the thing that keeps pulling my attention back—every time she catches me looking, that scowl deepens, but she never turns away first.
"You mentioned a tour?" Rachel asks, already looking toward the windows that face the vineyards. "Mason and I have been here several times, but we've never seen the operation."
"Absolutely." Tabitha glances at the empty tasting room. "It's quiet right now, so the timing is perfect. Let me show you around."
Tabitha leads us outside and across the courtyard, the afternoon heat settling over us like a warm blanket as we step between the first rows of grapevines. The vines stretch in precise lines up the hillside, their leaves rustling in a breeze that carries the faint sweetness of ripening fruit.
"These are our Viognier grapes," Tabitha says, brushing her fingers along a cluster of pale green fruit. "They're temperamental. They need full sun, perfect drainage, and just the right amount of neglect. Too much attention and they get lazy. Not enough and they give up on you entirely."
"Sounds like a few horses I know," I reply, and Tabitha laughs.
Further up the slope, the vines change with darker leaves, thicker stems, and a different kind of structure entirely. "These are our experimental varietals," Tabitha explains when she catches me looking. "Sunny's always testing what the land can handle. She's got this theory that the microclimate shifts just enough between the upper and lower slopes to support grapes nobody's tried in this region before."
There's admiration in her voice, the kind that comes from watching someone take risks that actually pay off. "Come on, let me show you where all of this ends up."
The barrel room swallows us in cool, still air, and the scent hits me immediately—oak and tannin and something earthier underneath, the patient smell of wine taking its time. Rows of barrels stretch toward the back wall, stacked three high, each one marked with dates and varietal codes in neat handwriting.
Tabitha leads us through a heavy door into the production room, and the space opens up around the towering steel tanks I'd been staring through from the tasting room. She walks us through the process from harvest to bottle, fielding Rachel's steady stream of questions with the ease of someone who genuinely loves what she does.
I'm only half listening. My eyes are already moving through the room, scanning the spaces between the tanks, the far corners, the workstation where I last saw her.
But the room is empty. Sunny is gone.
My gut drops, and I sweep the space one more time as if she might materialize from behind a fermentation tank if I just look hard enough.
"Charlie." Rachel's voice cuts through my fog, sharp enough to make me blink. Both women are staring at me. Tabitha with polite patience, my sister with the smirk of someone filing away ammunition for later.
"What?"
"Tabitha asked you a question." Rachel's eyes dance with barely contained amusement. "About wine. You know, the thing you're supposed to be tasting right now."
Heat creeps up the back of my neck. "Sorry. What was the question?"
"What’s your favorite wine?" Tabitha repeats, and the slight curve of her lips tells me she has a pretty good idea what had me so distracted.
