Jason huffs out a breath. “Okay. Worst case? Your grandfather was a jerk. You still brew a clean Heritage that half this town loves. You still pay your staff on time. You still bring my mom flowers on her birthday. A bad ancestor doesn’t retroactively turn you into a thief.”
I shake my head. “But the name. ‘Heritage.’ What if I’m selling a fairy tale?”
“Then we figure it out,” he says, matter-of-fact. “We check the story instead of letting three random guys write it for you.” Hetips his chin at the building. “You don’t have to worship the guy to tell the truth about him.”
“How?” My voice scrapes. “I’ve got a stained index card and a beer. That’s it.”
“We start simple,” he says. “I’ll ask Dad—he remembers more local history than he lets on. Gwen’s got a quilting circle that knows every family tree from here to Cairo.” That almost makes me smile. “We hit the historical society, newspaper archives, and old licensing records. Paducah had a Guild in the sixties—somebody’s still got a ledger. And we find people who actually knew William Hoffman.”
I rub my palms on my jeans. “And if we find out he was… Greg with better yeast?”
Jason shrugs. “Then it is what it is. It doesn’t change who you are. You walk around town and say the name Hoffman, and people think ofyouand what you’ve brought with you to this town as an adult. Not some dick who ran off on his kid as soon as humanly possible. The legacy you’re going to pass on to your kid? The only thing that matters?”
He turns, makes me look at him. “You are not your dad.”
“It’s not even about the beer, Jase. It’s… the other part.” I clear my throat. “The not-good-enough for Paige part.”
He shrugs. “You never even saw these guys before. The fuck do they know?”
I huff out a laugh that isn’t one. “Enough to say it out loud.”
“Yeah? Here’s what I know out loud,” he says, voice even but with an edge. “Paige isn’t a prize someone wins by pedigree. She is a grown woman with a spine and a brain who picked you. Not aversionof you. Not the you you-think-you-should-be. You. And if anyone in this town wants to run their mouth about whether you’re ‘good enough,’ they can come say it to me first.”
“That’ll go great,” I mutter.
“It will, actually,” he says, finally turning so I have to meet his eyes. “Because this isn’t a merit badge thing. It’s a behavior thing. You show up. You tell the truth. You take care of your people. You keep doing that, and you’re good enough. Period.”
I blow out a breath.
“And if I screw up?” I ask, because the part of me that expects to fail is always the loudest.
“You will,” he says, no softness, no performance. “So will she. So will I. Everybody does. The question is what you do after. Like today…” He tips his chin. “You screwed up. You should’ve texted. You shouldn’t have made her worried. A text. ‘I’m okay. Talk about it later.’ That’s it. Then tomorrow, you tell her where your head went. Not some pretty version of it. The real one.”
“When did you get good at relationships?” I ask, kind of annoyed.
“I’ve always been good at them. In hindsight, anyway.”
A real laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
“Hindsight, right,” I repeat, pulling out my phone and turning it back on. The screen glow makes my face feel exposed.
Three missed calls from Paige and a slew of texts. More texts from Charlotte. A bunch of calls from the bar.
“You know I’m still pissed at you,” Jason adds.
“I know.”
“And I’m not co-signing… any of it,” he says, a vague wave that covers fourteen years of friendship, an accidental pregnancy, and a punch in the face. “But I am not going to stand here and let three strangers tell me who you are. Or who my sister is.”
My throat tightens. I thumb out “I’m okay” and hit send before I can overthink the two most basic words in English.
The porch light clicks off upstairs. The window narrows to a rectangle of dark. It’s late.
“I should have told you,” I say, because here’s another fact that needs to be on the table. “About me and Paige. I should have told you the minute I… the minute it wasn’t just a thought I was trying to kill.”
“No shit,” he says, but there’s no bite; it’s just the truth. He rests the back of his head on the headrest and looks at the ceiling liner. “You ran today.”
“I did,” I say.
