by J. R. Ward
"Did you continue to see my father?"
"I saw him, yes. But after the wedding, I no longer...saw him."
"Did he know you were pregnant?"
"Yes. He understood the situation, however. He has always been most respectful. It is his way."
"You still love him, don't you."
"I will always love him." She looked over at him. "And you must know, my son, that you do not have to be with someone to love them. Love survives all things, time, marriages, deaths. It is more what makes us immortal than even the children we leave in our wake to our graves. It is the way God touches us, as our love for others is a reflection of His love for us. He grants us this reflection of His glory even though we are sinners, and so it is."
"Where is my father now?"
"Right here." She touched her sternum. "He is alive in my heart and will be forever."
"Wait, I thought you said he hadn't died?"
At that moment, someone came rushing out of the house. The nurse, all frantic. "Miss Bradford! Miss Bradford--"
Damn it, he needed more time. But as the woman in the white uniform rounded the corner and saw them, his mother's expression became confounded, that precious window of lucidity starting to close.
"Mother," he said urgently, "who was he? Who was my father?"
Little V.E. turned away from the house and refocused on the koi pond, her former clarity gone--and he worried it was never going to return.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Baldwine," the nurse said as she came up and took Little V.E.'s thin arm. "I fell asleep. It's unforgivable. Please, please don't fire me--"
"It's okay," he said. "She's fine. But let's be more careful in the future."
"I will be. I swear."
As the nurse led his mother away, Lane stayed by the pond. It was hard not to see in Little V.E. a life wasted, all the best of every opportunity squandered at the foot of a family legacy she had been born into but never volunteered for.
A gilded cage, indeed.
God, he wished his Lizzie was home. Even though Gin, his mother, and Jeff were under Easterly's great roof, the place felt totally empty without her.
The following morning, Lane got in his Porsche and headed out to the Old Site. The Bradford Bourbon Company's headquarters might have been downtown, but its heart and soul were about thirty miles to the south and east, on a vast stretch of acreage on which his family had been making, storing, and selling its product for well over a century. It took him a good forty-five minutes to reach the tourist destination: The first ten miles were quick enough on the highway, but from then on, it was a series of smaller and smaller roads to get to the campus.
Funny, he always knew he was getting close when he started to see the six-and seven-story-tall rackhouses, where barrels and barrels of aging bourbon weathered climate changes undefended against Mother Nature's whims. But that was the process. In those barn'y, rack-filled spaces, the seasons of warm, hot, cool, and cold, repeated over and over again, caused the nascent alcohol to penetrate and be expelled from the charred white oak of the barrel, the flavor of the bourbon coming alive over the passage of days, months, years.
After all, bourbon was a product, but it was also a labor of love. As one alcohol-producing maven once said, I don't worry about my vodka supply. I can turn a spigot and give the market plenty of vodka. Bourbon, on the other hand, takes time. So much damned time...
Turning off onto what was little more than a chicken path, Lane went three miles farther and then took a left on a more properly finished road, beside which was a sign with an arrow indicating that the Old Site was up ahead. As always, the Bradford Bourbon Company signage was discreet, nothing but an ink drawing of Easterly and the BBC name--and likewise, the landscape was well-tended, but not overdone. After about another mile and a half, a massive parking lot unfurled itself, next to which was a modern-style visitors' center that housed a conference hall for events and a small museum.
Even though it was early in the day, there were already people puttering around, groups of retirees, mostly. But on the holiday weekends, especially in the fall, there would be tour buses parked in all the far corners and the spaces for cars entirely full. The Old Site also hosted plenty of weddings, reunions, bourbon groups, Kentucky tourists, and all sorts of foreigners looking to experience an old American tradition.
In fact, the Bradford Bourbon Company's Old Site was the oldest continually operating business location in not just the Commonwealth, but this part of the nation.
Bypassing the visitors' center, he continued on to an Authorized Personnel Only road that took him to the main office where the master distiller, Edwin MacAllan, worked. Parking the Porsche under a tree, Lane got out and tried to focus.
He'd called Lizzie. Twice.
And gotten a text in return that she was going out to check the property and would phone him later.
Lane gave her space, but, man, it killed him--and reminded him that, among all the things vying for his attention, she was the anchor of the life he wanted to live. If he lost her? Nothing else mattered.
Walking along a little path, he tried to distract himself from the angst by looking over the familiar environs. All of the buildings, from where the stills were, to the storage facilities, to the packaging and distribution units and the half dozen original cabins, had windows and doors painted in red and wooden siding painted black. Paved walkways linked everything together, and tours were given on the hour, visitors guided by experts through every step of the bourbon making, aging, and bottling process, culminating in an opportunity for patrons to bottle some of their own.
With the carefully cultivated experience and pervasive vibe of early Americana, there was a Disneyland feel to it all, but in a good way: Everything was clean, orientated to families, and magical, what with the flower boxes that would soon be planted with petunias and geraniums, and the rolling lawns connecting the fifty or so buildings, and the cheerful uniformed guides, workers, and administrative staff who walked around and always took personal ownership of both the product produced on site and the property.
