Page 93 of Whiskey Kisses

Sloane pulls back, tenderly cupping my cheek. “It is so good to see you, sweetheart,” she breathes. “How have you been holding up?”

“I’m okay.” I pause, trying to find words to describe how I’ve felt lately, but none come. My brain feels foggy. “Some days are better than others.”

“I’m sure.” She smiles a little. “I know the timing’s awful, with everything that’s going on, but I wanted to congratulate you on the wedding. I wish Tristan had told us a little sooner. We’d have flown down right away.”

“Oh, thank you! We would have! It just happened really fast, and he wanted to …” I trail off. What can I possibly say to explain how and why I married her son? For all I know, she and Owen disapprove and they’re just too polite to say so.

But Sloane gives me another hug. “I can see why Tristan snatched you up. You were always adorable, and you’ve grown up into a real beauty.”

“All right, Sloane, don’t smother her,” Owen says with a chuckle, leaning away when his wife smacks his arm. Still, his eyes are kind as he looks down at me. “It’s true, though. You look a lot like your mother did. She wasn’t that much older than you when we first met.”

“That’s really kind of y’all to say.” I knuckle back the fresh wave of tears. “Anyway, I’m glad you’re here. Are you hungry? Can I get you anything? Some water?”

“No, no, no. We’re here to take care of you for a while, Evie,” says Sloane, linking her arm through mine. “Now show me into the kitchen so I can figure things out.”

Tristan bursts through the front door, carrying more suitcases. The swollen redness around his eye has begun settling into a dark purple, making him look like a real brute. It’s deranged, but it only makes him sexier. “You moving in, Ma?” he teases. “Jeez.”

“Maybe I am,” she snarks back. “You’re not the only capricious one in this family.”

“Oh, here we go.” He shuts the door, giving me aI told you solook. “Let’s hear it, Mother Dearest. Might as well get it all out now.”

“Don’t take that tone with me,” she admonishes. “I’m not the one who eloped!”

My face warms, and Sloane gives me a shrewd look. “Don’t worry, honey, I’m not upset with you. I know how convincing my son can be.Bet you couldn’t say no, huh?” She grins. “And I bet he loves that blush, doesn’t he?”

“I do,” Tristan affirms, swiping a kiss over my blazing cheek as he squeezes by, Timmy and Finn trailing behind. I glance through the window to the front drive, now full of cars and people I don’t know.

One thing about this Boston crew—they rolldeep. Tristan flew down here solo, was joined by Finn, Timmy, and Malachi, then Alex and the other guys I still don’t know very well, and now his parents, who’ve arrived with their own entourage. It’s hard to tell if they’re friends or a security detail. Or both.

But everybody seems to know each other, evidenced by the ease and comfort with which they interact. In fact, I seem to be the sole stranger—in my own house, ironically—passed around and introduced as the newest member of the family. By the end of the afternoon, Owen and Tristan have commandeered the living room as their unofficial war room. The bouts of laughter and Boston brogue become rowdier as the hours go by, lubricated by lots of whiskey and beer.

We have groceries delivered, enough to feed a small city, and then Sloane orders dinner from a gourmet deli spot in town, a feast of soups, salads and paninis, with cookies for dessert. She also orders a few gallons of sweet tea with a container of cut-up lemons. Tristan must have clued her in, and that he remembered something so trivial and so particular to me at a time like this makes me feel seen in a way I’m still not used to.

I’d been apprehensive about Tristan’s parents swooping in and taking over, but now that they’re here, it feels like I can take a proper breath. Sloane’s a mom, so she does what moms do: she feeds and fusses over me while delegating tasks to everybody else. We catch up over wine as we pick over what’s left of the charcuterie board she threw together, reminiscing about the summers their family came to visit mine. I tell her the truth about my relationship with Maribelle, which shocks her because my sister’s great at fooling people, and she shares juicy secrets of all the adult dramas that unfolded unbeknownst to us kids.

Sloane talks a lot about her kids and how much she loves being a grandma. And then, to my surprise, she confides that Bria just had an early-term miscarriage, which is why Lucky couldn’t come down this time around.

My heart sinks. I haven’t met Bria yet, but I remember Lucky and I can’t imagine how difficult this must be. “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she says softly. “They actually didn’t even know she was pregnant until she began to miscarry, so it was a shock to say the least.”

“Is Bria doing okay?”

“I think so,” Sloane says with a small nod. “She’s just taking it easy right now.”

She tells me of the time she miscarried years ago, after Tristan was born but before Maeve. And then, switching gears, she reveals how worried she’s been about Maeve lately. And how proud she is of Tristan for how far he’s come since the “incident.”

She explains how her career in wine started as a passionate hobby and encourages me to pursue my interests of horticulture and herbalism. “I wonder if there are ways to incorporate that into the whiskey business?” she muses, topping off our wine glasses. “I don’t know much about the distilling process yet, but surely whiskey can be infused with botanicals?”

“It can,” I say, excited that she zeroed in on this so quickly. “I actually made a couple of proposals to Daddy when I came home after graduating college, but he wanted to keep his whiskies traditional.”

“That’s understandable,” Sloane says neutrally. “But maybe we can take the distillery in a fresh direction. Balance the old with the new.”

And then we’re just tipsy. Any decorum or attempts to impress my new mother-in-law fall by the wayside as our conversation becomes more intimate, morereal, the jokes bawdier. “What?” she asks with a saucy smile, when her naughty story of a mishap with Owen makes me laugh so hard that I nearly choke on an olive.

“It’s just,” I finally say, once I can come up for air, “different, knowing you this way. You used to be my parents’ friend, and my friends’ mom, and now …”

“I’m your friend,” she says with a knowing smile. “Strange, isn’t it? I remember when I realized that my mother was a fully realized person with an interior world just like me—she’d just been around longer.”

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