Tabitha set another box of wine next to the dozen other boxes stacked in the corner of her sister’s living room. A pang of guilt hit her. She was taking over the whole house, and Gabrielle’s patience would undoubtedly wear thin very soon. “I promise I’ll get out of here soon. I’m looking for apartments all day tomorrow.”

“I don’t know why you keep saying that. It’s starting to annoy me. I like having you for a roommate.”

“Yeah, but your husband and son might not.” Gabrielle followed her into the small guest bedroom and leaned against the doorway to watch Tabitha set down her purse. She kicked off her shoes and jammed her feet into slippers, pulled off her leather jacket and hung it in her closet. Gabrielle’s son, four-year-old Micah, came into the room and jumped on to the bed. Tabitha collapsed next to him and pulled her nephew on to her lap.

“I don’t think anyone minds having you around,” Gabrielle said. “It’s not like you are here much, and when you are, you load Doug up with wine so that he can play sommelier with you. And Micah certainly doesn’t seem to mind the constant spoiling.”

Tabitha massaged her fingers through Micah’s mop of messy brown hair, and when the boy tried to wiggle away, she grabbed him by the waist and pulled him back to her, tickling his sides to hear him giggle.

Gabrielle watched them on the bed, the smile on her lips not transferring to the rest of her face. Once the tickle party ended, and Tabitha had Micah settled on her lap again, she asked her sister,

“What are you not telling me?”

“Nothing.”

The answer came too fast; she had hardly finished asking the question. Tabitha glared at her twin sister.

After a moment, Gabrielle said, sounding a little guilty,

“He came into the winery today. With someone.”

Neither sister had to clarify who the “he” in question was; the same name had occupied their family for weeks now.

“What does she look like?”

“Does it matter?”

Tabitha kept an eye on her sister, trying to keep her face neutral, swallowing a swell of affection for her twin. Gabrielle looked nervous; Tabitha could read her better than she could read herself.

“Why does he even have to come in?” Gabrielle asked. “Can’t he run the business remotely? Why do I have to see him?”

“Unfortunately for both of us, because he’s the big boss,” Tabitha replied. “We just have to accept that this is our life now. We are going to see him around town, and we have to work with him at El Zop, no matter how hard we try to rearrange our schedules to avoid him. I don’t know why I feel shocked that he’s bringing new women around.”

“Maybe we can call Homeland Security on him and tell them that he’s a threat. Then he’ll move back to England.”

Tabitha let the hope flicker in her chest for just a moment. Her life would be significantly easier to manage if Royal left town. “It might be a lot of fun if you and I ran the winery without him. I wish we could afford to buy him out. We could rename it Hermanas Lawson.”

But that was a pipe dream, and she knew it. Royal had been steadily building his prestige at the winery over the years; it was his baby. He’d turned down some lucrative offers in Napa, and even in Europe, to stay there and slowly build his empire. It was working, too. Tabitha could argue with him about a lot of things—the contents of his texts, for one thing. But she could not argue with his business success.

“The thing is…” Gabrielle broke into her reverie, and Tabitha looked up to see her twin still leaning against the doorjamb, looking down at her nails and picking her cuticles. She didn’t look up when she continued, “The thing is, he talked to me. We talked, I mean. I talked to Royal about something other than the winery.”

Tabitha swallowed. “Well, let’s get it over with.”

“He, um. He was rather determined to get his message across.”

“What message?”

“That you should quit the SommFest.”

The bottom dropped out of Tabitha’s stomach.

“That I should quit? That’s what he said? I should drop out? Just like that? Just drop out? The assh—” She glanced down at her nephew in her lap. “That donkeyhole thinks I should drop out of the fu—um, forking contest? Just like that? How did he say it exactly? How did you respond? Did you remind him that winning this has been my goal ever since he motherfu— Um. Ever since he monkeyforking met me and he is only doing it to prove some dumb-donkey point?”

Gabrielle waited out her sister’s rant. They both glanced down at Micah, still in Tabitha’s lap, looking up at her with big eyes. Tabitha buried her face into his grimy little neck, inhaling his sweet little-boy scent and plastering him with kisses until he giggled and squealed. He submitted for a few seconds and then jumped off her lap to scamper into the other room. Gabrielle joined her on the bed, shoving a pillow against the wall so they sat shoulder to shoulder. Tabitha glanced at the pair of them in the mirror over the dresser on the opposite wall. In her all-black getup, she looked like a negative image of her sister, who wore a loose white t-shirt and jeans. Gabrielle wore her light brown hair in a soft pixie cut that drifted down over her eyes. Tabitha reached over to her and pushed the bangs off her sister’s forehead, to look into her twin’s solemn brown eyes.

