Chapter 5: Easier

The pharmacist's note was one page, and Joaquin read it to me twice in the shade of the gatehouse.

The capsules in the white bottle were a prescription sedative.

The bottle carried no pharmacy name, only a blank sticker with the word vitamins printed on it by a label maker.

"A dose like that is meant for a week or two, Mari," Joaquin said. "Not five years."

I stared at my bandaged hand.

Five years of Lillian's anniversary dinners.

Five years of a small white bottle pressed into my palm, and of waking the next morning with a thick, slow head.

I had thought I was just tired.

I had thought I was just bad at being happy.

"I'm going to find him," I said.

"I'll come."

"No." I put the note in my pocket. "He needs to say it to me, and he needs to say it where people can hear."

At four o'clock the crush pad behind the cellars was loud with machines.

A dozen workers in rubber boots stood around the steel bins, sorting grapes from the afternoon pick.

Conrad stood on the edge of the platform in a clean shirt, telling the crew where he wanted the next bins.

Wyatt was up to his elbows in must beside the press and did not look at me when I walked in.

He stopped working, though.

I stepped onto the platform and turned off the nearest machine.

Conrad swung around.

"Marisol, this is a working floor."

"Then they can hear me working." I unfolded the page. "The bottle your mother gave me on Sunday has a sedative in it. It isn't a vitamin."

The crew went quiet one machine at a time.

"I've been taking those pills for five years, Conrad."

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