Page 64 of Taken Away

“Mabel was a force,” Walter said quietly, taking a slow sip of his coffee. His gaze drifted out through the glass wall to the production floor, where the staff moved efficiently between tanks. “But she could be hard.

Aubrey paused, her pen hovering over a ledger line noting an uncharacteristically large corporate expense from three years ago. “Hard how?”

Walter glanced back at her. The reflection off his wire-rimmed glasses obscured his expression.

“Your mother,” he said softly, “Anne had a way about her, you know. Beautiful... impossible to ignore. Wild as a briar rose, but she had a heart that felt things deeply. When everything happened, the town slowly stopped talking about Anne. Before long, it was as if she'd never belonged here at all."

Something in Aubrey’s chest pulled tight. Hearing it from Walter—the man who had watched it happen from the inside—made her realize how little she actually knew.

“Mabel didn’t leave her anything, did she?” Aubrey asked quietly. “Until this will.”

Walter was silent for a moment, looking down through the glass at the production floor.

“Not a penny,” he said softly.

His fingers turned the coffee mug slowly between his palms.

“Truth is, child, there are folks in this valley who never quite got over what happened back then.”

Aubrey glanced up.

Walter gave a small shrug.

“Anne was gone. Mabel was here. That’s the version everybody ended up living with. Small towns have a way of remembering the ending and forgetting everything that came before it."

The old bookkeeper smiled faintly, though there wasn’t much humor in it.

“Funny thing about ledgers, though. Numbers balance. People don’t.”

Aubrey looked back down at the open binder.

Walter took another slow sip of coffee.

“Some things never get balanced properly,” he said quietly. “Not even after decades.”

An hour later, Aubrey had three spreadsheets open on her laptop, two legal pads filled with notes, and a new respect for how much money people would spend on fermented grapes.

Walter sat across from her, reviewing a stack of invoices while she worked through a binder labeled **LAND ACQUISITIONS — HISTORICAL**. The records stretched back decades: parcel purchases, timber rights, equipment leases, conservation easements.

Mabel apparently kept everything.

Aubrey flipped another page.

Something slid free from between two sheets of paper and drifted onto the desk.

A photograph.

Walter looked up over his glasses. “What’ve you found there?”

Aubrey picked it up.

The photograph was old, the corners faded and soft. Three people stood in front of a much smaller version of Blackwood Winery. A young man with dark hair. A blonde woman laughing at something off camera. And another woman beside her. Beautiful.

Aubrey’s breath caught.

Anne. Young and beautiful.

Aubrey recognized her mother immediately.