Maisie stopped dead and said in a ghostly voice, “I’m a figment of your imagination.”
Amelia laughed, straightening up. She had grain covering her ugly yellow apron with matching latex gloves. “Nice try,” she said, wiping the sweat beading on her forehead with her covered arm. “You better hurry before Clara sees you’re late. Again.”
“What do you mean, late?” Maisie asked, fluttering her lashes. “I’ve been here for an hour already. You need sleep, Amelia. Seriously, you need to take better care of yourself.” Before Amelia could respond, Maisie booked it, walking faster now. Clara only understood punctual. Maisie missed that gene.
“Hey, Maisie,” Amelia called, just as Maisie reached the door to storage room. “You’ve got paint on your cheek.”
Dammit. Maisie went to swipe away the paint when she walked straight into something hard. She bounced back and glanced up into something harder. Clara’s stormy blue eyes. “Hi,” Maisie said with a tight smile. “Oh, you look so pretty today.”
Not falling for it, Clara frowned, crossing her arms over her lacy blouse. “Three festivals. That’s what you’ve got on your plate for this week.”
Maisie nodded. “Yup. Got it.”
She slinked away when Clara’s cold voice stopped her. “You know what these festivals mean for us? This is our chance to take Foxy Diva and actually make something happen. If we screw this up, we need to start all over. You get that, right?”
Again, Maisie nodded. “Yes, I know how important the festivals are. Don’t you worry one bit. Everyone will know Foxy Diva’s name by the time I’m done with the festivals.” It took two years for Amelia to perfect their grandfather’s ho
memade brew. Maisie had come up with the name and the logo, which at least fed Maisie’s creative side, but now, she was expected to go on a road trip through Colorado to give their beer exposure. “I’ve got this handled. Promise. And I’m sorry I was late.”
Clara swiped at Maisie’s cheek, pulling away with a green finger. “You were painting again.”
It wasn’t a question. “A little, but the sunrise today was absolutely gorgeous. Besides, blame this one on my phone. I set my alarm to get here on time, but it didn’t go off. This time, it’s not my fault.”
Clara softened a smidgen. Like, a miniscule. “I don’t mean to be hard on you, but we can’t make mistakes now. You two put me in charge of running this company, so you have to trust me to do that, and take my advice seriously. We need to make sure we stand out at these festivals to get a buzz going. Without that, Foxy Diva cannot and will not take off.” Which was the only thing anyone thought about lately.
To be successful, Foxy Diva needed to become a staple across North America. So far, locally, they’d made it a huge success, but they needed distribution across North America to actually make decent money. They wanted Foxy Diva to be in every restaurant. Every bar. Every beer store. Or at least, Clara and Amelia did, and Maisie just followed along, doing her part to make the beer a hit.
Clara uncrossed her arms to take Maisie by the shoulders. She dropped her gaze to Maisie’s eye level. “I’m going to ask you again: Are you sure you can do this? No one is going to fault you if this is too much.”
Maisie could barely hold Clara’s fierce stare. Part of her wanted to run and hide, mortified her sisters were gliding through this brewery gig, while Maisie was basically drowning. She was an artist, not a business-minded person. But she owed this to Pops. He’d left them everything to make this dream happen. His final wish. And heck, she’d bartended for years. “It’s not too hard. I’ve got this. One hundred percent. You don’t need to worry.”
The look Clara gave her said she didn’t believe her. Though blessedly, she let Maisie off the hook and changed the subject. “I need to go to the post office. I’ve got Foxy Diva entered into five more contests, so I need to mail in the samples.” Which was how beer contests happened. Now all they had to do was wait to see if Foxy Diva won any awards.
“That’s great news,” Amelia cut in. “I’m crossing my fingers something comes of the awards. That will help us nail a distributor more than anything else.”
Maisie rolled her eyes. “Oh, sure, now you’re part of the conversation.” What about helping her out when Clara cornered her?
Amelia shrugged. “Just ’cause I’m the middle sister doesn’t mean I need to get in the middle of everything, including your conversations.” To Clara, she asked, “How long do you think it’ll take before we get the results?”
“Months,” Clara said with a long sigh before her voice perked back up. “But getting the awards is really just step one. We need to get buzz going, and social media is our greatest tool for that.”
“Which is where I come in?” Maisie asked.
“Exactly.” Clara nodded. “When we finally go to the distributor, we need all the ammunition to stand out from the other hundreds of craft beers sent their way.”
“And,” Amelia added, “if we get enough buzz going, they might come to us.”
Great. If that wasn’t a reason to drink, Maisie didn’t know what was. To avoid the pressure that became near suffocating, she grabbed the door handle to the storage room. “Well, I’ve got a four-day road trip, and a trailer that isn’t going to pack itself. See you later.”
“Maisie.” At Clara’s soft voice, Maisie froze. “I know today has to be hard for you. Are you okay?”
Maisie shut her eyes and breathed deep. She’d avoided thinking about what today was ever since she’d woken up. It was why she’d gone and painted, to bring a little brightness to a very dark day. But there was no running away. The articles that splashed across the media two years ago haunted her: Murder Rattles the Small Town of River Rock. Young Woman Brutally Murdered. Officer Hayes Taylor Leaves Denver Police Department After Wife’s Murder.
Laurel’s murder had been declared a robbery gone wrong at their home in Denver. Hayes had hunted down her killer, and after a shoot-out, the killer was dead. After that, he quit his job and moved back home to River Rock. But even with the justice of finding Laurel’s murderer, nothing had been the same since. For a month, Maisie could barely breathe, function. Her sisters had come to her aid. They’d fed her, forced her to shower, brought her out of the darkest place Maisie had ever gone. Laurel’s absence felt like half of Maisie’s body was missing, and she’d struggled to learn how to walk again. But slowly, through her sisters’ love, things had gotten better, and Maisie remembered how to take one step in front of the other. More importantly, she remembered life was a one-time deal. The loss of her parents, of Pops, and of Laurel had taught her that. The world, her life, was far too beautiful and special to waste the time she had.
For Laurel, for her parents, and for her grandparents, she looked for the beauty every day, until the beauty was all she saw. She drew and painted and never stopped until that ache in her chest, while still there, didn’t shadow her happiness.
“I’m okay,” she told her sisters, glancing back at them with the smile she knew they needed to see. “Thanks for worrying about me, but really, I’m remembering the good stuff about Laurel, not the bad memory that took her away. I know she’d want that.”