Ruin Me, Daddy novel · Chapter 31 of 32

Chapter 31: Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve came in gray and cold, with frost on the rickhouse roofs.

I put on my oldest jeans and a barn coat of Forrest's that came to my knees.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked him on the walk down.

"Lettie doesn't tell me things." He had his hands in his pockets. "She tells the bank, the diner and the church bus."

"You're lying."

"I'm not allowed to lie." He glanced at me. "So I'm not talking."

"That's the same thing."

"It's in the rules. I checked."

Rickhouse A was dim and sweet and freezing.

Lettie was waiting in the middle aisle in her canvas apron, with a work lamp at her feet and her glasses on their chain.

Beside her, on a wooden cradle on the floor, sat a single new barrel.

The oak was still pale. The hoops were bright.

"Come here, sugar," she said. "Look at the head."

I crouched down.

Somebody had stenciled the round end in black paint, careful and square.

MAMAW.

Under it, smaller, the date. 18 DECEMBER.

I sat down on the dusty floor. I couldn't help it.

"We filled it last Friday," Lettie said. "Forrest picked the barrel. I picked the batch. It's the same mash bill my granddaddy started with."

"The recipe," I said, and my voice broke.

"The recipe." She smiled. "It sits right here, on the bottom rack, where the floor's coolest. Nobody touches it until it's ready."

"When's it ready?"

"Twelve years, maybe fifteen." She shrugged. "Ledfords don't rush."

I put my hand flat on the barrel head.

The wood was cold and smooth. I could smell the char inside it, and the white dog, and something caramel already.

"She'd have hated this," I said. "She was Baptist. She'd have told you whiskey was for sinners and fixing coughs."

"Then she can fix a cough in fifteen years," Lettie said.

I laughed so hard I had to wipe my face on Forrest's coat sleeve.

Lettie put her hand on my head, just once.

Then she picked up her work lamp.

"I'm going to go stand in the parking lot," she said, "and pretend I don't know anything. Merry Christmas, both of you."

Her boots went off up the aisle.

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