Chapter 3
Mountain Road is unsurprisingly a road that goes up a mountain.
I drive slowly because the curves are sharp and unfamiliar, but also because I am delaying the inevitable.
The forest presses close on both sides, broken occasionally by driveways that disappear into trees, leading to houses I cannot see.
I pass the First Baptist Church, white clapboard, tall steeple, and a sign out front reading: FREE COFFEE + ETERNAL LIFE.
I continue climbing. And then I see it.
The Rusty Spur announces itself with a giant neon sign that is visible even in daylight, a cowboy boot with a spinning spur, outlined in red and blue lights.
The building itself is a very large wooden structure, weathered to a silvery gray, with a wide front porch and a parking lot that could hold at most thirty cars.
There are string lights strung across the porch, unlit now, but promising evening festivity.
I pull into the parking lot and sit in my car, staring.
How did I get here?
It is worse than I imagined, but somehow better.
The building has a certain ramshackle charm, like a beloved old dog that has seen better days but still wags its tail.
There are flower boxes on the porch. They look like they have been tended, with red geraniums spilling over the edges.
A hand-painted sign on the door reads “WELCOME Y’ALL” in letters that are a little bit crooked, but enthusiastic.
I can hear music from inside. Country, of course. Something with steel guitar and lyrics about a truck or heartbreak or maybe both.
I take a deep breath, check my reflection one more time, and get out of the car. The porch steps creak under my heels. The front door is heavy, real wood, with a brass handle worn smooth by how many hands have touched it over the years.
I push it open and step inside.
The interior is dim, lit only by afternoon light filtering through the windows.
They sure could use a good cleaning. My eyes adjust, and I begin to make out the details.
A long wooden bar running along one wall, bottles of liquor glinting on shelves.
Tables and chairs scattered around a scuffed wooden floor.
A small stage in the corner, complete with a drum kit and a microphone stand.
Mounted deer heads and vintage beer signs, string lights, and, inexplicably, a disco ball.
It smells like old wood and spilled beer and something else that I cannot quite identify. It definitely doesn’t smell like my studio back in Atlanta.
Standing behind the bar, watching me with an expression I cannot read, is quite possibly the most attractive man I have ever seen in my life.
He is tall, well over six feet, with broad shoulders that strain against a gray Henley shirt, sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms tanned, muscular, and tattooed.
Dark hair with a slight curl at the ends.
Square jaw covered in stubble. Blue eyes, startlingly so, that are currently examining me with a mixture of curiosity and something that might be amusement.
“Well, you must be Eleanor,” he says. His voice is deep, with just enough Southern drawl to make my name sound like something musical. “Harlan called. Said you’d be coming by.”
I straighten my spine, summon my mother’s voice in my head. Poised, Eleanor. Presence. Never let them see you sweat.
“And you must be Wyatt Rivers,” I say. “The manager.”
“That’s me.” He sets down the glass he was polishing and walks around the bar, moving with such an easy confidence that shows he is completely comfortable in his own skin. What must that be like?
He is wearing worn jeans and work boots, and he looks like he belongs here in a way that I never will.
Wyatt extends his hand. “Welcome to The Rusty Spur.”
I shake it, noting the calluses, the strength, the warmth. “Um, thank you. I’m here to assess this situation.”
One corner of his mouth quirks up. “Assess the situation? That sounds official.”
“Well, I’ve just come from Mr. Tucker’s office. He explained the terms of the will.”
“Oh, the six months thing,” he says, nodding. “Yeah, Mavis told me about that before she passed. She wanted to make sure you’d give the place a real chance.”
“A real chance of what exactly?”
He shrugs, his impressive shoulders rising and falling. “Well, that’s something you’d have to figure out for yourself, I reckon. Mavis wasn’t a woman who liked to explain herself. She just trusted that the reasons would make sense eventually.”
I look around the bar again, trying to see it through objective eyes. Obviously, the floor needs refinishing. The windows definitely need cleaning, and the disco ball is just a crime against aesthetics. I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a disco ball in person.
“How many people work here?”
“Four, including me. Dolly’s been waitressing here for over thirty years. Boone handles security. He’s a big guy, gentle as a lamb unless you give him a reason not to be. And Presley waits tables and tends the bar with me when she’s not writing songs.”
