Page 3 of Her Hometown Man
“The brewer is handling the brewing, of course.”
“Okay.” Gwen waited, but her sister didn’t offer any more information. “If the brewer is handling the brewing, then the brewing is handled. Problem solved and, I repeat, what do you expect me to do?”
“There’s a lot more to running the business than the actual making of the beer. We have to finish renovating the space and make sure we stick to the business plan and plan a menu and go through a metric ton of checklists.”
“And hire staff,” Evie added.
When Mal shrugged and made awellsound, Gwen got it. And she didn’t like it. “You expect us to be free labor, don’t you? Bartender? Server?”
“Dibs onnotbeing the dishwasher.” Evie practically shouted in her rush to get the words out.
“If everybody pitches in, we can do this,” Mallory said.
“I have a job,” Gwen reminded her. “One that I actually get paid for.”
“We can try to keep you at half days so you can still write. Maybe they can give you a little more time to write your book—an extension or whatever?”
Gwen’s stomach knotted at the idea of asking for another deadline extension. The writing hadn’t been going wellbeforetheir father died, and it certainly hadn’t gotten any easier since. “It’s not that simple, Mal.”
“I don’t know if we can do it without you,” her sister said somberly.
Ellen sighed and blinked back unshed tears. “The last thing I want is to ask you girls to put your lives on hold, but the thrift shop can’t support this house, me, Mallory and the boys,andthe loans your father took out. If the brewery doesn’t succeed, I’ll lose everything.”
Gwen’s heart ached at the hopelessness in her mom’s voice, and she focused on her mom’s hand in Mal’s because the pain in her eyes was too much. It wasn’t until she saw her sister’s hand trembling that it hit her that Mallory would lose everything, too. She’d moved home with her sons after her marriage fell apart, and she’d started working at the thrift shop with their mother. It was an arrangement that had worked well for everybody, but her life was so intertwined with her parents’ that she had no safety net of her own.
There was absolutely no way Gwen could get back in her car and drive away, leaving them to figure it out while she tried to help and advise from a distance. “How much debt are we talking about?”
Her mother quoted a number that instantly made Gwen’s stomach hurt. “Mom. How...?”
She let the questions die away.How could Dad do that to you? How could you let him do that?Saying the words would only hurt, not help.
“Gwen, do you...?” Mallory looked down at the table and shook her head, letting the question fade away.
She didn’t need to finish it, though. Gwen knew that the perception of a bestselling author’s income and the reality were not one and the same. “I can maybe help a little, but I can’t put a dent in that. Most of the stuff people see—the book clubs and the movie and all that—was baked into my first contract and debut authors don’t have a lot of negotiating power. And I signed the contract for the second and third book beforeA Quaking of Aspensbroke out, and my agent gets his cut and don’t even get me started on taxes. I got more for my current book but it’s not done. So, like I said, I can help a little, but not enough to make this problem go away.”
Honestly, the best thing she could do was go home and finish the book and get the rest of her advance, but even that wouldn’t be enough.
“I wouldn’t want to take your money, anyway,” Ellen said, but Gwen and Mallory locked gazes and she knew if she had it to give, they would take it.
“How is the business partner handling things?” Gwen asked after an awkward silence, and the look that passed between her mom and Mallory filled her with dread.
“He stands to lose his investment, too,” Mal answered. “Pretty much all of his life savings. He’s doing what he can, but he was never supposed to be involved with all of this—the tavern part, I mean. He’s the brewer.”
“We need to meet with him,” Gwen said. “Whoever this guy is—and I assume it’s an old friend of Dad’s—he needs to step up.”
“Maybe he wasn’t supposed to be involved with this,” Evie added, “but if he might lose everything, too, then he needs togetinvolved.”
“It’s Lane,” Mal blurted out. “Lane Thompson is our brewer.”
As that bit of news settled, Gwen thought back over all the conversations she’d had by phone and email with her parents, and sometimes Mallory.The partner. The brewer. Him. He.She realized now none of them had ever used his name.
“Dad went into business with my ex-husband?” Evie asked, and then silence filled the room as even Mallory didn’t seem to know what to say. “You can’t be serious.”
“They always got along, honey, and years ago, when they discovered they both loved craft brewing, they became good friends,” Ellen said quietly. “And all that was so long ago, he didn’t think you’d mind.”
All thatmeaning Evie and Lane’s marriage and subsequent divorce. And if they were so sure Evie wouldn’t mind, Gwen thought, they probably would have mentioned his name at some point in the last two or more years since they hatched this plan.
“If he didn’t think I’d mind, why did he hide it?”
