The Divorce He Asked For, The Empire I Took Away novel · Chapter 22 of 32

Chapter 22: Before the Auction

I held the phone out so Augie could read it.

He read it.

His jaw did the thing it did when the tractor wouldn't start.

"Head winemaker," he said. "Of his tanker."

"Your name on the back label," I said. "In small print. Where nobody looks."

"What are you going to say?"

I typed my answer.

"No."

I sent it and set the phone face down on the press.

It buzzed again almost right away.

I didn't turn it over.

"Come see my wine," I said.

Augie's barrel room was the old part of the cave, dug into the hill by his grandfather.

The walls were rough stone, sweating a little.

It was cold enough to see your breath, and it smelled like wet rock and oak and something sweet underneath.

Fifty-eight barrels sat two high along the left wall.

KESSEL, chalked on every head, in my handwriting.

At the far end was a battered leather couch where Augie slept during harvest when a tank was misbehaving.

An old wool blanket was folded over the arm.

He turned on the string of work lights and they came on one by one down the length of the cave.

I pulled a sample from the middle barrel with the glass thief.

The 2026.

Six weeks old, still rough, still grumbling.

I poured two small glasses and handed him one.

"Tell me what it is," I said.

He tasted it.

He took his time.

He always did.

"Young," he said. "Angry about it. Dark cherry. Black pepper. Something like tobacco on a porch rail." He tasted again. "And the nail's in there. Underneath. Waiting."

"It's not done yet."

"No. It's going to be the best thing anybody's made on this road in fifty years. And that includes my wife."

I looked at him.

He didn't take it back.

"You tasted it," I said.

"That's what you do with wine."

"Nobody tasted it," I said. "Seven years. He'd ask if it was good and I'd say yes and he'd pour it for somebody else."

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