Frankie came around from behind the bar and walked over to the fireplace, standing with her back to it, hands behind her. “Brokenhearted.”

“She was devastated yesterday.”

“Poor kid. I think she was closer to him than she is to Scotty or Clay.”

“Quinn told her not to come to work until she’s ready. She’s probably going to need a few days off.”

Frankie’s eyes clouded. “I don’t mean to sound selfish but I hope she’s not going to stay away too long. This week is going to be crazy with everything we’ve got going on.”

“Come on, we’ll manage. We always do.”

“I know.” She sighed. “The water’s probably hot. I’ll get our tea. I brought in a holiday-spiced tea from Fortnum & Mason. An early Christmas gift from a girlfriend who just got back from London.”

“Sounds lovely. I’ll take a look at those lights.”

“I wonder who put them away last year and got them in such a mess.” She stuck her hands on her hips like an irritated schoolteacher about to scold a student who’d forgotten the homework again.

“Me, I think. Sorry. We had an event coming up right after New Year’s and I seem to remember we were rushing to get all the decorations taken down.”

“Oh.” She looked nonplussed. “Well … in that case, they’re all yours.”

Frankie ran the day-to-day operations of the retail end of our business, plus she planned all of our social events with the skill and precision of a general organizing a multifront military campaign. For years I’d taken care of everything by myself as my mother had done, but it finally got to be too much and I’d hired Frankie. Eventually, as we grew, the work got to be too much for her as well so we’d hired a staff—an assistant tasting room manager, a bookkeeper, and two elderly women who took care of social media, advertising, and filling orders. But Frankie was still the commander who supervised everyone else.

She disappeared into the kitchen and I brought the lights over to two leather sofas that faced each other across from the fireplace. Mosby, the vineyard barn cat and champion mouser, who mostly appeared in winter when it was cold outside and food was harder to find, lay flattened like a gray velvet rug in front of the crackling blaze. He opened one sea-green eye and blinked at me before going back to sleep. I sat down on one of the sofas and laid the lights out on a large oak coffee table. They were a mess, all right.

Frankie returned carrying a tray with our tea and a plate of Christmas cookies.

“How’s it going with the untangling?” She sat down across from me.

“Slow.”