All the Luck You Need (Asheville Brewing)

by A. R. Casella

  “We’ll see you later, old friend,” Beau said. “I get the impression the lady wants to talk to me alone.”

  “That, my dear, is because you are a very wise man.”

  They rode to Dottie’s house quietly, Beau taking in the new color without comment other than a small smile, and Dottie sent him to the bathroom to wash up while she made him a plate of food.

  When he emerged, his face freshly scrubbed and a tiny scratch on his nose, she gave in to her urge to go to him. She gathered him in her arms and kissed his cheeks and then his mouth, and for a moment he just let himself melt into her, holding her tightly and burrowing his face into her hair.

  He was the one who pulled back, if only slightly. “Are you sure, Dottie? I don’t think I can begin to deserve a woman like you.”

  “Who said anything about deserving? Now, you sit down and have something to eat while you tell me everything.”

  His lips firmed into a line, and she knew this wasn’t easy for him, talking about whatever had happened. This would be a pivotal moment for them—a test of whether he was ready to open up all the way or if he would snap shut like a clam when the going got rough.

  He gave a slight nod—“okay”—and sat across from her at the table. But before he got anything out, he glanced around, as if seeing her house with new eyes. “Where’s River?”

  She felt a tugging in her heart, but she just said, “They’re gone for now. But I have more to tell you about that later. River asked me to tell you goodbye.”

  Another small nod. “I’m fond of the boy. I hope he’ll be back soon.”

  “I feel confident he will be.” Then, in a softer tone, little more than a whisper, she added, “What happened, Beau?”

  “Can I take your hand?” he asked, reaching for her across the table. “I…I don’t begin to understand it. I realize we’ve known each other for hardly any time at all, but you make me feel so much stronger, Dottie.”

  She took his hand, weaving their fingers together. “Our souls know each other. That’s why.”

  His expression rueful, he inclined his head. “Maybe there’s something to that after all, because there’s no denying the way I feel.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I told you there was some trouble with my boy. At first he was just asking me for money, telling me his company was in some trouble and he needed capital. But he finally shared the truth yesterday afternoon. He and his boy’s mother, the one he had out of wedlock, were involved in a scheme to trick investors out of money. He didn’t put it that way, of course, and he placed all of the blame on her shoulders, but I know that two and two make four. But it didn’t stop there. He and his partner will be indicted if they can’t raise enough funds to make this go away, and if he goes to a bank for money, the truth will get out.” He looked up at her, his eyes shining with tears. “I don’t want his children to bear the weight of this, Dottie. None of them.”

  “You’re going to give him money,” she said.

  “You don’t think I should.”

  Neither of them posed their comments as questions.

  “No, Beau. Because it’s clear to me you’ve given him money before—a lot of it, probably—and I don’t think money will ever be enough for him. It won’t fill what’s empty inside, even if he swears up and down it will. If you keep doing it, it will keep happening. There won’t be a happy end.”

  “I know that,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I know it.”

  “Which is why you spent all night drinking and then stumbled around making a spectacle of yourself. Because you know it won’t help but you have to do it anyway.”

  “Yes,” he said, squeezing her hand. “But I don’t plan to make it easy on him. If he wants the money, he’ll have to acknowledge his second son. Visit him, even. I’m going to get it in writing. And I’ll insist on seeing my grandchildren too.”

  She nodded, because she understood. They would both do anything to save their families, to have those beloved children in their lives.

  And yet…

  “If you make him do it, it’ll never lead anywhere good, Beau. For the boy or for you. Have you tried to get in touch with him directly?”

  “Yes, but his mother won’t let me. Hasn’t stopped me from sending letters, but they’re all returned unopened.” He bowed his head for a moment, looking at his untouched food, then glanced up at her. “My son’s wife sends me letters, you know. She sends me pictures of the kids. Stories about them. It’s been a while since I was invited to visit, but I feel like I know them through her. She’s a good woman, Laura.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “I know she’d let me see them more than I do, but I don’t want to make life any harder for her. My boy’s not good to her.”

