She hung up and I remembered what she’d said. Unconditional obedience to follow orders if she took us on as clients. It sounded as if it applied to answering her questions about Prescott and the Bruton Vault as well.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

QUINN AND I DROVE over to the winery together after I told him about my call with Josie Wilde and the plan for us to drive to Jamestown and Williamsburg tomorrow morning.

I thought he’d balk since he wasn’t totally on board with hiring her and ceding control of the vineyard. Instead he said, “I read about Jamestown in American history class in high school in California, all the usual stuff about Pocahontas, the Indian princess who saved the life of Captain John Smith, but I’ve never been there. Or Williamsburg, either. I’m looking forward to this.”

“It won’t take us long to get there, under two hours—it’s only about a hundred miles or so,” I said. “We can leave after breakfast.”

Quinn parked the Jeep behind the barrel room where we had a few parking places marked STAFF ONLY and said, “Another exciting day of barrel cleaning and sterilizing for me.”

I smiled. A lot of people have the misbegotten idea that owning a vineyard involves wandering around all day with a glass of wine in your hand benevolently supervising your workers happily toil in the fields and watching the grapes ripen on their own until they reach perfection thanks to nature’s bounties and God’s wondrous handiwork.

If only.

The reality is that it’s not that glamorous and much of the work is backbreaking with a lot of heavy lifting and plenty of tedium. There’s also endless cleaning, sterilizing, and sanitizing. Bacteria and contamination are the two biggest enemies in winemaking, so we clean and sterilize each piece of equipment every single time it’s used. I don’t mean at the end of the day, either. I mean every time we switch tanks or need to reuse a barrel.

We’re also constantly inventing on-the-spot fixes for things that break or, in my case, since I don’t have the upper body strength of Quinn or any of the men, finding easier ways to move heavy equipment or wine barrels—most of which seem to involve clever uses for our forklift and the pallets on which we store cases of finished wine. As for fixing the smaller stuff, you’d be surprised the wonders you can work with hair ties and duct tape. I’m particularly proud of figuring out a way to use bike pulleys to open the vacuum-sealed stainless steel tank lids so you didn’t need superhero strength. Even the guys used it now.

“What’s your plan?” Quinn asked.