Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Wyn
Five days later, Sheriff Fury came looking for Dr. Reed Andrews who had been reported missing.
A professor who didn’t show up for classes had set off enough warning bells that eventually made it to the Rumor County Sheriff’s Department.
After all, this wasn’t the first time a professor at the university had disappeared.
It is the first time, however, that I know for a fact that a missing professor wouldn’t be returning.
Fury asked that I come down to the sheriff’s station for a statement about the last time I saw my colleague, and if I knew his whereabouts.
My mother had told me to be as honest as I wanted, so that’s what I did.
Birdie reported the aggressive nature of some of the wildlife that had been residing in the river around The Whispering Fool to animal control, but all of the dust settled without much repercussion.
Without a body there isn’t a crime. That was when the rumors started.
My home is a town named after its ugly little super power—rumors that muddied the waters and caused a sense of confusion.
It was rather brilliant when I finally saw it for what it was.
Little lies and embellished truths that made people talk instead of look.
I knew where the rumors started and how they caught fire.
This time, they swirled around a young professor with a gambling addiction.
There was another about the predatory teacher being arrested across state lines, making it the FBI’s problem.
My favorite one was the conspiracy story about how Reed had killed Stan Billings and then got away with it.
I’m not a liar. I told as much of the truth as I could.
He drank some whiskey, said some shitty things, there was an altercation, accusations, and then we left.
Whatever happened later, he would need to ask around somewhere else.
I’m positive my mother and Birdie had answers, but they’re Crownes, so nobody would ever know what happened unless they wanted that to be the case.
When I walked out of Fury’s office, Andi sat waiting, along with two other women, one wearing a sorority sweatshirt and the other with university sweatpants.
There were plenty of people to shoulder some of the damage in all of this—the university, the sheriff’s department, and anyone else who knew and didn’t make enough noise to stop it from happening.
I left the sheriff’s station feeling a sense of pride, knowing that something’s finally been done to put a stop to it.
Something that felt more like what was due instead of what was accepted.
I don’t know what kind of person that makes me, other than a Crowne.
A few days after I walked out of the sheriff’s station, I submitted my formal letter of resignation to the head of my department, officially ending my time and tenure as professor of organic chemistry.
“Do I want to know?” Jo asks as she sketches in her notebook. I stop mid-pour and remember what my mom and Birdie’s wishes were. If my sisters are ever going to find out the things our mother and grandmother have done, it would come from them.
“I find it incredibly convenient that a sexual predator just disappears the moment he’s about to be found out,” Stevie says, clapping her hands together after she runs it across the workbench.
My sisters are smart. They know something had happened with Reed.
Stevie’s been putting pieces together about his involvement with the sexual assault allegations that had been barely reported at the university.
But outside of Julian’s stitched-up and bandaged hand, there isn’t much of a trace of that night.
“Slipped with one of my files and really got myself good,” he said to Jo.
Julian clued me in later that my mother and grandmother had plans for Reed.
They had plenty of eyes on him while he’d been at The Whispering Fool.
The pillars of security, Gina and Gail, clocked him in every time he walked through those doors.
I don’t think they thought he’d be ballsy enough to do anything in plain sight at my family’s bar like that, but I suppose that’s the fucked-up thing about sociopathic sexual predators—they have no rules.
It made sense that his punishment hadn’t either.
I was the variable they didn’t expect. After they learned the part he played in my kidnapping, it just confirmed that the role Birdie and Lu Crowne play in our small town isn’t simply justified, it’s necessary.
“You know you can always bribe me to come over when you’re feeding me, but this,” Stevie says when I don’t respond to her suspicions, looking at the massive spread I nervously cooked early this morning. “It’s hella early to be drinking, Wynnie. Do we need to have a talk about healthy consumption?”
Jo throws a crinkled-up paper at her. I think she knows I want to talk about the distillery, since I clued them in about that much, considering there hasn’t been any time this past week to spend together. But I’m not sure she has any idea what I’m about to ask of them.