  “He doesn’t hurt her?” she asked, feeling a throb of concern.

  He shook his head slowly. “Not the way you’re thinking.”

  “But sometimes the wounds no one can see are the ones that hurt the most.”

  “Exactly,” he said, bringing his other hand around to stroke hers.

  “You blame yourself for the way he is, but it’s not your doing, Beau.”

  He heaved a sigh, but he didn’t pull away from her. “It certainly wasn’t his mother who made him this way. I’m not a perfect man, Dottie. Gail told me I was manipulative with the boy. That I used rewards to get him to behave the way I wanted. Those are the lessons he took away, and I can’t deny that I’m the one who gave them.”

  “But you have a big heart, Beau. Anyone who’s met you knows it, no matter how you try to hide it. Sometimes we choose the lessons we learn, and that’s not on other people, that’s on us.”

  “There’s nothing I want more than to help my grandchildren, Dottie, and I can’t do a goddamn thing.” He tightened his grip slightly. “It makes me feel helpless. I started two businesses from the ground up. I built them and raised them and made them whole, but if I can’t make things right for my own family, then who am I as a man? What was the point of any of it?”

  “You talk like it’s always going to be this way, Beau, but it’s not. The only one thing we can count on in this life is change. You may feel powerless to help them now, but you won’t be powerless forever. And when it matters, when they need you most, you will be there.”

  She squeezed his fingers, then let go and lifted up from her chair. Feeling his eyes on her, she retrieved a candle from the kitchen and lit it with one of the matches she kept over the stove. She carried it over to him on a small saucer dish, one she’d been given by a friend in Fayetteville, another maker.

  “You’re going to wish on it, and then you’re going to blow it out and send your intentions into the universe.”

  A corner of his mouth quirked up. “But you already know my wish. You just said it aloud. I thought wishes didn’t come true if you said them out loud.”

  “Well, this is the kind of wish that will. I’m telling you, Beau, you will make a difference in their lives. Maybe all the difference. And I’ll tell you something else…I think I will too.”

  He studied her, his mouth opening slightly as if he were searching for words. “You will?” he said at last.

  “I will. And if River comes here to live with me—”

  “Is that a possibility?” he asked, surprised.

  “I hope so. And if it comes to pass, I know you’ll be there for him too. Because you do have a big heart, Beau, and you can’t hide it anymore. It’s spilling out of you.”

  For a moment, she worried he’d tell her she was crazy. That only an insane woman would say such things to a man she’d known less than a week. But he just pursed his lips and blew out the candle, the smoke pluming around them. And…could it be?

  He looked at her, his features twisted into shock. “The smoke is shaped like a heart.”

  “Of course it is,” she said, with a smile, as if she’d known it would be all along. “Now, take me to my bedroom, Beau. I’m tired of waiting.”

  And he did. Because he was, after all, a very wi
se man.

  Epilogue

  Doris had come around to the idea of having a party to welcome Alli, and she’d even allowed Dottie to make most of the arrangements.

  “As if she had any choice,” Beau had said when she’d told him, his grin stretching even wider when she poked him in retribution.

  Leonard was in the process of fencing Dottie’s yard in, something he’d insisted on doing in his free time as a way of thanking her for her role in his courtship of Doris, so they were holding the party at Beau’s house on Flint Street. Dottie spent quite a bit of time there now, as she and Beau didn’t like to be apart for long and usually split their nights between the two houses. He’d made some noise about her moving in with him, but she’d made it very clear that she intended to keep her little purple house until they buried her.

  Beau and Luke had brewed Buchanan’s new white ale together, with plenty of help from Dottie, and it remained unnamed. At her suggestion, they’d decided to move their contest to the day of the party so the guests could vote on their favorite painting. Whoever won would name the beer.