The master distiller's office was in a modernized cabin, and as Lane walked into the rustic reception area, a nice-looking woman glanced up from the desk.
"Hey, Lane."
"Beth, how's our boy?"
"Mack's as good as he can be given the situation. He's in there with Jeff. I'm just printing out more Excel spreadsheets and then I'm joining you guys."
"Good, thanks."
Mack and Lane had known each other for nearly all their lives, as Mack was the son of the BBC's previous master distiller. In turn, Beth Lewis was someone the man had hired to fill an office support vacancy--but evidently, it had turned out to be an eHarmony solution as well as one from Monster.com.
Love had a way of coming into people's lives at the right time.
Okay, his heart hurt just thinking that.
As he entered the office, he was momentarily struck by all the labels on the walls. Instead of wallpaper, it had been the tradition of the company's master distillers to paste labels of their era of products around them--and some went back a hundred years or more. Lane had heard that when it came time to pump some money and attention into modernizing this building, the preservation of this tradition had nearly given the architects, contractors, and designers a heart attack.
Across the way, Mack and Jeff glanced up from the conference table. And both looked like they wanted to be on a beach in Cabo.
With a beer.
Or a fruit punch made with rum.
Basically, anything other than bourbon, in a place anywhere other than Kentucky.
"How we doing?" Lane asked.
Jeff sat back. "Bad. Just bad. If one more bank comes in? We're in Chapter Eleven. We don't have the cash flow to cover these debts, no matter how I crunch it. I mean, I keep looking for a solution, but there isn't one. We need a massive cash injection from somewhere."
Lane clapped palms with Mack and sat down as Beth came in and pas
sed around columns of numbers.
As all four of them focused on the financials, and Jeff started talking in technical terms about money, Lane tried to keep track of things--and just completely failed. He was waiting for Merrimack to call, praying Lizzie would talk to him soon, and wondering what in the hell to do about Edward--
"So what do you say, Lane?"
"Huh?" Looking up, he found the three of them staring at him. "I'm sorry?"
Mack sat back and crossed his arms over his thick chest. "I've got something that could save us. If you want to come meet her."
"Her?"
Mack glanced at Beth. Looked back. "Yeah, come on."
The four of them got up together and proceeded through the reception area. Out in the warm sunshine, Mack led them over to a modern building that had no windows and an air-locked door. Taking out his pass card, he swiped the thing and waited as the seal disengaged itself.
Before they went in, the guy stared into Lane's eyes. "Just so you know, this is going to kill me."
Oh, God, Lane thought. He'd never seen Mack look so grim.
And heaven knew they had been through all kinds of things together, from their shared high school days at Charlemont Country Day, to the later years in college all the way to when Mack had been earning his stripes here at the Old Site under his father and Lane had just been loafing around, doing nothing with his degree.
They both loved U of C basketball, good bourbon, bad jokes, and the Commonwealth of Kentucky--and were essentially positive guys.
At least until recently.
Mack glanced at Beth again, who seemed likewise subdued, and then he held the door wide so that one by one they could file into the laboratory's anteroom. All around, white suits hung on pegs, and there were boxes of blue booties to slip on your footwear. Goggles, masks, and hairnets were also organized on shelves and on hooks.
The BBC's master distiller ignored all that and walked right through the glass door and into the lab space beyond. There, stainless-steel counters, bright lights, and microscopes made the place seem like an IVF lab or maybe part of the Centers for Disease Control.
"She's over here."
Mack stopped by a relatively innocuous glass container with a slip of tinfoil across its top and a fat belly full of a dark, thick liquid that had a frothy, cream-colored head.
"Meet my new strain. Or, shall I say, our new strain."
Lane popped his eyes. "You're kidding me. I didn't even know you were working on a new yeast?"
"I wasn't sure I'd find anything worth talking about. But it turns out, I did."
The rules and method that governed bourbon making were very clear: The whiskey had to be made in the United States and the mash had to be a minimum of fifty-one percent corn, with the balance being from rye, wheat, and/or malted barley. After the mash was ready and at the right pH, yeast was added and fermentation occurred, and that fermented mash had to then be distilled to a given alcoholic percentage in the stills. The resulting "white dog" was placed in new, charred, American oak barrels for aging, a process whereby the caramelized sugars in the charred wood colored and flavored the alcohol. After maturing, the bourbon was filtered and balanced with water and finally bottled at at least eighty proof.
What affected the taste was, essentially, three things: the composition of the mash, the length of the aging...and the yeast.
Yeast strains were the top secret for bourbon makers, and for a company like the BBC, they were not just patented, they were kept under lock and key, the mother strain carefully tended to, DNA'd, and checked every year to make sure there were no contaminations.
If the yeast changed, the taste changed and your product could be lost forever.
The strain used for Family Reserve, for example, had been brought over from Scotland to Pennsylvania during the early days of the Bradford family. And there hadn't been a new one since about fifty years after that.
"Right before Dad died," Mack said, "I had started working on this. You know, traveling throughout the South, getting soil, nut, and fruit samples. And this one...she just started talking to me. I've analyzed her thoroughly and compared her DNA to everybody else's. It's proprietary, and more than that, it's going to make a hell of a bourbon."
