Chapter 17: Chandler's Bill

At ten to six on Wednesday morning, the cellar floor was cold and smelled of oak and wet stone.

Twenty-two people stood in a loose half circle between the steel tanks, in rubber boots and canvas aprons, with their coffee going cold.

They were the people who worked the harvest every year.

The old foreman with the walnut face stood at the front, with his cap in both hands.

I stood a little apart from them, in jeans and a work shirt, with my mother's ring on my hand.

"Is he coming?" asked a girl from the tasting room.

"He'll come," I said.

At five to six, Chandler's car pulled into the yard.

He got out slowly, in a plain white shirt with no jacket, and came across the gravel carrying a long flat box.

He stopped at the cellar door.

Twenty-two faces turned toward him, and none of them smiled.

He came in anyway.

I will say that for my brother, then and after.

He came in.

"Gillian," he said.

"Not to me," I said. "To them."

He looked at the half circle, at faces he had walked past for ten years without learning half of their names.

He swallowed.

"I did it, and I'm not here to explain it again," he said.

"I'm here to tell you I resigned as vice president last night, and I won't vote with our father again."

Nobody moved.

"I said 'oops' to her face," Chandler said. "I want you all to know that I said it, and that she didn't deserve it."

Keep reading free with an account. Start I Was Always Second. Until I Left. from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.