The name on the amended inventory was Gordon Hale.
The brides father. A kind, heavyset man in a rented tuxedo who had been laughing at the head table with a glass of my husbands wine in his hand. He was a notary public in Sonoma County, and he was sitting four seats from Colin.
His wife was the one who stood up. She did not look at Colin. She looked at her husband, and she said, Gordon, what did you do?
Gordon put down his glass. He did not argue. He said, Colin came to me in May. He said the estate was a mess and he needed a notary to witness a change to the paperwork. He said it was a correction. He said Yvette had already agreed. I signed as a witness and I stamped it. I did not read it.
He turned to me. His face was the face of a man who has just realized that his own signature has been used to wrong a widow at his daughters wedding. He said, Yvette, I am so sorry. I did not know.
I believed him. I had spent thirty-one years at a bank window and I know the difference between a man who signs to cheat and a man who signs because somebody he trusts put a pen in his hand.
The attorney sitting next to me, who had come to that wedding as a guest and not as my lawyer, said very quietly that this was a matter for the probate court, and that nobody in that barn had to decide it tonight. He suggested we all have some cake. Nobody did.
Wallace used to say that cellar was my insurance, and a man who writes down every bottle in pencil is a man who expects to be read someday.
Wallaces will was filed in the court, with the specific bequest on page two. The judge in Sonoma County did not need long. The sale to Colins friend was voided. The amended inventory was struck from the record as false. Colin was removed as executor by an order that took up half a page, and a neutral professional was appointed in his place. The court surcharged him for the difference between the appraised value and the sale price, thirty-six thousand dollars, to be paid from his share of the estate.
The friend returned what he had left. Some of the bottles were gone, poured at a wedding in front of two hundred people. But a hundred and ninety were still in his garage, wrapped in blankets, and he carried them back up my steps himself, one case at a time. He did not look at me. He said, I am sorry, Yvette, and I said, Be careful with the cases.
Gordon came to see me in July. He brought his notary journal and a bottle of wine from his own cellar. He said he had given up his commission. I told him there was no need. He said there was. He had stamped his name on something he had not read, and he did not feel he deserved the stamp.
His daughter and Colin are still married. I am told there is a great deal of silence in that house.
The court had Wallaces pencil ledger copied for the file, and the original came home to me. I read it at the kitchen table on a Sunday. Every bottle, every year, every winemaker who paid him in glass because he was too kind to ask for cash. On the last page, in smaller writing, he had put a note. It said, For Vette. Open the 1996 when you need to remember we were happy.
I opened it last March. It was very good.