“Songs?”
“Well, she’s a singer. Performs here sometimes. Mavis encouraged it.”
Something flickers across his face. Grief, maybe? I do not know what to say to that. This man clearly loved my great aunt, and I am standing here in her bar, looking at property values and exit strategies. I didn’t know her. This stranger knew her, and I didn’t. It’s so strange.
“The apartment upstairs,” I say, changing the subject. “Can I see it?”
“Sure. Follow me.”
He leads me through a door at the back of the bar, up a narrow staircase that is very clean and well-lit. At the top, he opens another door and steps aside to let me enter, but I am not prepared for what I find.
The apartment is wonderful. Completely, unexpectedly wonderful.
It is open and airy, with exposed wooden beams and large windows overlooking the mountains.
The furniture is definitely eclectic. A velvet sofa in deep turquoise, mismatched armchairs, and a coffee table made from what looks like an old barn door.
The walls are covered with art, vintage concert posters, local landscapes, photographs of people laughing and dancing, and everywhere, little touches of someone’s personality.
I’m assuming my great aunt’s.
A collection of cowboy boots is displayed on a shelf. A guitar is propped in the corner. Books are stacked on almost every surface. A kitchen with copper pots hanging from a rack and herbs growing in the window.
It looks like someone actually lived here. Someone who was very happy. It is like I walked into the middle of someone’s life. It feels comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.
“Mavis had good taste,” Wyatt says from the doorway. “Different than probably what you’re used to in Atlanta, but good.”
I look at him. “You knew her well.”
“She gave me a job when I needed one. Gave me a purpose when I had lost mine. She was,” he pauses, and I see him swallow hard, “she was the best person I ever knew.”
The sincerity in his voice makes something crack inside my carefully constructed composure. This is not just a bar to him. It is not just a job. It is a home, a family, and a life.
And I am jealous of him in this moment, that he knew my great aunt so well, and I knew nothing.
How did I miss out on knowing the greatest person someone ever knew?
I am just the outsider who has inherited all of this.
“I haven’t decided yet,” I tell him, because I need him to know that, to be honest about at least this much. “I mean, whether I’ll stay, whether I’ll accept the conditions.”
He nods slowly. “That’s your choice to make, ma’am. But if you do decide to walk away,” he meets my eyes, “just know that what you’re walking away from is more than a building. It’s more than a business. It’s over thirty-five years of Mavis’s heart and the hearts of everyone who loved her.”
He turns and walks back down the stairs, leaving me alone in my great-aunt’s apartment, surrounded by the life of a woman I never knew.
I sit on the turquoise sofa and look out the window at the mountains.
I try to imagine spending six months in this place.
Months of pickup trucks and twangy accents and a bar called The Rusty Spur.
Months of small-town nosiness and country music, and a blue-eyed manager who looks at me like he is trying to figure out if I am worth trusting.
Months of being someone other than Eleanor Whitfield, etiquette instructor, keeper of her mother’s legacy, and professional failure.
The thought is terrifying.
It is also, I realize with surprise, the first thing that has made me feel anything at all in years.
I have some big decisions to make.
For now, I will just sit in Mavis’s apartment, watch the sun set over the Blue Ridge Mountains, and wonder what on earth I have gotten myself into.
* * *
I have made a terrible mistake.
That is the thought that is running through my mind over and over as I stand in the doorway at The Rusty Spur on a Friday night, frozen like a deer caught in the headlights of approximately forty pickup trucks’ worth of patrons.
This bar is packed, wall-to-wall with people wearing denim and flannel and cowboy boots, laughing and shouting over music so loud I can feel the bass vibrating in my chest. The disco ball I noticed yesterday is spinning now, casting fractured light across the dance floor, where couples are doing something complicated with their feet that I could not replicate if my life depended on it. It is certainly not the waltz.
And every single person in this establishment is staring at me.
I am wearing a pencil skirt. A pencil skirt.
Navy blue, perfectly tailored, paired with a cream silk blouse and my mother’s pearls.
I spent forty-five minutes on my hair, pinning it into an elegant chignon that says, “Professional businesswoman here to assess her inheritance.” But what it actually says, apparently, is “Lost tourist who wandered in looking for the nearest Whole Foods.”