Page 25 of Bourbon Girl, Part 2 of 6
"I'm sorry I couldn't help. Good luck finding your mother's friend."
I ended the call and stood in the busy reception area, surrounded by the cheerful chaos of bourbon tourism. This place represented everything I'd been searching for—the heartof Kentucky's bourbon heritage, the community where my father had supposedly once worked and made friends and lived a life I knew nothing about.
I gathered my composure and headed toward the tasting room to rejoin my group, where Teresa would undoubtedly find new ways to critique my performance while I smiled and pretended everything was fine.
Six more names on the list. Six more chances to find a connection that might actually lead somewhere.
August 30, Saturday
off-flavorundesirable taste or aroma resulting from poor fermentation conditions
THE BUSdoor hissed open and I climbed aboard. My shoulders sagged with exhaustion that went deeper than physical fatigue—the kind of bone-deep weariness that came from repeated disappointment.
Jett looked up from his clipboard as I settled into my usual seat behind him.
"Strike out again?" he asked gently, starting the engine.
"Struck out four more times, actually," I said, pulling out the marked-up list we'd compiled from his directories. "Linda Church at Maker's Mark retired fifteen years ago and moved to Florida. David Church at Jim Beam died in a car accident in 2003. The other two leads were dead ends—one never worked in bourbon at all, just happened to have the same name, and the other was a typo in the directory."
The bus pulled away from our final stop of the day, a small craft distillery where our group of bourbon enthusiasts from Atlanta had sampled experimental rye blends while I'd slipped away to make phone calls that led nowhere.
Jett's hands tightened slightly on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry, Bernadette. I know how much you were hoping those names would pan out."
"It's okay," I said, though my voice carried the hollow ring of forced optimism. "Well, not okay, but it's progress of a sort. At least I'm eliminating possibilities."
"Who's left on the list?"
I consulted my notes. "Two more. There's someone at a small distillery about an hour past Bardstown that I'll have to visit in person—they don't answer their phones and apparently don't believe in email. And one person who works at Angel's Envy in Louisville."
"Angel's Envy," Jett repeated thoughtfully. "That's where we're going tomorrow, isn't it?"
"First stop on the Louisville tour. Maybe I'll catch a break."
Jett caught my eye in the rearview mirror, and suddenly his hands shot up from the steering wheel in an elaborate display of crossed fingers—not just his index and middle fingers, but somehow he'd managed to cross his ring fingers over his pinkies too, creating four sets of crossed fingers on each hand.
"Fingers crossed," he announced solemnly, wiggling his contorted digits while somehow maintaining perfect control of the bus.
The absurdity of him turning himself into a human pretzel of good luck gestures broke something loose inside me. Laughter bubbled up from my chest, the first real laugh I'd had in days.
"You're ridiculous," I said, giggling.
The laughter felt like medicine, washing away some of the day's accumulated disappointment. "Thank you," I said quietly, watching Jett's profile in the rearview mirror.
"For what?"
"For making me laugh. For caring whether this works out."
His eyes met mine in the mirror, holding the contact a beat longer than necessary. "Of course I care."
Something in his tone made my pulse flutter, but before I could examine the feeling, he was focused back on the road.
August 31, Sunday
batch fermentationa single fermentation cycle run in one tank, typical in bourbon production
THE SUNDAYtour group—ten members of a Louisville book club celebrating their annual bourbon education outing—filed through Angel's Envy's gleaming entrance with the kind of reverent excitement that came from visiting the city's only full-production distillery in the downtown walking district.
"Take your time exploring the lobby," I told the group as they dispersed among the educational displays and gift shop offerings. "We'll meet at the tour entrance in twenty minutes."
