Chapter 17: The Kind of Quiet That Isn't

October settled over the valley in earnest, the harvest slowing from its frantic peak into the steadier, more contemplative rhythm of pressing and barrel work, and with the slower pace came a different kind of danger for Wren and Théo — not the crisis-driven intimacy of a stuck fermentation at five in the morning, but the quieter, more insidious closeness of ordinary evenings, shared meals, small...