when Grandmother phoned.”
Vestal folded her napkin neatly and set it aside before unhooking an ornate cane from the back of her chair.
Birdie faced them all, hands on her broad hips. “Pie’ll be in the fridge,” she snapped. “I’ll leave a thermos of coffee on the counter. In case that spreadsheet threatens to put you to sleep, Mr. Alan.”
“Birdie, I’m truly sorry. We all appreciate how hard you work.”
“We do indeed,” Vestal assured her. “And the pie will keep. You know, Alan,” she said, “there’s something I missed more than pie during my hospital stay. Our catching up over a nightcap. I believe I’ll wait in your office.”
The reigning Ridge matriarch patted Louemma’s thin face. “Good night, sweet pea. Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”
Alan smiled in spite of everything. Vestal had sent him off to bed as a boy with that same admonition. His father had said it’d been their ritual, as well. One thing was different—the way Louemma used to throw her arms around Vestal’s neck, and how girl and woman used to giggle delightedly. That ritual, too, was gone.
Alan escaped then, because it hurt deep inside his chest to be holding his precious child, and feeling her slip away from him in body and spirit, with apparently nothing he nothing he could do to change that.
Hiding the tears stinging his eyes, he dragged out the routine of tucking his daughter in for the night. He was aware, from Vestal’s insistence, that she had something more than a nightcap in mind. Eventually, Alan trudged slowly and heavily down the hall.
Bracing for whatever awaited him, he wiped away all traces of anxiety before entering the room he’d usurped for his office. On top of a desk crafted from local hardwood, aged and polished to a glossy shine, two old-fashioned glasses sat, each holding a splash of Windridge bourbon.
When Vestal picked up one glass and handed him the other, it struck Alan that it’d been she, not his father, who’d taught him how to appreciate the taste of bourbon. His dad had been struck and killed by lightning up at the distillery the year Alan turned thirteen. His grandfather Jason’s health had gone downhill after the loss of his only son. It’d been Vestal, and Alan’s mother, Carolee, who’d plunged him into the business of producing top-grade bourbon.
Their lives had seemed smooth until Alan was twenty or so and Carolee met and married a wine maker from California. At that point she turned her back on Windridge and her only child. She’d looked back once—when she’d signed over to Alan her shares in the corporation she’d set up. She’d sold forty-nine percent of overall shares, pulling the wool over Vestal’s eyes. And Carolee’s brash move had sparked the business with a new influx of cash.
Alan clinked his glass to the rim of Vestal’s, smiling fondly at her as they waited for the chime of the crystal to fade. That was another of her mantras. Fine bourbon should be served in the finest crystal.
“You seem restless tonight, Grandmother. This being your first day home after a lengthy illness, shouldn’t you trundle off to bed?”
The woman sipped the amber liquid with her eyes closed, ignoring his nudge. “I love the barest hint of a woody taste. I assume I can thank our new, ungodly expensive aging barrels. I hope you don’t mind that I broke the seal on a new bottle.”
“Not at all.” The bottles were all carefully filled and corked by hand in a manner that made Windridge a constant favorite of a discerning liquor market.
“Did you want an update on expenses, Grandmother? I can run you a cost analysis worksheet tomorrow.”
“Don’t rush me, Alan. Ever since you were a little boy, you’ve rushed through life hell-bent for election.”
He smiled again at her longstanding version of the cliché, then cleared his throat “I’m just wondering what this is about. Monday, as I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I saw Hardy Duff driving off. You didn’t mention his visit. I figure he must’ve decided the fastest way to get me to move on reacquiring Bell Hill was to go through you.”
“Hardy brought me violets. His neighbor grows them.” Vestal took another sip. “Very well, Alan. But I’m telling you the same thing I told Hardy. Ted Bell saved your grandfather’s life in Korea, and Jason meant for Ted and Hazel to live out their days on the hill. Still, Hazel had no call to go behind our backs and file squatter’s rights. Granted, she and I had a falling out. Didn’t mean I’d ever have tossed her off our land.”
“You, Grandfather and the Bells were once best friends.”
“Yes.” Vestal stared into space. “Relationships can crumble. Hazel had…hobbies that obsessed her. Then she…we…well, we argued after her daughter, Lucy, ran off with that no-account transient tobacco picker your grandfather hired. We hired a lot of transient laborers then. Hazel had no say in hiring or firing.”
“It’s late. Talking about this upsets you. Let’s save it for tomorrow.”
She polished off her drink and set the glass on the tray with a thump. Stretching out slightly arthritic fingers, she pried the business card she’d given Alan earlier out of his shirt pocket. “Bell Hill will solve itself. Louemma, however, is wasting away before our eyes. I want you to promise you’ll call Ms. Ashline first thing in the morning. If it wasn’t so late, I’d insist you phone her now.”
Alan snatched back the card, dropping it next to his phone. “Even though I fail to see how a stranger who doesn’t have a medical degree can be any help, I’ll call the damn woman. Scout’s honor,” he added, seeing Vestal’s arched eyebrow.
“Call it meddling if you will, Alan. Or call it intuition. I saw what she did for Donald Baird and…a feeling swept over me. I’m sure Ms. Ashline’s the one who can help our sweet girl get back to her old self.”
Alan downed the rest of his drink and set his glass beside hers. After walking his grandmother to the door and kissing her cheek, he muttered, “Unless Laurel Ashline is a magician or a witch, I sincerely doubt she can make a difference in Louemma.” He sighed. “Why can’t you knit or travel abroad like other women your age?” But Vestal just gave him one of her famous looks.
Still brooding, he shut the door and picked up a family photo sitting on a bookshelf. A picture of him, Emily and Louemma, the shot had been taken three years ago, on Louemma’s sixth birthday. Alan suspected she’d one day match her mother’s beauty. Maintaining a tight grip on the silver frame, he splashed another three fingers of bourbon into his empty glass, although he’d learned a year ago that drowning his sorrows in whiskey never worked. Not even drowning them in the world’s finest bourbon. Holding the glass to the lamp, he assessed the color and clarity. It was perfect. His daughter wasn’t.
Grimacing, he drank half in one swallow. Still, the subtle burn sliding down his throat couldn’t compare to the constant fire consuming his heart. He gently returned the photo to where he kept it for Louemma’s sake. After draining the glass, Alan stared at his former wife through a sheen of tears brought on by the fiery drink. “Dammit, Emily, I wish you’d reach out from the grave and tell me why in hell you were on a mountain road going to Louisville. Why were you driving on such an icy night? And why did you have Louemma with you?”
In the silence following his questions, Alan knew he couldn’t work on spreadsheets, after all. Not that bed was an answer to his restlessness. As had become habit since the accident, he grabbed a flashlight and an old jacket off a rack in the mudroom near the kitchen. Exiting the house, he tramped up the long hill to the distillery. The solidity of the building’s mossy stone walls had withstood generations of storms worse than the one raging inside him.
Finding that thought vaguely calming, Alan went into the vault and checked alcohol levels in two current batches of yeast-laden mash. Every batch fermented naturally for three to five days. On a chart, Alan made notations under Day Four. Their night watchman was used to his midnight prowling. The two men exchanged waves as Drake Crosby made his rounds.
Roaming