Chapter 6

Briar

The regional showcase was a bigger deal than the tasting.

The tasting was informal—assessors, feedback, nothing on record except notes. The showcase was different. Participating farms submitted a base version of their core formula for permanent archive, and once it went in, it didn't come back out. The regional board used it for provenance tracking, authenticity certification, the kind of thing that mattered if you ever wanted to sell outside Varne.

It also meant that whatever you submitted was no longer just yours.

Our father put Isolde's name down for it without asking anyone. That was a Monday.

Wednesday was the tasting. The same day Isolde watched the assessors question my formula under her mislabeled bottle, she came home, sat down at dinner, and pressed two fingers to her temple.

"I've had a headache all day," she said. "I don't think I can do the showcase presentation."

I looked at her.

She'd handled the tasting fine—standing there with her hand over her mouth, performing the perfect mix-up, letting the room absorb the idea that it was an accident. She'd done that well. What she couldn't do was stand at a podium in front of regional assessors and answer technical questions about a formula she hadn't developed. The tasting had been about appearances. The showcase would be about knowing the actual work.

She didn't know the actual work.

Our father looked at the calendar. Then he looked at me.

"Briar can do it," he said.

"When is it?" I asked.

"Friday."

Two days. The showcase required a verbal presentation, a written submission, and a sample. I had all three—I'd been building this formula for two years—but submitting it meant handing over the base version permanently. Into the archive under the official registration, which was already in Isolde's name, because our father had put her name down and hadn't changed it.

"The registration is in Isolde's name," I said. "If I present under her registration, the archive attribution goes to her."

"You're both Harlow farm."

That wasn't an answer and we both knew it.

"Fine," I said.

The showcase was at the regional agricultural center, forty minutes outside Varne. Our father drove. He didn't ask me anything on the way there.

Callum was already inside when we arrived—he attended most regional events as a committee member. He looked up when I came through the door and I watched him recalibrate. He'd been expecting Isolde.

I didn't look at him again after that.

The presentation went well, technically. I knew the material and I didn't stumble, and one of the assessors asked a follow-up about the fermentation timeline that I answered without checking my notes. He wrote something down and nodded, which was more than I'd seen from a regional assessor at a Harlow table in years.

When it was done, they handed me the submission form.

The registration line already had Isolde's name printed on it—primary submitter, Harlow Farm. Below it was a line for the presenting representative.

I filled in my own name.

I handed it back.

Two years of work, in an archive, attributed to my sister. My name was on the form, sure—as the stand-in, the one who showed up when the registered submitter couldn't make it. That's what the record would show.

Nobody said anything about it afterward.

My father spent twenty minutes shaking hands near the entrance. I packed up my sample bottles, said nothing to no one, and went outside.

He'd driven us, which meant I was waiting for him.

I sat on the low wall at the edge of the parking lot and watched people filter out. It was cooling off, the sky going from blue to gray at the edges. I had nowhere to be except back in that car for forty minutes.

A truck pulled in and parked across the lot.

Emrys got out.

I stared at him. "How do you know where I am."

"You mentioned the showcase last week. Knew you'd be stuck waiting for your dad." He stopped in front of me. "Come on. I'll drive you back."

"My father's inside."

"I know. I saw his car. You want to ride back with him or you want to ride back with me?"

I thought about forty minutes in that car, my father not saying anything, the way he didn't need to say anything.

"Give me a second," I said.

I went back inside, found my father near the exit, and told him I had a ride. He nodded without asking who with.

I went back out and got in the truck.

Emrys didn't ask how the presentation went. Didn't ask what I'd submitted or whether I was okay about it. He just pulled out and headed away from the main road, toward the back route through the fields.

I noticed after about ten minutes that we were going the long way.

Not a detour. Just the route that cuts through farmland before it loops down into Varne from the north. It added maybe twenty minutes. There was nothing on it except fields and the occasional slow-moving tractor.

I leaned against the window and watched it go by.

There was something about the way he drove. Steady. Not rushed. He didn't check his phone or push the engine or do anything that suggested he was thinking about anything other than the road in front of him.

I didn't say anything. He didn't either.

By the time we turned onto the Harlow road it was almost dark.

He pulled up to the gate and stopped. I got out, and I was halfway to the door when I turned around.

"Why do you keep showing up?" I said.

He actually thought about it for a second.

"Because you're always in the wrong place alone," he said.

He reversed out before I could answer.

I watched his taillights go.

Then I looked down at myself and remembered I was still wearing his jacket—had been since the tasting two days ago, had just kept it on, hadn't mentioned it, hadn't given it back.

I took it off.

I folded it and left it on the front step.

Then I went inside.