Free A Tainted Finish: A Sydney McGrath Mystery by Rachael Horn

it. She knew it meant she was feeling good.
    “Did you do punchdowns?” he asked.
    “No. No, I just got here, I opened the doors ten minutes ago.”
    “Ah. I'll get started.” He walked into the winery, turning on lights and disappearing into the cool depths of the building. She listened to sounds of running water and the scraping of a ladder on the concrete floor.
    Syd sat out on an Adirondack outside the winery, drinking in the remainder of the sunrise. She sipped her lukewarm coffee and pondered her own resilience. She felt fine for the moment. Somehow the sun, the vineyard, and the winery filled her with an unexpected buoyancy. She still felt the devastating pain in her chest, but her head somehow felt detached from it. She was awed by her sense of suspended grief. She became aware of the gracious gift of patience she had for herself; an acceptance of her own process. She invited the grief to settle in her chest and found a kind of comfort in the weight of it.
    ~
    The day of pressing red wine passed similar to the day of crushing fruit when she first arrived. She and Olivier worked side by side in a graceful rhythm; two experienced winemakers falling into sync. Three other cellar hands busied themselves with cleaning and storing the tanks, and wrangling hoses and sump pumps. Two of them were familiar to Syd. Alejandro was the primary connection for cellar hands in the winery, and he often found help from his cousins and friends. Clarence was always better at working with the cellar hands than she had been. Most were Mexican or Salvadorian workers who lived permanently in the area. He spoke fluent Spanish and he managed to maintain a universally casual nature, with little need to flex his authority. She always felt awkward at the deference the workers showed her. She was never sure if it was because she was the niece of the jefe, or because she was female, or just because she was white. The racial disparity between Mexican and Salvadorian workers and white workers was not as obvious in the fields when she worked alongside them. But in the close quarters of the winery she was always aware of social stratification, and always deeply uncomfortable with it.
    But now things had inexplicably changed. She felt more at ease with the cellar workers than in the past. She joked and flirted her way around the cellars hands. She could ask them to do a task without feeling bossy, and they clearly respected her decisions. She was grateful for this. She noted that Olivier was more aloof with the workers than she was. They stayed clear of him, even though she never observed him say or do anything unkind or dictating.
    Alejandro disappeared in the vineyard after he realized he was not contributing much with Sydney on the forklift. He nodded at her when he entered the winery and avoided her eyes. They had known each other for years. Alejandro had loved her uncle like his own. He had strong feelings for her too. Many summers ago, they had a fling that caused a temporary rift between Alejandro and Clarence. But that was almost a decade ago, and she had all but forgotten about it. But she suspected that he didn’t dismiss their romance as easily as she did. Whenever she visited it took him a few days to warm up to her. She would sometimes catch him glancing at her out of the corner of her eye. Still, she wanted to talk to him.
    She finally got her chance to corner him when the other workers began to clean equipment at the end of the day. She was outside, stretching and staring at the view. Alejandro drove down from the vineyard on an ATV, and she stepped out in front of him.
    “Hey! You dodging out of work?” she asked, teasing him. Her question forced him to look her in the eyes. He shut off the 4-wheeler.
    “Only one seat on the forklift, senorita ,” he said. His smile was so full of sadness that it struck her in her sternum. She wanted to embrace him and hold him against the pain in her chest. But he stoically kept his composure.