Sassy Blonde - Stacey Kennedy Page 0,53
anything. She hopped out of bed to grab her sketch book, which was about the only thing she could do with a broken finger, when her grandfather’s letter fell out onto the floor. She froze midstep and then laughed softly at herself. Luna had her thinking Pops was following her all over the place. She grabbed the letter from the floor and then returned to her bed.
Beams of sunlight shone on her duvet as she took out her sketch pad and pencil. She opened the letter and read the quote again: The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.
She never really understood that quote before, but for some reason it resonated now. Maybe because of what Clara said the other night about the broken mug. “He told you no one was like you. That most people would have thrown it out. But you looked at something broken and made it beautiful. That was your gift to the world.”
Every day since the brewery opened, Maisie had been trying to fit into Clara’s box and do things her sister’s way. She’d failed miserably. Over and over again. With Luna’s advice humming in her ear, Maisie wondered what would happen if she did something her way, in her style. And that, instead of setting her aim so low that her only wish was to survive the festivals and fulfill Pops’s final wish, maybe she needed to set the bar higher. To do things in a way that was true to herself. To figure out what the brewery needed from her. And a little bit of beauty never hurt anyone.
An idea suddenly came to her, as if Pops were whispering the words into her ear. She grabbed her cell and texted her sisters and Penelope: Family meeting in 20. The dings of her phone indicated they’d responded. Maisie didn’t let the notifications distract her, she began awkwardly sketching with the splint in the way, her hand flowing fast over the page, her imagination coming to life before her eyes.
When she finally stopped, she looked down at the shadowed drawing. It definitely wasn’t a masterpiece, but it showed her intent. “Yeah, yeah, Pops. I get it now,” she said to herself. This whole time, she’d been following Clara and Amelia. But she needed to lead. With a smile, she hopped up and hurried to get dressed and threw her hair up in a messy bun.
Right on time, she trotted down the staircase, finding her sisters and Penelope sitting at the kitchen table, a box of Danishes in the center. Maisie ignored those and slapped the drawing down on the page.
Clara studied the piece of paper. “Not your usual beauty. What exactly am I looking at here?”
“Our barn.”
“Okay,” Clara said slowly then looked to Maisie with lifted brows. “You want to decorate it?”
The drawing depicted her favorite spot, where she’d been with Hayes. Romantic and whimsical, she’d drawn that same décor throughout the entire brewery. “We needed that last festival to make us stand out. We all know that. It’s going to hurt us and hurt big time. We needed that final push for our social media. That didn’t happen. But who’s to say we can’t bring the party here?”
Amelia took the piece of paper. “To the barn?”
“Yes,” Maisie said. “We put on a festival of our own, but make it even better. Our type of party, done our way.”
Clara gazed at her with intense focus. “Go on.”
Maisie drew in a big, deep breath, her belly filled with butterflies, and sat next to Penelope. “Okay, we share the party all over social media. We’ve got the beer, and this is our chance. We take what we’ve got that’s not already promised to the restaurants and bars here, and we serve it until it runs out. We all know this is our only shot. We either bring out the big guns or go home. We can bring in a band, set up a dance floor outside the barn or something.”
Penelope asked, “But where would you get a band on such short notice?”
Maisie didn’t even hesitate, already thinking all this through. “First, let’s aim to have the party in a week. That’ll give us the time we need to get the event out there. Second, I thought we could approach Megan.” She was Nash’s wife and owned the best bar in town, Kinky Spurs. They had an