She hiked up and found an impossibly old man, a middle-aged woman, and a few younger people clad in heavy wool sweaters and wearing fingerless gloves, with mud caking their rubber boots. They sat on little rolling stools, moving along the rows as they tended to one vine after another. In oil drums at the ends of the rows burned the clippings, providing warmth for cold fingers.
The scene reminded her of the battlefieldséchoirs, and she felt an urge to capture the scene on canvas with her new paints. The impressionist painter Édouard Manet once said there were no true lines in nature, only areas of color coming together. She would prepare her palette with zinc oxide, cerulean blue, burnt umber, viridian green....
“They’re tying up the vines,” said a voice behind her.
Heart thudding, Rosalyn turned to see Jérôme, dressed like the others in muddy boots and a heavy parka over a sweater. His cheekswere shaded by whiskers, and his mouth drew her attention. But as always, it was his eyes that captured her.
“I’ve seen the process, in Napa,” Rosalyn said. “But isn’t it early?”
“It is, yes, but we adjust our calendar to accommodate the weather.” He crouched down and pointed to where the canes were tied to the horizontal wire. “We use biodegradable twine to train the plant.”
She nodded, leaning over to see.
“The pruning cuts down on mildew and stimulates the buds to encourage new growth, which replaces the old wood.” Jérôme looked up at her for a long moment. “Rosalyn... I apologize.”
“For what?”
“For whatever I did to make you run away.”
Rosalyn felt her cheeks burning. She straightened and focused on the steeple of the church rising out of the sea of red-roofed homes in Cochet, far in the distance.
“You have nothing to apologize for, Jérôme. Honestly. I’m what we Americans call ‘a hot mess.’”
He chuckled.
Despite the cold, she felt warmth flood through her as they stood side by side, looking across the fields of neat parallel grapevines.
“Did I say something funny?” Rosalyn asked.
“One thing I have learned from all of my reading over the years is that we’re all a mess,” Jérôme said in a quiet voice. “Hot or otherwise. Every single one of us. Even my little Laurent.”
“How is he? I’m surprised he’s not out here learning to prune the vines.”
“He spent the day in the fields yesterday. But today he is with my mother; they are baking an onion tart.”
“Well, of course. Every six-year-old should know how to prune grapevines and bake an onion tart.”
Jérôme fixed her with that quizzical look again. “It is a joke?”
She smiled and nodded.
“Oh. It is not very funny, this joke.”
“Told you, I’m a hot mess.”
He smiled then, and they exchanged another long look, the only sounds the crackle of the fires and the snapping of thesécateurs, or clippers, as the workers snipped the deadwood from the vines.
“Do you have a date for the festival of Saint Vincent?” Jérôme asked suddenly.
“Are escorts required? I know the French are more formal than Americans, but that seems a bit much.”
“You don’tneedan escort. I was wondering if you would like to accompany me.”
“I...” Everything in Rosalyn shriekedno.No, of course not. I’m a married woman.But she heard herself say, “I would love that. Thank you.”
“Be aware: Escorts are not required but costumes are.”
“I believe Blondine and Emma—my partners in crime, as you call them—have rounded one up for me.”
