"It's Kentucky. For better or worse, bourbon is woven into everything. Our economy, our culture, our sense of who we are."
I touched the Kentucky pendant at my throat, thinking about how this industry had shaped my own story. Without bourbon, my mother might never have met Boyd Biggs. Without bourbon, James might not have had the means to assume his brother'sidentity and help build Goldenrod Distillery. Without bourbon, I would never have come to Kentucky at all.
"It's strange," I said quietly. "Bourbon brought me here searching for my father. And in a way, it gave me answers—even if they weren't the answers I wanted."
"So you got what you came for?" Jett asked.
I considered the question, turning over the events of the past six months in my head. "Yeah. I got something real—the truth."
He reached over and squeezed my hand. "That's all any of us can hope for," he said. "Something real."
I glanced out at the hills and horse farms rolling by. This place had broken my heart and put it back together in a different shape.
December 27, Saturday
decantera special decorative bottle, often used for collectible or luxury editions
THE TOURbus sat empty in the parking lot. Our customers were already inside the first distillery of the day sampling flights. I stayed behind in my usual seat, the special Saturday print edition of theLexington Herald-Leaderspread across my lap. The headline stretched across the top of the page in bold type:
BOURBON GIRL'S SEARCH FOR FATHER ENDS IN HEARTBREAK
Underneath, in smaller font:How one woman's quest to find her biological father exposed a decades-old deception in Kentucky's bourbon industryby Naomi Sook.
"What do you think?" Jett asked from the driver's seat, turning to face me.
I stared at the newspaper, my fingers tracing the edge of the page. "I already read the story. Naomi emailed it to me for approval before it went to print. But seeing it like this—with a headline, with photos, in actual newsprint—it feels different."
"Different how?"
"More real. More permanent." I looked at the photograph Naomi had chosen—my mother's picture from the pendant, the one where she was young and smiling, full of hope. "She kept her promise about portraying my mother well. The article talks about Ginger's struggles with mental health, but it's compassionate. It makes her human instead of tragic."
"That's good, right?"
"Yeah." I kept reading, skimming through sections I'd already approved. The story of my arrival in Kentucky. The search for my father. The facial recognition analysis that had pointed to Boyd Biggs. James's arrest and confession. The car pulled from the Kentucky River. The DNA confirmation.
All of it laid out in black and white for thousands of readers to consume with their Saturday morning coffee.
Then I reached the final paragraphs, and my stomach dropped.
"What's wrong?" Jett asked, noticing my expression.
I read the last lines again, making sure I hadn't misunderstood:
Waters, who plans to return to Arizona to complete her college degree, admits the journey has been emotionally exhausting. "I came here with nothing," she says. "Just hope and my mother's rusty van." The neediness in her voice is palpable—a young woman desperate for connection, for family, for anything to fill the void left by her mother's death and her father's absence. Whether closure will give her that stability remains to be seen.
That last part hadn’t been in the version Naomi had sent me. Waves of humiliation rolled over me. Needy… desperate. Was that how everyone saw me?
My eyes traveled to Jett, who was concentrating on a report he was filling out.
Is that how he saw me?
December 28, Sunday
duty stampa tax stamp applied to bottles for certain regulatory jurisdictions
THE TOURbus pulled up to the campground entrance a few minutes early. I climbed aboard with my bag and notes, settling into the seat behind Jett.
"I can't believe this is our last tour together," he said, catching my eye in the rearview mirror as he pulled away from the campground.
