Chapter 1

In Vinewood, a child of the land is born when the wine is brewed and married when the jar is opened.

With the wedding almost here, I went to dig up the wine under the sweet-olive tree, and found it already gone.

I hurried home, only to walk in on my fiancé handing the aged bridal wine to my stepsister.

"Your mom says you're going to livestream a heritage wedding ceremony. On the wedding day, you'll ride in the bridal sedan holding the aged bridal wine, streaming the whole thing."

Seeing me come in, my brother frowned, grave.

"The tourism board asked your sister to livestream a re-creation of a heritage wedding ceremony. Your wine can be the prop that goes on TV. Don't make a scene."

My mother, too, was glowing with borrowed pride.

"Tessa Whitfield, this is a big deal for Beryl Pruitt. I've decided to move your whole wedding schedule onto her."

"As long as you're the one who signs the marriage papers at the end. You don't mind, do you."

I didn't answer. I turned to look at my fiancé.

"Do you think I shouldn't mind either?"

Ervin Dickerson blanked for a moment, then settled back into calm.

"Tessa, you've always been sensible."

"This is Beryl's big day. You should be understanding about it."

I nodded, my face untroubled.

"You're right. Her business is what matters."

And mine doesn't.

I should have seen it clearly by now. And I should leave.

...

"This wine really smells good, Mom. Can I open it and have a taste?"

"Just a little bit."

The coy voice drifted over, and my mother's answer was thick with indulgence: "Taste it if you want. It's nothing special anyway."

In my memory, the small me watched my father brew wine for another family's newborn and wanted, curious, to have a sip.

My mother would always scoop me up at once, her voice doting and helpless.

"The first mouthful of aged bridal wine can only go to that family's child. It's the blessing her father gives her for a beautiful life."

"For anyone else to take the first taste is stealing that child's blessing. That's bad manners."

But now, my blessing was the one my mother had given away.

My brother poured her a small cup, and Beryl downed it in one go. The next second her face twisted from the burn.

Her little hand fanned like a paper fan, waving air over her own tongue.

"So hot, so hot, my tongue hurts and it's all this awful wine's fault."

Beryl, unhappy, never held it in.

She knocked my brother's hand aside and smashed the wine on the floor.

"What is this garbage—"

It was as if the wine and the shards burst apart in the same instant.

I stumbled forward two steps, my heart like it was being cut away piece by piece.

I crouched down, wanting to gather up the fragments that still held a little wine.

The next second my hand was pinned under her foot.

"Picking up every piece of trash. Can't you see I got burned?"

Pain shot straight through the back of my hand. Cold sweat broke out, and I gritted my teeth and pulled it free. Beryl, not expecting it, took a step back.

Then she burst into sobs. "Mom, brother, she's bullying me."

"In my sister's eyes I'm not even worth as much as some awful wine."

One cry, and my brother's and mother's eyes changed.

Turned on me in blame.

In reproach.

In disgust.

"Can't you ever give your sister a little slack?"

"A jar of bad wine, so it broke, it broke. That move of yours, what if you'd hurt your sister?"

My mother shoved me backhanded, and I fell onto the shards of the wine jar.

The puncture in my hand drove deeper, and more shards of porcelain bit in.

Blood mixed with wine, and the cut burned as if it were being seared.

My body hurt so much that the ache inside almost seemed to ease.

After my father died and my mother remarried, from day one she told me I had to give way to the sister in the new family.

To treat everything about my sister as if it were the most important thing in the world.

When my sister got sick from the cold, my mother would drive me out into the yard and pour bucket after bucket of ice over me.

Dressed up as:

"Your sister isn't well. If nothing's wrong with you at all, it'll upset her to see it."

When I ran a high fever, I wasn't even given medicine.

"You're too strong, medicine works fast on you. Your sister would be unhappy to see that."

When my sister fell and scraped her knee and cried a couple of times, my brother dragged me straight to a little dirt slope and shoved me hard down it.

My hand fractured, and I was scraped raw all over.

And he said:

"Get hurt worse. Your sister will be happier seeing someone as hurt as she is."

They wanted my sister happy, and it didn't matter whether I lived or died.

Ervin helped me up, something like pity in his eyes too.

"Your sister's just a kid at heart. Don't take it to heart."

"Go clean up your wound first. Your sister and I still have to run through it at the guesthouse. The ceremony's tomorrow."

With that, he let go and chased off after Beryl.

I took out my phone and messaged my best friend:

"Weren't you short a winemaker for the island?"

"I'll come."