The Whole Valley Called Her the Plain Fiancee, So She Let the Banquet Read the Deed novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Snowed In

Signe's POV

The snow kept coming all Saturday.

By four in the afternoon the road down to the barrel room had vanished under a foot of it.

The plow that serves the Oregon line had gone home.

Rhys and I walked down from the vineyard house because there was no other way to go.

He said he had to check the cellar crew's pipes.

I went because I did not want to be in his house when his mother's car came up the drive.

The crew had left at noon, and the long stone building was empty.

The barrels slept in their rows along the passage, and our boots made the only sound.

The cellar office was the one warm room.

Rhys lit the iron stove and fed it split oak until it ticked.

My forty labels glowed on the wall behind his desk in the firelight.

I stood in front of the girl's hand on the gate with my hands in my jacket pockets.

"I painted that one the week my mother's headstone went in," I said.

"I didn't know whose hand it was.

"I thought it was mine.

"I think it was hers."

Rhys came to stand beside me and did not touch me.

"I read your speech," I said.

"You did not," he said.

"You left it on the hall table last night.

"I read it before you were up."

He closed his eyes.

"I only got the first three pages," I said.

"The last one you tore up four times, and I found the pieces in the wastebasket.

"I put them together on the kitchen table."

"Signe," he said.

"It says you love me," I said.

"It says it four different ways, and you crossed out every one."

"I could not make them true enough," he said.

"They were true enough," I said.

"I only wanted to hear you say it."

The snow hissed against the high window.

I took my mother's glasses off my nose and laid them on his desk, folded, with the chain curled around them.

He watched me do it.

I had taken them off in front of him once before, in his hall doorway, and held them in my hand.

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