The LeBaron Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

its bung has never been removed.
    Only one thing is certain: It is filled with something, for wine casks, like hearts, must be kept filled to stay alive and, once emptied, they quickly shrink and crack. Oh, there have been times—at long-ago wildish parties and the like—when someone has boisterously suggested that the old wooden bung be pulled and Grandpa’s wine be sampled, but this has never been permitted, thank goodness. If it had, what came out might be enough to poison them all, Sari sometimes thinks. Sari has also been warned that the cask might someday explode. Well, if it did, that would be poetic justice, wouldn’t it? For everything to end in an explosion of putrefied muscatel gone green with age? But Sari doubts that this would ever happen. Sari knows a great deal about wine and the ancient, almost lost art of cooperage (Baronet wines are now aged in glass-lined metal tanks). That particular, gentle arch of a hardwood barrel stave, and the way it is bound with its fellows in hoops to form a perfect, solid cylinder, the concave ends of the staves then fitted together tightly—this was how the craftsman could guarantee that his sturdy cask would withstand the most furious internal pressures for all eternity. Get Sari LeBaron started on the history of wine making and she can go on for hours. For instance: In the ruins of Pompeii, buried for centuries under layers of lava, Vesuvian cinders, and volcanic ash, were found intact wine casks. Intact, after nearly two thousand years.
    The wine cask as a decorative feature of Sari LeBaron’s house is often noted by writers who come to interview her about her civic pursuits: a wine cask in the portrait gallery. How quaint! “A reminder of the family’s humble beginnings,” they write. And “Clearly the LeBarons have a sense of humor.” Rubbish! Julius LeBaron had no sense of humor whatsoever. “Baronet—An Honest Wine for the Working Man”—this is one of the advertising slogans still used. And, on the sides of the big red tank trucks with their scrolly white lettering, hauling their loads to the bottling plant, a newer one: “Baronet—Simply Put: Simply Priced and Simply Delicious,” which was thought up by Sari herself, thank you very much, even though her son Eric sometimes tries to hog the credit for it. But it is true that from this humble old barrel sprang everything—the summer place at Tahoe, the winter place at Santa Barbara that belongs to Joanna LeBaron now, the ranch in Montana for anytime in between. Et cetera. Et cetera. It is an irony that Peter LeBaron’s widow is not unmindful of—that the blue-collar popularity of their inexpensive wines should have bought them all these costly palaces and possessions. And all this is what is at stake. This, Sari LeBaron often thinks, is why I worked so hard. It must have been. If not, then why?
    As though he is reading her thoughts—as, indeed, he often can do—Gabe Pollack says to her, “It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
    â€œWhat? I was wool-gathering. What do you mean?”
    â€œThis.” He gestures around him. “All this.”
    â€œOh, perhaps. Perhaps. I suppose so.”
    â€œYou could have had a quite different life, you know, once upon a time.”
    â€œOh, I know,” she says a little crossly. “Ancient history. I could also have been a housewife in the Bronx, I suppose, if I’d wanted that.”
    â€œYou had your choices. You chose this.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œOf course, I’ve always felt that whatever you chose to do you’d be successful at it.”
    â€œHa!”
    He studies her face. “There’s more to this, isn’t there—more that you’re not telling me. It’s more than just Melissa, isn’t it? What is it? You’re frightened of something, aren’t you? Can you tell me what it is? What’s frightening you,