“What?” Stevie barks out a laugh. “We’re inside of a very dirty distillery at ten-thirty in the morning on a weekday, it feels like it should be said.”
“I quit,” I tell them.
Jo sits up and puts the notepad down. Stevie glances at her with wide eyes, then back at me, waiting for me to elaborate.
“I wasn’t happy with going back and doing what I had done before.” I look down at the flight of glasses I’ve poured and the names that I’ve scribbled next to them. “And this place, making whiskey, running a distillery, it feels like what I should’ve been doing all along.”
Taking a breath, I look at two of the most important people in my life, the women who make me remember what it’s like not to be alone. “I have a business idea, and I wanted to run it past you two before I really dug into it. Or even mention it to Mom and Birdie.”
They both glance at the other again. For once, my sisters are silent, and it almost makes me laugh.
“I’d like to know if you both would want to do it with me. You can be as involved as you’d like. Put to use your strengths or interests. You don’t need to distill or work the whiskey product side of it.”
I try to gauge their body language or their gut reactions, but they’re not giving me all that much. I think I may have shocked them slightly.
“Jo, there’s a logo, bottle designs, creative things that I couldn’t even start to wrap my head around that I would want you to lead and own.
” I take a seat around the round table at the center of the space.
“Stevie, you make more noise about things than any other person on the planet. You don’t have to give up your shifts at The Whispering Fool.
But I could see you helping me run the business side of this—and the public relations.
If anyone can hype and help schmooze people in town about it, it’s you all the way. ”
“So you’re saying you need us,” she says, squinting her eyes at me.
That was wildly accurate and far more so in the grand scheme of my life. I smile and nod. “I’m saying I need you, always have.” I tilt my head to the side. “I’m doing this, no matter what; I just want to know if you want a piece of it with me.”
Jo claps off the sugar on her hands and shifts out of her stool to stand. “It’s a fuck yes from me. I wouldn’t mind scaling back at the bar and leaning into doing more creative things.”
We both look at Stevie, who’s smiling, looking between the two of us. “Mom is going to run The Whispering Fool until she loses her marbles, and even then, there’s a part of me that knows she’ll never want to give much of that place up.”
She sits down and kicks her feet up, the chartreuse MIU MIU pumps front and center.
“I’m keeping my podcast and nights at the bar—I still need to pay bills and feed Nashy.
But I’m in.” Then she gasps. “Oh my gosh, Theo is going to be so jealous. I bet he could get bottles circulating with all of the schmoozing he does too.”
“When I was in Montana,” I say, looking at my sister, “I listened. All the time.” Pausing, I swallow the emotion that still holds.
“It was how I felt like I didn’t lose”—I look around—“all of this and all of you.” I smile and wipe at the tear that escapes.
“We did tasting flights of all your recommendations. I want to do that here.”
Stevie looks up at the ceiling, trying to keep from letting her welled tears fall. “Well, fuck you for making me cry before noon, Wynnie.”
“This feels right, Wyn,” Jo says, breaking through the dramatics of our middle sister. “You’ve always been brilliant, but taking something and making it even better is your superpower.”
“What are we going to call it?” Stevie asks. “The whiskey brand or the distillery, what should we call it?”
The firewood cracks loudly and sparks move up and into the air.
Evenings in autumn are such a tease—they make us think that brisk nights and warm blankets are on the agenda until the next day, when summer teases her way back in.
But tonight, after a big dinner with everyone I love in one room, I look up at the way the clouds move with purpose and feel content that maybe I’ve found mine as well.
I never thought I’d see this part of my life again, the one where my family had a late dinner together and then a drink around the firepit.
I spent too much time thinking I didn’t want to have anything to do with it, then craving nothing more than to see them all one more time, to this—standing here, I don’t know if I feel like crying or laughing.
I smile right before I feel him. Large arms weave their way around my middle from behind, and the warmth and smell of him follow. “You look like you’ve had a good day, baby.”