  And there would be plenty of it for everyone to enjoy, along with an enormous cake Dottie and Doris had made together, shaped like the Blue Ridge Mountains—if you have a very good imagination, Doris had said, which thankfully she did. One of Dottie’s new friends, a dear woman with a small farm outside of the city, was even bringing over some chickens and chicks for a petting zoo.

  From the look on Alli’s face when Doris and Leonard led her out back, she hadn’t expected anything quite so extravagant. Nor, perhaps, had she realized her dear sister had made so many friends. Her wide eyes were exactly like her sister’s, although her hair was honey blond and hung down past her shoulders.

  Dottie and Beau had been sipping the new white beer—quite pleasant—while Luke attempted to talk to Bethany, the chicken wrangler, who seemed more interested in attending to her chickens. Several of Beau and Dottie’s other friends had come, and some of the staff from Buchanan Brewery had come too, including Mara, who had warmed up to Dottie after Beau’s brush with the authorities and the meeting with the Eds. Indeed, business with the Eds was bustling, and Mara had brought one of them to the party. The looks they were passing between each other suggested there was a mutual interest that ought to be fostered. And—

  “Stop your scheming,” Beau said fondly, goosing her. “We should go greet the guest of honor.”

  “You love my scheming,” she said, weaving a hand through his arm and joining him.

  “I’d never suggest otherwise.”

  Dottie broke away from him as they approached her friends, and proceeded to hug Doris, Leonard, and then Alli. “Oh, it is good to finally meet you,” she said to Alli. “Doris has told me so much about you.”

  “She’s told me a lot about you, too,” Alli said, her gaze scanning the party again. “I can see most of it is true.”

  Leonard put an arm around Doris, who was blushing prettily.

  “We brought her on a long hike yesterday. We were just saying it’s too bad there’s no seating at Buchanan, because it would have been nice to stop in for a cold beer.”

  “Someday,” Beau said with an emphatic nod. He nudged Dottie a little. “And this one will be in charge of the tasting room. She has a rare talent for selling my beer to people without making it seem like she’s making a sale. In the meantime, we invite you to try our new beer.” He gestured to the half keg. “We’ll be naming it today. Or, rather, one of us will be.”

  They explained the contest and showed them the paintings they’d propped up against the side of the house, a small box beside them with papers and a pen.

  “Is that Dottie?” Doris asked, pointing to Beau’s portrait. She sounded pleased as punch with the idea.

  “I’m in both of them,” Dottie said. Because really, she would like to name the beer.

  The afternoon whiled by quite pleasantly, although one Buchanan staffer’s five-year-old daughter attempted to steal a chick away in her pocket, and it ended up jumping on the cake, leaving footprints on the peak of the mountain. Dottie made the rounds, speaking with Mara and the Ed, who had very agreeable star signs, and dear Alli, of course, who seemed to have come around to Doris’s decision to stay in Asheville. She suspected it had something to do with Leonard, because anyone could see that he and Doris were truly in love. Wherever they went, signs of love seemed to follow. Heart-shaped stones. Sunsets of orange and pink and purple. Parking spots that appeared out of nowhere.

  Of course, that last one could be put down to luck. But who was more lucky than a couple newly in love?

  Then again, the same could be said of Dottie and Beau. Their connection only grew tighter and stronger as the days went by, and she reveled in all the ways it was strengthening them both, not just as a couple but as individuals.

  “Any more news from Kate?” Doris asked while Alli went over to watch the chicks.

  “Nothing since the last postcard, but I’m hopeful they’ll be here soon.” River had written to her from Tybee Island, where they’d gone after South Carolina hadn’t worked out as Kate had hoped.

  It’s nice here, Aunt Dottie, but I like Asheville better. Esmerelda says we can come back soon.

  “We are too,” Doris said. “We all love River. Part of me was hoping he’d get here before Alli’s visit so he could be at the party.”

  Dottie had harbored the same hope. But if she knew one thing about Kate, it was that she’d arrive in her own time and not a moment before.

