Chapter 5

Briar

The joint tasting happened on a Friday, at the old mill building on the edge of town that the Apple Festival committee rented out every year for exactly this kind of thing.

It wasn't a competition, technically. Each orchard brought samples from their current season, the regional assessors gave informal feedback, and everyone stood around drinking small pours and pretending they weren't sizing each other up. It had been going on since before I was born and it mattered more than anyone admitted.

I brought a sample of my private reserve.

I wasn't planning to submit it formally—it wasn't ready for that, and it wasn't the kind of thing I wanted feedback on from a committee table. I'd brought it because I was going anyway and I didn't want to show up empty-handed, and because I'd been working on this particular formula for two years and I was starting to think it was actually good.

Probably a mistake, bringing something I actually cared about.

The event ran through the afternoon. The mill was warm and smelled like fermentation and sawdust, and by two o'clock most of the floor space was taken up with folding tables and small groups of people talking shop. I knew most of the faces. A few nodded at me when I came in. Most didn't.

I set up my samples at the end of the Harlow table and stayed out of the way while my father and Isolde handled the main presentation.

That was the arrangement. It had always been the arrangement.

The assessors came through in rotation, working the room table by table. I watched them stop at ours, watched my father do his usual smooth job of presenting the season's lineup, watched Isolde smile at exactly the right moments. She was good at events like this. She knew how to make people feel like they were getting something special.

When they got to my end of the table I gave them a brief rundown and let them try the sample.

The first assessor took a sip. Frowned slightly. Looked at the label.

"This is reading sweeter than the profile suggests," he said. "The acidity balance is off for a late-season press."

I looked at the label.

It was Isolde's label. Her orchard, her variety, her expected flavor notes.

Not mine.

I stood there for a second, running the math. My sample was in her bottle. Her sample was presumably in mine, sitting at her end of the table, doing fine under the correct label.

"There's been a mix-up," I said. "That's not the sample for this label."

The assessor looked at me. Then at the bottle. "The labels were provided by—"

"I know." I kept my voice level. "They got switched. The formula you're tasting is mine, but the label on it is my sister's. If you want an accurate read, you'd need to taste it against the right profile."

From down the table, Isolde made a sound.

I looked up.

She had her hand pressed over her mouth, eyes wide, exactly the right amount of horrified. "Oh god," she said. "Oh, I'm so sorry—I must have mixed them up when I was setting out the bottles, I wasn't paying attention—" She looked around at the small crowd that had turned to watch. "I'm so sorry, Briar. I wasn't thinking."

The assessor was already making a note on his clipboard, which meant the moment was being recorded, which meant it existed officially. A mix-up. An accident. Sisters, you know how it is.

Half the room had already decided.

I could see it in the way people were looking at me—that particular expression that meant they were waiting to see if I was going to make a scene about it. Hoping, maybe. I'd given them enough material over the years.

I didn't say anything.

Callum had been at the back of the room the whole time. I'd clocked him when I walked in and done my best to keep him in my peripheral vision rather than looking directly at him, which was a skill I'd been practicing for years.

Now he came forward.

He stopped beside me, and his voice was quiet, the kind of quiet that doesn't carry. "Let it go," he said.

Two words.

That was my whole defense team. Two words that put me squarely in the position of the person who needed to calm down about something, when I was the one standing in front of a mislabeled bottle that hadn't mislabeled itself.

I looked at him.

He wasn't being cruel. That was the thing about Callum—he was never cruel, exactly. He just looked at situations and made decisions about them very quickly, and the decisions were always the same, and he had no idea.

"Sure," I said.

I picked up my sample, put it back in my bag, and walked out.

The parking lot was cold after the warmth of the mill. I stopped on the bottom step and just stood there for a second, breathing.

I heard footsteps behind me and didn't turn around.

"Here."

I turned.

Emrys was leaning against his truck, which was parked three spaces down. He was holding out his jacket—a dark canvas thing, the kind he wore for work.

"You've been in there for two hours," he said. "It's cold out."

"I'm fine."

"I know." He shook the jacket slightly. "Still cold though."

I looked at the jacket. Looked at him.

I took it.

It was warm in the way that jackets are when someone's been wearing them—that built-in warmth that doesn't come from the fabric. I put my arms through the sleeves and it was too big, obviously, and I didn't say anything about that.

He pushed off the truck and stood beside me, facing the parking lot.

He didn't ask what had happened in there. Didn't tell me I should have pushed back harder. Didn't say anything at all.

I pulled the jacket tighter.

He'd been out here the whole time, I realized. Waiting, without making it a thing. Just—present.

I tried to remember the last time someone had just been present without needing something back from it.

"You don't have to stay," I said.

"I know," he said, and didn't move.