Chapter 12: The Committee

"Who decides?" I said.

The auction chair blinked at me.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Who decides what's a wine and what's a dispute? You?"

"The committee. We meet on the twenty-fourth for lunch. But Liesl, they'll say the same thing I'm saying."

"Then they can say it to my face."

I walked out with my folded form and let the door swing shut behind me.

The two volunteers went back to their envelopes very slowly.

The Dry Creek Harvest Auction committee had lunch on the last Thursday of every September at the country club in Healdsburg.

Seven people at a round table by the window.

White tablecloth, iced tea, chicken salad on croissants.

I had never been invited.

Grandpa had sat at that table for thirty years.

On Thursday at twelve-thirty, I walked into the dining room in my work boots and a clean denim shirt, carrying a wooden wine box.

Winona came behind me, cane thumping on the carpet.

A waiter tried to stop us.

Winona looked at him, and he decided not to.

The chair saw me and put down her fork.

"Liesl, this is a closed meeting."

"I know. I won't take long."

Around the table were seven faces I'd known my whole life.

Two bankers. A restaurant owner. The chair.

And three old growers in pressed shirts.

One of them had a white crew cut and hands like tree roots.

He'd farmed the bench above Grandpa's place for sixty years.

He'd been at my christening.

He'd been at my wedding, too, and he'd left early.

"Sit down, Liesl," he said. "You're making the waiter nervous."

I didn't sit.

I opened the box and set two glasses in front of each of them.

Then I set out two bottles wrapped in brown paper bags, the tops twisted shut.

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