As Beth came up to the man, he put his arm around her and kissed her.
Lane shook his head. "This is downright historic--"
"Yeah, in, like, ten years," Jeff cut in. "I don't mean to be a downer here, but we need to generate cash now. Even if this results in the best bourbon on the planet, it's still going to have to be aged before we can distribute it."
"That's my point." Mack focused on the beaker. "We can sell this yeast strain today. Any other bourbon maker--or whiskey maker, outside of the United States--would kill for this, and not only because it's going to make a great liquor. They'd pay a premium for it just to get it out of our hands."
Jeff's affect changed on a dime. "No fucking kidding."
"It's got to be worth..." Mack shrugged. "Well, you tell me we need about a hundred million to pay off all those banks, right? Something like this--it's practically invaluable. Hell, I'm not even sure how to put a dollar figure on it. But it's at least that much. Or more. Think about it, a proprietary blend, never before on the market, and a competitor who will be diminished by its sale."
"Priceless," Jeff murmured.
Lane focused on Mack. Master distillers were usually much older than Mack's thirty-something years, and for him to not only be his father's son, but to discover something like this? It would make his career, put him in the big leagues--and break his heart if someone else got to claim the bourbon that flowed from his discovery.
"I can't let you do it," Lane said. "No."
"Are you out of your mind?" Jeff barked. "Seriously, Lane. We're in beggars-not-choosers land over here. You've seen the hole we're in. You know what's at stake. A cash infusion on that level is what could save us--assuming we can get the money in time."
In the silence that followed, Lane thought about Sutton Smythe.
The Sutton Distillery Corporation was sitting on a boatload of cash--because, hello, they hadn't had some jackass in the top office stealing money.
She was the CEO. She could make decisions like that, and fast.
And as the BBC's biggest competitor?
Mack extended a finger and tapped the tinfoiled beaker. "If it'll save the company, I'll be a hero of sorts, right? And I'll be saving my job while I'm at it."
As all three of them stared at Lane, he hated the position he was in.
That his father had put him in, he corrected.
"Maybe there's another way," he heard himself say.
Although if that were true, he thought, why was he hearing crickets in his head?
After a moment, he cursed and headed for the door. "Fine. I know who to call."
--
All things considered, Max thought as he dismounted from his Harley, it was a surprise that he hadn't had more experience with jails.
Looking up at the Washington County Courthouse, he marveled at the many floors and wondered exactly where the jail was located in the complex. The building had to be an entire block long. And wide.
As he walked up the series of steps and levels, he braced himself to get profiled as a criminal. Beard, black leather, tattoos. He was the poster child for a certain kind of folks who tangled with the legal system, and sure enough, the sheriff's deputies around the metal detector you had to walk through gave him the hairy eyeball.
He put his wallet and its chain in the black basket along with his cell phone and went through the trellis of a sensor. On the far side, he was wanded. Twice.
They seemed disappointed when nothing went off.
"I'm looking for the jail checkin?" he said.
"For prisoners?" the woman asked.
"I want to see one, yes."
Of course you do, her eyes said. "Go up to the third floor. Follow the signs. They'll take you into the next building over."
/> "Thank you."
Now she seemed surprised. "You're welcome."
Following her directions, he found himself waiting in line at a checkin desk, in front of four people in sheriff's uniforms typing requests into computers.
He would have glanced at his watch. If he'd had one. Instead, he relied on the clock on the wall behind them all to assess the time. At this rate, he wasn't going to be able to leave town until noontime--
"Max?"
He turned at a familiar voice and then shook his head. "Hey, man. How you?"
As he and Deputy Ramsey clapped palms, he kind of wanted to explain the beard and the tats. But whatever, he was an adult. He didn't have to be accountable to anyone.
"You here to see Edward?" the deputy asked.
"I, ah, yes, I guess. Yes."
"He hasn't been much for visitors."
"I'm pulling out. Of town. I wanted to see him before I go, you know."
"Wait over there. Lemme see what I can do."
"Thanks, man."
Max went across the linoleum floor and parked it in a lineup of plastic chairs. But he didn't sit back and relax. None of that happening, nope. He just put his hands on his knees and passed the time checking out the other people milling around. Not a lot of white-collar types.
Yeah, his dad, with all his fine-bred bullshit, wouldn't have liked it in here. Then again, William would have been in the federal system, not this local one. Would that be any classier, however. No.
Too bad the bastard had been killed before the hammer had fallen....
For once, Max didn't fight the onslaught of bad memories, the snapshots of arguments, beatings, disapproval...downright hatred...filtering through his brain like the worst kind of slideshow. The way he looked at it, though, he was never coming back to Charlemont after this, so it was the last time, in his entire life, his father was going to get any airtime under his skull.
In other cities, in other climates, in other time zones, it was so much easier to leave everything that had hurt behind.
So much easier to pretend things had never happened.
From out of the corner of his eye, he saw a mother-and-son duo come in and get in line. The kid was scrawny and lanky, with the all-cartilage, no-bones body of a typical sixteen-year-old. Mom had the gray skin of a smoker and more tattoos than Max did.
