And so on a cold January day two decades ago, Lydia had moved into the nineteenth-century ranch house made of board-and-batten walls and encircled by a wide porch. She’d spent those first months restoring the house and making it habitable and then in the spring had planted her first vines.
What Lydia lacked in science she made up for in luck. She’d inadvertently chosen the perfect site to grow grapes. Though Texas was a land of extremes—cold, heat, hail, and drought—Bonneville enjoyed the right blend of moisture-laden soil, hot Texas sunshine to nourish the vines, and gentle steady breezes to chase away pests.
And as Bonneville had welcomed Lydia, so it had greeted Greer with meandering hillsides, orange-yellow sunsets, and temperate breezes. She’d been too battered to appreciate the beauty initially, but soon the land had eased her sour moods and guided her away from grief. Now she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
“Good morning, Miss Templeton,” José West said.
She smiled. “Good morning, José.”
José West was a midsize man with thick arms and deeply colored skin from years in the sun. There’d been a time when he could heft one-hundred-pound sacks of fertilizer without a thought, but in the last year much of that boundless strength had waned. The graying at his temples had deepened and his eyes no longer sparked with challenge.
He had been managing Bonneville Vineyards for twenty years, and he’d not been pleased when Lydia had brought Greer to Bonneville. He’d made it clear he did not have time to babysit. Greer had made it clear she did not want to work in the dirt with a gruff man. But Lydia had insisted in a not-too-friendly tone that the two get along. “The grapes do no care about your problems,” she had shouted to them both.
Neither liked the other but both respected Lydia enough to try. And so Greer had followed José to his truck that first morning at sunrise. She’d had a terrible headache, still limped from her accident, and had wanted only to return to her bed and pull the covers over her head. José, mumbling in Spanish, had grumbled about moody teenage girls. When she’d glanced back at Lydia hoping for a reprieve, she’d found her aunt smiling.
By noon of that first day, Greer had been covered in sweat. Her hands had ached and her legs covered with scratches from the vines. To say her mood had lightened would have been a lie. José had explained how to prune the dead vines and leaves and watched as she’d practiced. Midday, he’d ordered her to return to the main house to rest her injured leg. Though she’d never have admitted it then, she would confess now there’d been a flicker of accomplishment when she’d limped to the waiting truck.
José had come again for her the next day and again on the next. She’d followed him, sullen and silent, into the fields. That first harvest season, neither had spoken more than six words to the other. But she’d learned how invasive weeds could be to the Texas Hill Country vines and how to curse them in both Spanish and English. She’d grown adept at jiggling the truck’s spark plug so it would fire and the engine would start. At harvest time, she’d learned to sharpen the blade of her pruning knife and how to cut, twist, and toss a cluster of grapes quickly and gently.
The vineyard allowed no time for self-pity or much reflection. It required her full and immediate attention all day, every day. No weekends off. No vacations and abbreviated holidays. The vineyard wanted her body and soul, and she was grateful to give herself over to it.
Over the next two seasons, José had taught her about soil, sun, rainfall, and drainage. He’d taught Greer about the life cycle of a grape and how to tell when the grapes were the sweetest. Without a lot of words spoken, they’d become friends.
By the end of her third season, her mother had started talking of college back East. But by then the land and the grapes had infected Greer’s blood and filled her mind with dreams of expansion and winemaking. To her mother’s disappointment, she’d forgone an Eastern school and earned a viticulture certificate from Texas Tech.
Now, accomplishment burned as she studied her land. This was her last season as a grower. This time next year she’d be making wine. She didn’t yearn to mass-produce wines but to create wines conveying quality.
“Your aunt would be proud,” José said.
“Yes.” It still saddened her Lydia would never taste the first Bonneville wine. “We’ll drink a toast to her with the first bottle.”
He cleared his throat but didn’t speak.
José had been hit as hard by Lydia’s death as Greer. Though they’d not made their relationship public, Greer knew José and Lydia had been lovers for years. For Lydia, he’d always grieve.
“How is the new boy working out?” she said.
He squinted against the sun as he watched Mitch watering the horses. “He’s done well with the horses.” He frowned. “We’re not a horse farm and we cannot afford to feed the horses or the man who feeds them.”
“We can afford a couple of old horses, and Mitch knows he’ll work in the fields.”
“When?”
“You can have him today. After he feeds the horses he’s all yours.”
Lines around José’s mouth deepened as he studied the animals. “Lydia gave you a dog. Why didn’t you give him a dog?”
She thought back to the mutt Lydia had given her after the first harvest. The Golden Shepherd mix had been six weeks old. Like the grapes, the dog had not cared about her past. There was simply now. Sadie had lived eight years and been there to greet her each morning, barking when she’d left for Texas Tech and when she’d returned. “I spotted the FOR SALE sign at the horse farm while I was driving home. Buying the horses made sense.”
José snorted and kicked the dirt with his boot. “You can’t save the world.”
“No, not the world.”
José flexed his hands, now bent and swollen by arthritis. “But you hope to do for him what Lydia did for you?”
“I promised Lydia I would help one person. Just one.”
“And he is your one?”
“I asked Dr. Stewart to give me someone to help. He gave me Mitch. So yes, he is the one.”
“Why was there a Texas Ranger here yesterday? Was it about the hanging?”
“Yes.” She shoved out a breath. José didn’t trust the law. “And he’s Mitch’s uncle.”
A string of Spanish curse words rumbled out with his next breath. “Was he here for the hanging or the boy?”
“Both.”
“Why would he ask you about the dead man?” She rubbed the back of her neck with her hands. “Because I knew him.”
“How?”
“From before Bonneville. From Shady Grove.”
José frowned. They’d never talked about that time but Lydia had told him. “That is not good.”
“No.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.”
She’d thought a lot about Shady Grove in the last twenty-four hours. She’d not kept up with any of the kids from her pod, not even Betty, whom she’d had a chance meeting with a couple of years ago at a wine festival. Greer had been taken back. Their conversation had been awkward, each anxious to gain distance from the other.
Shady Grove and the accident had been a distant dull pain until yesterday.
Why did you do this to me, Rory? Why now?
With Rory’s death, Mitch, and now Bragg’s watching, she feared she’d bitten off too much. “How do the grapes look today?”
“They’re plump and ripe. The spring was good to us, and if these next two or three weeks are hot and dry, we will be ready for harvest by early July.”
“How many tons do you think this year?”
“The new vines you planted five years ago will be ready. With them, I think we’ll have twenty-thousand tons.”
“A sizeable load.”
“The wineries will be pleased. We could turn a nice profit this year.”
“Next year we will be making our own wine, just as Lydia dreamed.”
Frowning, José pulled a bandana from his back pocket and glanced back toward land cleared for the winery. He disapproved. They were farmers in his mind. They grew the finest grapes in Texas and were no winemakers.