Free Sweeter Than Wine by Michaela August Page A

deliberately: "Both. If you
like."
    He nodded eagerly, then rose to help her clear the table. Alice quelled her
momentary gratitude. Siegfried was obviously just trying to make a good
impression.
    But I like it , whispered a traitorous little voice. Bill had never shown the
least inclination to help her. On Maria's days off, he used to sit talking through the
open doorway while Alice washed up by herself.
    Brusquely, Alice directed Siegfried to place a glass bowl under the spout of the
brass and walnut grinder fastened to the counter edge. While a kettle of water
heated, Alice scooped coffee beans and Siegfried turned the long crank, watching
with deep concentration as the dark grains rained down.
    Fetching a pitcher of cream from the icebox, Alice poured some into a creamer
and the rest into a large bowl, adding a teaspoon of vanilla extract and several
spoons of sugar. As she spun the handle of the eggbeater and whipped the cream
into froth, she studied Siegfried.
    He opened up the grinder to clean out every speck, as if each particle of coffee
were as precious as diamonds. He transferred the ground coffee into the china
filter on top of the coffee pot and then sighed, as if he had accomplished some
great mission.
    The kettle whistled and she let the eggbeater settle into the thickening cream,
shaking her wrist--still sore from the impact with the hotel's door--to loosen up her
muscles. She poured boiling water through the coffee filter, checked that the
porcelain coffee service held sugar as well as cream, and handed a willing
Siegfried the tray. "I'll be finished in a moment," she promised, shooing him
out.
    When Alice emerged from the kitchen a few minutes later, she had a dusty
bottle of well-aged port tucked under her arm and was balancing plates of fluffy
shortcake heaped high with strawberries from the garden and topped with whipped
cream. Siegfried sat at the head of the table, waiting expectantly.
    She handed him a dessert plate and poured out cups of coffee and small
glasses of deep-red port before sitting down opposite him. "Can you tell me a bit
more about your winemaking skills?" she asked after his plate was clean.
    "I used to make--that is, I used to help my father make wines at Rodernwiller,
and I apprenticed here under Opa Roye and Signor Verdacchia," Siegfried replied.
Absently, he fingered the rim of the plate as if searching for nicks, or crumbs. "I
know he lived a good long life, but I was very sorry to hear that he had passed
away, and I shall miss him. My grandfather was a great vintner--when he could
take the time from his business concerns--but he depended on Signor Verdacchia
to take care of all the day-to-day tasks which must be done to achieve a good
wine."
    "We all miss him," Alice said, eyes stinging. Last winter had been a nightmare.
Everyone at Montclair had come down with the Spanish Influenza one after the
other, and both Peter's father and his young son had perished. Maria still grieved
for little Mario in silence, but she had begun to recover her ability to take joy in the
simple things of daily life. It had taken the foreman a long time to regain his
balance, and Alice was not entirely sure he had achieved it yet.
    "I'm surprised that you learned much from Signor Verdacchia," she said, a bit
off-balance herself. "He would never talk to me."
    An involuntary smile tugged at Siegfried's lips. "Not even his lecture on
'Winemaking, Man's Work?' He gave it to me, forcefully, several times."
    "So that's why he never let me into the winery alone!" Alice exclaimed. "Bill
always had to come with me, before he--left." She hated the catch in her voice,
and the thought of getting swept up in those memories again. She focused on the
lesser pain. "I paid attention during crush, and listened to Peter and Signor
Verdacchia argue about sugar and length of fermentation, but I can't say that I
know very much yet."
    And she needed to know everything. Someday, if she could figure out a way to
annul this