Page 5 of Grumpy Ex-Military Brewmaster’s Secret

I read the list over twice, decide it's solid, and go find the one member of this operation who's actually going to listen to it without an opinion.

Biscuit is asleep in the sun by the office door, taking up roughly the same floor space as a small couch. I crouch down next to him and he cracks one eye open, tail giving a single lazy thump against the concrete.

"New rule," I tell him. "The kids don't come near me. Not the tanks, not the walk-in, not me specifically. You can like them all you want. I need one of us keeping some distance."

He studies me for a long moment, unimpressed, and then closes his eye again, which is about the response I expected from a dog who spent the entire back half of yesterday afternoon following an eight-year-old around like she was carrying a steak in each pocket. Biscuit made his decision about the Walsh twins in roughly four seconds and has shown no interest in reconsidering it since. I envy him that, a little. He never learned to hold a grudge the way the rest of us do.

I go back to work. It's easier than sitting with the thought for too long.

The day runs the way most of them do, long and physical and loud enough that there isn't much room left over for thinking about anything except the next task in front of me, which is exactly why I like it. By the time Gunny heads out, the sun's dropping fast behind the ridge and the taproom's gone quiet except for the hum of the walk-in and the tick of the mash tun cooling down.

"You want me to lock up?" Gunny asks, keys already in hand.

"I've got it."

"You always got it." He says it without any edge, just an old observation he's made a hundred times before, and shrugs into his jacket. At the door he stops, looks back at me across the empty taproom. "For what it's worth, I think you did good. Hiring her."

"It was a business decision."

"Sure it was." He grins, doesn't argue, and lets the door swing shut behind him.

I mean to head straight up to the loft. I end up in the office instead, telling myself it's just a final check before tomorrow, and spend the better part of half an hour doing things that have nothing to do with checking anything. I throw out three years of expired takeout menus. I find a mouse that still works under a drift of unopened mail and plug it into the ancient desktop. I move the shoebox of receipts off the chair and onto the floor so there's somewhere for an actual human being to sit down.

The dandelion's still in its water glass at the corner of the desk. I move it two inches to the left so it isn't directly in the way of the keyboard, then stand there for a second, a grown man who just rearranged a weed for a woman he hired eleven minutes into meeting her. I turn off the light before I can start asking myself why, and go upstairs.

Alone, the brewery goes quiet in the particular way it does at night, tanks ticking as they cool, the old barn settling around me like it's exhaling. I climb the stairs to the loft, pour two fingers of something I don't really want, and sit down at the desk with my laptop, because it's the third of the month, more or less, and there's a piece of business I handle the same way every time, alone, after hours, with nobody around to ask what it's for.

The login takes four tries because I always forget the password on purpose, some old habit about not making anything too easy to find twice. The account itself is nothing dramatic to look at, just a small holding company with a name that means nothing to anyone who might stumble across it, and a single standing transfer that goes out on schedule regardless of whether the brewery's had a good month or a bad one. I've done this so many times the motions don't require thought anymore. I enter the amount, confirm it, and authorize the transfer. It's done in under a minute.

Tonight it takes longer than it should, because my eyes keep drifting past the laptop screen to the water glass sitting at the corner of the desk, one slightly crushed dandelion still holding its shape better than it has any right to after a full day. I don't remember deciding to keep it. I remember Josie Walsh handing it to me like it was the most natural thing in the world, like handing a stranger a flower was just something people did, and I remember not knowing what to do with my hands until I'd taken it.

I should throw it out. It's a weed in a water glass on a desk covered in invoices, and I run a business, not a garden. I look at it for a solid ten seconds, weighing the decision like it's actually a decision, and then I leave it exactly where it is and finish the transfer instead.

The confirmation screen loads, blank and businesslike, no name attached that would mean anything to a stranger, no note, same as it's been every month for longer than I want to count. I close the laptop before I can start reading too much into either the transaction or the flower.

Tomorrow Jenna Walsh starts work in the office fifteen feet from where I'm sitting right now, and I've got a list in my pocket that says exactly how far apart the two of us are going to stay.

It should be easy. I built the whole rule specifically because it's supposed to be easy.

I don't believe myself even a little, and that's a new problem I don't have a list for yet.

3

JENNA

The shoebox is worse in daylight.

I've been staring into it for a solid five minutes, which feels like an appropriate amount of time to mourn something, and I still haven't found where it starts. There are no dates on the outside, no folders, no rubber bands separating one crisis from the next, just receipts and invoices crammed in on top of each other until the box gained actual structural weight. Some of them have gone soft at the corners from being pulled out, reconsidered, and shoved back in without ever being dealt with.

I pick it up anyway, and something in my chest does a small, ridiculous flip of joy. This is a problem I can actually fix, not the kind that keeps me up at night, but the kind I can sort by date and put in order with my own two hands. I haven't had one of those in longer than I want to admit.

The accounting software is worse than the shoebox, if that's possible. I click into it expecting resistance and instead get a login screen that's sat dormant for months, judging by the little timestamp in the corner that Rafe clearly never noticed was there. A whole quarter's worth of invoices sits somewhere in the dark, unrecorded, unpaid or unbilled. I can't tell which yet, and probably both.

"Found the mouse, I see." Rafe leans in the doorway, coffee in hand, watching me the way you'd watch someone examine a car after an accident, waiting to see how bad the news is going to be.

"Your software hasn't been touched in months. Since your last office manager stopped showing up, I'm guessing."

"Sounds about right."