  As for Beau, he’d offered his son more financial help, and in return, the boy had agreed that Beau could see the children. He’d be going to Connecticut in a few weeks, although his visit would coincide, unsurprisingly, with one of his son’s business trips. Even so, the boy, Prescott, had made it very clear that Beau was not to bring his new “friend”—his friend being Dottie, of course.

  Beau had offered to press the point, but Dottie had insisted against it. The situation was already so precarious, and she wanted him to have a relationship with the children for as long as he was allowed. Because if she was sure of anything, and she was sure of a lot of things, it was that a man like Prescott wouldn’t remain satisfied for long.

  But those were future concerns, and it was a beautiful, sunny day outside with friends, and she chose not to dwell on them while passing out slices of mountain cake and cups of beer and soda.

  Finally, Beau suggested it was time to count the votes.

  At their urging, Alli did the honors, and Beau held Dottie’s hand while she counted.

  “May the best man win,” he said to her in an undertone.

  “Or the best woman,” she said pointedly. “I wouldn’t mind making my mark on your brewery.”

  He released her hand but only so he could wrap his arm around her. “You already have, Dottie, and I don’t think you have a mind to stop.”

  No, she didn’t.

  “We have a winner!” Alli said with a grin, lighting the sparkler that had been prepared for that purpose and waving it at the winning painting.

  Beau’s.

  It truly was a lovely painting, given he wasn’t a painter by vocation, but she had a sinking suspicion…

  She shifted enough to look him in the eye, and he gave her a wicked wink, squeezing her waist a little as she did. Which was when she remembered the way he’d sidled up to various people all afternoon, huddling with them and speaking in an undertone.

  “You cheated,” she said, although she couldn’t keep the edge of amusement out of her voice.

  “For a good cause,” he insisted, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “I have a gesture to make. One I think you might approve of.”

  Alli had a slightly panicked look on her face as the lit part of the sparkler neared her fingers. Oh dear, they’d forgotten to set out a glass of water, but before Dottie could step forward, Leonard did—dousing it in his glass of water. The action earned him a sweet smile which surely boded well for their friendship.


  “I planned that,” she said in an undertone.

  “Of course you did.”

  Then Beau led her toward the two paintings and turned to address the crowd, his arm still firmly around her. As they stood there, he gestured for Luke to come forward. Having failed to attract the attention of dear Bethany, he had ended up in conversation with Mara and Ed.

  Luke pointed to himself, and when Beau nodded, he wandered up to the front with them.

  “It’s time,” Beau said, and Luke retrieved his set of bongos from beneath the table and started to play a discordant drumbeat.

  Grinning at Dottie, Beau announced, “Thank you for coming, everyone. I’m excited to name our first white ale for Buchanan Brewery. My good friend Luke helped me make this one, and he did me the other great service of introducing me to my lady, Dottie.” He gave her another squeeze, and the pride in his eyes made her blink back sudden tears. “I was in a lurch, you see, and not just because I needed someone much more charming than me to help me sell my beer. I’d fallen into despair, and Dottie was exactly the medicine I needed to drag me back. Just don’t ask her to give you any actual medicine, as you won’t care for the side effects.”

  She gave him a little shove, because he deserved it, the infernal man, and then she kissed him, because he wasn’t wrong, and because she loved him more than she’d thought possible.

  Their friends cheered and sent up wolf whistles, and Beau waved to quiet them. “So I hereby name this beer Lurch White, and I would like to invite Luke to be co-brewer at Buchanan Brewery. I’m told it’s about time I learned how to rest occasionally.”

  Luke gasped in the manner of a woman just informed she’d been named Ms. America. “Do you mean it, Beau?” He looked happy for the first time since Leda had almost struck him with that crystal, and Dottie felt the warm flush of knowing the man she loved wasn’t only a good partner but a good friend. He’d sensed that Luke needed this. Not only that, but the name he’d given the beer was a tribute to Dottie and the love growing between them.

  “I do,” Beau said, accepting a handshake from Luke, who then pulled him into a hug, to another round of wolf whistles.