“Sorry. I’ll let you finish. Without a forking donkey flip-out this time.”

“You’re allowed to flip out. That’s what evil twins do.”

“I’m tired of letting him dictate when I flip out. Tell me what happened with the Prince of Darkness.”

Gabrielle smirked. “I was shocked that he was talking to me. Since you split up, he hasn’t said a single word to me other than business talk. That’s how I imagined our relationship would evolve, you know? Like, I get that we have to live in the same town and act civil at work, but I was hoping we could just ghost each other. If we pass him around town, we just look right through each other. That would make me happy.”

“Nice try. Royal only ignores people he has no use for. He must have needed to make a point. And I’m guessing it had something to do with me.”

“He started asking about Paul, and about Micah. He said he missed them both.” Tabitha scoffed, but Gabrielle put up her hand. “I know, I know. After trying to act like a human instead of a reptile for a few minutes, he got to the point. He said I should either convince you to drop out of SommFest or to keep your mouth shut.”

“And what did you say?”

Tabitha saw her sister shrug in the mirror, felt her arm raise next to her. It had always been this way, since the moment Gabrielle was born eight minutes after Tabitha. They could see each other across the house, across a classroom, across a bed, and feel each other’s movements a fraction of a second before either one of them made it. If Royal was going to confront anyone about Tabitha, she was glad it was her sister, the better version of herself. Her positive copy.

“I told him to fuck off.”

Tabitha’s head snapped around to look at her sister, and they grinned at each other.

“You did not!”

“What else was I supposed to say? I’m not going to agree with him, and I’m certainly not going to listen to his reasons.”

“Just out of curiosity, what were his reasons?”

“Oh, you know, blah blah, why does Tabitha even need a SommFest medal? She’s just serving wine to the people who knit pussy hats.”

“Oh, God. He did not say that. That’s not even close to what I do.”

“It doesn’t matter. He’s just trying to put you down, in that way that he has. That way that is trying to be funny, but is ultimately just unkind.”

“He didn’t used to be like that, you know.”

Gabrielle sat forward, turning to face Tabitha straight on. “Tabitha, listen to me. He was always like that. I knew it, Doug knew it, Mom and Dad knew it. You were in love, so you didn’t hear us when we tried to tell you. It’s okay; love makes everybody stupid. But now you’re not in love anymore. Or, at least, you know it’s unhealthy to love him, so now maybe you can hear us. Everything he said had an underlying meaning. Every compliment had a dig at something else. He’s handsome, and he did it with a smile, but he still did it. Every time I left him, I felt bad about myself, but I couldn’t figure out why. Everything he has ever said to you had a hidden agenda.”

“So now his agenda is to get me to quit SommFest? That doesn’t even make sense. If I won, he’d still claim credit somehow. He’d say I learned under his expertise, that he is responsible for everything I know.”

“He’s scared.”

That silenced Tabitha, and she let the notion roll around inside her head for a moment.

“He’s guilty of something, and he knows you know it,” Gabrielle continued. “He said you need to keep your mouth shut. And, on a practical level, everybody knows you can beat him, and deep down, he knows everybody knows. Nothing in the world would make him more insane than you winning.”

“He didn’t care about my skills when I was his wife.”

“He thought he was in control of your skills when you were his wife. You changed your mind about all of the wines because he made you doubt your skills. He has spun the story so that people would say you are only as good as you are because of what he did for you.”

“Well, I mean that’s just stupid. Isn’t it? I was good before I met him.”

“You don’t need to tell me that. Or him. He is not going to let you succeed without him. You know that, Tabitha.”

They heard a crash from the kitchen, a wail from Micah, and both women jumped off the bed to sprint toward the sound. Micah sat on the kitchen floor, surrounded by silverware and the drawer that he’d pulled out of the cabinet.

Sighing, Gabrielle picked her son up and stroked his head, while Tabitha fitted the drawer back into its position and started gathering handfuls of cutlery off the floor.

“Is he hurt?”

Gabrielle examined her son. “No, just mad. He screams when he gets frustrated. I can’t imagine where he gets it.”

Not meeting her sister’s eye, Tabitha sorted through the silverware, slamming each piece into its appropriate slot.

“Maybe he’s right,” she muttered. “I should quit. I don’t even need this. I mean, so what if I don’t have a SommFest medal? I’m doing fine without it. My career is doing fine.”

