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There may be hope for our gamer brother, Beau, and his twin-sister Georgia-Blue, both twenty-five.
Georgia provides all the woo-woo in the family and says everything is written in the stars and you can solve most things with the appropriate crystal and by burning a sage stick. Also, the power of positive thinking is underrated, according to her. Beau, while tall, blue-eyed, and broad like the rest of us brothers, skipped the famous Bassett temper that my other three siblings have. Nothing fazes Beau, a lot like me.
I’m kinda like my two older brothers in stature, but prefer a cowboy hat and plaid instead of a suit. My hair is longer at the front than my mother would prefer, and I’m more tan from being outdoors. Even when I am distilling for the family business, I still get time to ride my horses and tend to my beloved garden; I grow my own vegetables and have a beautiful vertical wall herb garden. I’ve been trying out my hand at planting a mini-orchid because the soil is very fertile on our property.
Beau and Georgia both still live in their separate casitas of the family homestead, while Gabe and I built our houses years ago on what we affectionately call ‘the farm,’ aka two hundred acres of land where our Bourbon distillery is situated along with the many acres of crops of barley and wheat that we grow. Grayson is in the middle of building his dream home on his beloved land ‘Coyote Run’ which my parents gifted him years ago on the south end of the property.
We’ve all been part of the family business since we were born; Bassett Brothers Bourbon, which has been in the family for a couple of generations now. Our grandfather passed the business down to our dad, Robert — commonly known as Bob — and his brother, our uncle Jack.
Both of them have retired now. My mom, Gayle, worked in the business too, along with our aunt Patti, Jack’s wife. Mom has officially retired, though she wants to help Georgia-Blue with the wedding venue next year after Mom and Dad have taken the big European vacation they’ve been planning. We’ve spent the better part of a year remodeling the old barn and converting it into its original state. Our cousin, Callan, who’s tall and dark haired like the rest of us, but he has distinguishable ochre eyes and we all have blue, did most of the framework and all the woodwork and joinery.
We have other workers, but it’s certainly an on-going family affair and we each have a role in the business.
I work in the cellar, managing production and bottling. I spend most of my time down the two flights of stairs in ‘the vault.’. The rickhouse, our storage warehouse, adjoins the production cellar and it might as well be my second home. The barrels are stored on ricks, stacked several high and aid the maturation process.
These days I have a production assistant, Jarrod, and a team of very capable staff who know the bottling and production procedure well.
I’ve loved this job since I started out all those years ago. Growing up I learned the ropes and took to the production side of things. It never interested me with other aspects of the business. Though I do have an input in design and marketing, I never get too involved. I don’t like to delve too much outside my area and I despise computers and administration.
Gabriel is the man for that. He was freshly appointed CEO a couple of months back, and oversees every aspect of the distillery now that our parents have officially retired.
He’s the only one that knows about this recent non-divorce phenomenon of mine.
I sigh, staring at the unlodged divorce papers on my desk.
They’ve been burning a hole in the forefront of my mind since I found them.
I know I need to tell her, and Gabe agreed when I confessed just recently.
The other thing I need to address with Eden is this Kirk business. She’s just started dating a new guy, and granted I haven’t taken her love life too much to heart over the years, but maybe that’s because there hasn’t been anyone serious.
My daughter just met Kirk not long ago and said they all got along really well.
I’ve never seen the guy, but something just doesn’t sit right with me about him.
He’s some fancy pants doctor from Nashville.
Maybe it’s because I’m a jealous fucker after all. Something I didn’t realize until I found those damned papers. Now I can’t stop thinking about it.
She’s legally still my wife — even if we haven’t been intimate in years. There was that time we tried to rehash things briefly about two years after our first breakup, but we both realized it would be too confusing for Blake being so young, so we left it at that.
I plowed myself into work, and built my house on the family property. I now live in a massive homestead with stables for my horses, and a small hobby farm where I keep my animals; a pet pig called Mandy, two goats, Eliza and Elsie, and my newest addition, a rescue Donkey called Sawyer. I have rescue horses too, and not that I like to play favorites or anything, but my boy is a Tennessee Walking Horse named Bandit. I love him to pieces. I rescued him after my divorce, along with an American Paint Horse named Sailor — she’s Blake’s favorite. I currently have two others, a beautiful mare, Misty, and an ex-racing horse, Apollo.
It was around this time of rescuing more horses that I became a vegetarian.
I smile when I think about Eden’s face when I told her a little while back…
Eden gapes at me in surprise. “What?”
“A vegetarian. You know, we don’t eat meat.” I’ve always been a steak and potatoes kinda guy, so I understand the surprise and curiosity.
“Seriously?”
I shrug. “It’s really pretty shocking how badly animals are treated, Eden.” I’ve always had a soft spot for animals, and after some recent footage I saw on a documentary, it really put me off.
“That I can believe.”
And that’s how it happened.
