Free Smoke River by Krista Foss

and disappointment, fills him with parental dread.
    Today he awoke with a thirst – a thirst for Scotch that couldn’t be exorcised by deep breathing or by shoving handfuls of smoked almonds into his mouth. He wants a drink. And he wants to be able to purchase a very nice single malt without being seen by a neighbour or friend who will force bonhomie with a wink and a nudge at his brown bag.
Betcha been needin’ a lot of that lately
.
    Thirty minutes earlier he hiked himself up on the kitchen counter and, balancing on his knees, reached into the very top cupboard, where Ella kept herbed vinegar, Thai fish sauce, pickled mango – a variety of gifts and impulse purchases exiled for being frighteningly exotic, a little too outside their palates. This was where he hid a bottle of twelve-year-old Scotch, a showy thank-you from a grateful client. It was the one place that had eluded Las and his ne’er-do-well friends, who consistently ransacked the house’s other booze supplies. He ran his fingers along the glass shapes on the shelf, searching for the squatter, rounder prize, and managing to ignore that his knees were wet from a spill left on the counter – Las’s handiwork, no doubt.
    Mitch felt keenly then how different he is from his son, whose limbs are long and flexible. It took an unaccustomed thrust of his shoulder to get his short arm to extend upward to the cool neck of his quarry. When he gripped the bottle, there was a sudden, jabbing pain. In reflex, Mitch yanked back his arm. The bottle of Scotch flew downwards and bounced off the counter to the tile floor. If there’s a sound that can break a man’s heart, it is the simultaneous
thunk
and
crack
of an unopened bottle of pricy Scotch hitting unforgiving slate. His centre of gravity shifted, the spill on the counter added glide, and seconds later, Mitch bounced off the counter too, following the bottle with a bruising thud of his own.
    The sight of the Scotch’s amber puddle roused him like an electric shock. He uncrumpled himself, stood up, grabbed a roasting pan from the oven drawer, scooped up the leaking bottle, and placed it in the pan, where it opened like a boiled clam, releasing a gush of peaty liquid. Tipping the roasting pan as if salvaging turkey juice for gravy, he poured the liquid through a fine-mesh strainer into a tumbler. He swirled it with anticipation, took a long, loving sniff, and brought it to his lips. He would have drunk it too, were it not for the thought that a little shard could make its way past his tongue, begin a hidden insurrection in his pulpy depths, a rent in his throat or stomach, that would widen, infect, ultimately fell him in the prime of his life. And what kind of legacy was that to leave for his wife, his kids?
    Already one investor was making noises about the development acquiring the tarnish of a troubled project. To compound matters, the representative of a numbered company approached his lawyer two days earlier with an offer to buy Jarvis Ridge at just below the original price, reasoning that the barricade had greatly devalued the property. Mitch dismissed the idea without hesitation; he was certain that the law and his good name would prevail. And there was not just a fat profit to be made but enough to ensure that a future community centre would be named in his honour. There had been so many other calls, but he never pressed for details.
    No, he wasn’t going to make it easy for everyone with a premature death caused by a reckless chug of compromised liquid. Mitch emptied the glass into the sink, tidied the kitchen, and, realizing he was still thirsty as hell, drove to the store to get a virgin bottle before he gave up on the whole enterprise.
    He gets out of the car, turns his head in a 180-degree survey, peers through the display windows as he walks towards the entrance. Not seeing anybody he recognizes, inside or out, he lets his chest deflate and walks into the liquor store.

    When Elijah Barton spies the