Chapter 5: The Labels

Wheelwright Cellars sits at the bottom of the valley where the Oregon line cuts across the vines.

It is a long stone building with a slate roof, built in 1951 by a Wheelwright who wanted a name more than wine.

It looks like a bank that took up farming.

I had never been inside past the tasting room.

On Thursday after the last truck, Rhys Wheelwright sent a car to the scale house.

There was a note on the seat that said, "Please come and see where the water goes."

It was signed with his initials and nothing else.

I went in my canvas jacket, because I wanted him to see me in it.

He met me at the door of the cellar office himself, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow and a pencil behind his ear.

I had never seen him without his suit coat.

His forearms were corded and brown from the sun, and the sight of them made my mouth go dry.

"Miss Aldahl," he said.

"Mr. Wheelwright."

"This way."

The cellar office sat at the end of a long stone passage lined with oak barrels.

The air smelled of wet stone and old wine and sweet, close wood.

There was an iron stove in the corner with its door shut, and a battered oak desk, and a wall of framed paper behind the desk.

I stopped.

They were labels, thirty or forty of them, each one mounted on cream board in a plain black frame.

I knew every one.

A hawk over a wheat field in the first light.

A river bend with three cottonwoods.

A girl's hand on a gate, in washed-out ink.

My mother's kitchen window, with the geraniums.

I had painted them in the back bedroom of the farmhouse over nine years, at night, after the scale house.

I had posted the originals to a post office box in Portland with a signature that was not quite my name.

"They're beautiful," I said.

My voice came out steady, which surprised me.

"They are the best thing this company has ever put on a bottle," Rhys said.

He stood beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his arm.

"I've been trying to find the artist for four years."

"Have you?" I asked.

"The agency says a post office box in Portland," he said.

"The checks go to a bank in Spokane.

"The signature is S. Touchet, and I have never found out whether that is a person, a pen name or a company."