Total pages in book: 110
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103552 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 518(@200wpm)___ 414(@250wpm)___ 345(@300wpm)
She was the perfect mayor’s wife. She liked her position, both the power and the wealth it afforded her, but no one could deny that she spent a lot of time and effort making Sawyers Bend a better place to live for everyone, not just for herself. By the time she was done filling me in, I’d finished most of my dinner, and my father looked ready to explode.
“And how about you, dear?” she asked. “Anything interesting going on in town?” She waggled her eyebrows at me with a smile, already knowing I wouldn’t tell her anything. And we both knew, with her resources, she got the best gossip, usually before a whisper reached my ears.
“I heard,” she said, leaning in with a smug smile on her face, her voice dropping as if there were anyone to overhear, “that Avery fired her brewmaster.”
“I think that’s common knowledge by now,” I said.
“Well, the firing is, but did you know he may already have a new position?” She mentioned a brewery that was, sadly, fairly local. I didn’t know Matt that well, but my gut said the farther he was from Avery and Sawyers Bend Brewing, the better.
“And,” she went on, “The brewmaster has been sharing some stories about his time at Sawyers Bend Brewing.” My mother shook her head, her expression genuinely troubled. “It sounds like Avery’s in over her head. I always wondered what Prentice was thinking, letting a young lady like her run a brewery. It’s not proper.”
“Mom, you sound like a dinosaur,” I said, wishing I were surprised by her line of thought. I loved my mom, but she was perpetually stuck in the fifties. “Avery brews an excellent beer, and she knows how to run a business.”
“Then she should have turned her recipes over to the brewmaster and let him run the place,” my father grumbled. “Your mother’s right. It’s not appropriate. She’s a Sawyer. It never sat right with Prentice. He only let her have the place to keep Ford happy.”
“I don’t know what that has to do with anything,” I said stiffly, annoyed on Avery’s behalf. As much as I wasn’t Ford’s biggest fan, I knew without him in her corner, Sawyers Bend Brewing wouldn’t have gone anywhere. “I don’t know what stories Matthew is spreading,” I said. “But I’m not sure you should take the word of a guy who just got fired.”
“She did have a break-in, though, didn’t she?” my mother asked, gently probing for more details. My eyes went to my father.
“Why is everyone so interested in the break-in at Sawyers Bend Brewing?” I asked, uneasy. “Dad asked about that, too. Where did you hear about it?”
My mother remained silent. After a long silence, my father said, “Harvey mentioned something.”
“Harvey,” I repeated. That was plausible. My parents were good friends with him, as were most of Prentice’s generation. And a crime against a Sawyer business was unusual enough to make it a hot topic for gossip. I still didn’t like it. Considering he’d kept his mouth shut about his own break-in, why was he talking about Avery’s? She’d hate being the subject of town gossip. Harvey should know better than to talk about her personal business.
“So, how’s the mayor business, Dad?” I asked, changing the subject away from Avery. There was no way I was getting out of here without hearing whatever it was my father wanted to say. We might as well get it over with.
“Frustrating,” he said, letting out a gusty sigh.
“Frustrating how?” I prompted.
He set his empty bourbon glass on the table with a thump and drew in a breath. I braced for the bullshit to come. I was not disappointed.
“Things have been done a certain way here for a very long time,” my father said, his deep voice reverberating as if he were giving a sermon. “The fabric of our town is woven with the threads of history. Without respect for the past, we have nothing.”
He paused, as if waiting for a response from me. Since he hadn’t said anything worth responding to, I stayed silent, waiting for him to get to the point. He forged ahead.
“Change is rarely good, and too much change can be disastrous. We need to hold tight to our ways. That’s where we find security and positive growth.”
Another expectant pause. And still, he hadn’t actually said anything. He’d thrown out some vague concepts dressed up in pretty words, but he hadn’t said anything concrete at all. I knew this game just as I knew what he was getting at.
I wasn’t in the business of vague promises. The law doesn’t work on vague. If he wanted my help, he was going to have to articulate exactly what he needed, which I knew was the last thing he wanted to do. But I had a life to live and a cold IPA in my future. I’d had enough of my father’s machinations.