Gabrielle put Micah down, and he promptly ran out of the room, squealing at whatever caught his interest in the living room. The boy had more energy than everyone else in the house put together. Gabrielle moved to the counter and put her hand over her sister’s to stop her from her frantic slamming of the cutlery.

“I don’t ever want to hear you say that again.”

“Who cares? Outside of the wine world, it’s not like anyone notices these things. In the grand scheme of life, this little contest doesn’t matter.”

“Inside the wine world, where you have lived for the last ten years, it matters a lot, and you know it. If he steals this away from you, it will be worse than every vagina picture on the planet. Don’t ever say those words to me again. You hear me? You can lie to yourself all you want, but do not ever lie to me again.” Gabrielle had taken over the cutlery as she spoke, throwing the pieces in without regard to where they belonged, each piece clanking into a mess in the drawer. The sisters faced each other, separated by the drawer. Gabrielle’s husband Doug came in, his satchel across his chest, holding Micah on his hip.

“Everything okay here?” he asked.

“Tabitha wants to quit the SommFest,” Gabrielle replied, not taking her eyes from her sister’s.

“I don’t want to quit. I just don’t want to deal with my cheating ex-husband, who seems to be determined to ruin my life. For fork’s sake, G, you are the one who is always telling me to be more Zen, to relax and enjoy my life. I’m supposed to let the man ruin everything now? Let him taunt my family?”

“He didn’t taunt me.” Gabrielle turned to Doug, holding a large spoon in front of her and glancing at Micah. “He told me she should quit. I told him to eat with a fork.” She jabbed the spoon up toward the ceiling. “And then I left. My blood pressure never even changed. You know why? Because that man means nothing to me. He is trying to hurt my sister, but my sister is, and always has been, better than him.” She threw the spoon into the drawer. “That’s why he’s trying to stop you.”

“If she doesn’t want to compete, what’s the big deal?” Doug asked, putting the wriggling Micah down. He pulled the messenger bag over his head and set it on the dining room chair next to him, then stood up to face the women again. He recoiled just a bit when he saw the look on his wife’s face.

“What’s the big deal?” Gabrielle’s eyes narrowed, and she looked from him back to Tabitha. “Someone gets in our way, and we just say, It doesn’t matter? That’s just who we are now—women who just throw it away because someone annoyed us? Some pompous British piece of dirt who isn’t even the good kind of British, like Colin Firth, but the slippery, uppity dickhead kind who doesn’t have any self-worth of his own, so he sucks it out of the people around him?” Gabrielle cursed without glancing around to see if Micah was in the room, and both Tabitha and Doug straightened their shoulders just a fraction.

Tabitha cleared her throat and took a deep breath. Her sister’s fury was a rare sight; she didn’t quite know how to face it. “Well, I mean, Doug is right. I’m going to be fine if I don’t win this. There are thousands of somms around the world who don’t have this medal, and they do just fine. I have a good income without it, and a decent reputation.”

“I don’t even know you anymore, Tab. I am not kidding, if you quit because of him, I will never forgive you.”

“I thought you said I’m the best somm you ever met!” Tabitha’s voice rose to meet her sister’s volume. “Since when do you care so much about my titles? You are the one who has always told me that the hardware doesn’t matter. You said I’m great at what I do, no matter what titles come after my name. Now all of a sudden the prestige matters?”

“I’m sorry I ever told you anything. I’m sorry I told you I saw Royal. I’m sorry I talked to him. He’s a dick.”

Doug put his hands up. “Gabrielle, I think she can make her own dec—”

“I said that the hardware didn’t matter way back when your entire self-worth was hung up on winning. I said that to calm you down a little bit because I thought you were too hard on yourself. You wanted to win the SommFest to prove something to Mom, and I had to convince you that you were good enough without it. And you are. You are good enough without any awards and without Mom’s approval. But now, it’s different because you’re letting him bully you out of it. If you quit this contest because you decide it’s not necessary to your life, you have my full support, and we will all go on with our happy little lives. But if you quit because of Royal, so help me God, Tabitha, I will never speak to you again. Never. You will leave this house, and you will leave my family, and you will never see me, or my husband, or my son again. I am not kidding.” She slammed the spoon down and walked out of the room.

Tabitha and Doug looked at each other.

“She would never keep you from Micah.”

Tabitha nodded, unable to speak.

“Still,” he murmured, “I would do what she says.”

Tabitha took a deep breath and put the last spoon into its slot. She pushed the door closed and faced her brother-in-law.

“Well, I guess it’s time to call Weston.”