My Three Aunts Decided I Was Too Handsome to Stay Single. I Had Twelve Months Before They Ran Out of Women in Kentucky

I went on the dates.

The pastor’s sister spent dinner trying to save my soul and asked if bourbon was “a sin or a business.” I said both. She didn’t laugh.

The dentist from Louisville looked at my teeth for most of the meal.

Darlene brought her mother.

Number seven was a financial advisor who spent an hour explaining why I should move the distillery’s retirement plan to her firm and restructure my life insurance. I learned a lot about whole life policies. I did not learn her middle name.

Number eleven was lovely. A widowed history teacher who knew more about Kentucky bourbon history than I did. We talked for four hours. At the end of the night, she shook my hand and said, “You’re a wonderful man, Wyatt. You’re also clearly not looking for anybody. Tell your aunts I said hello.”

She was right.

By August, I’d been on fourteen dates. My aunts were getting desperate. They’d started recruiting outside the state.

Then, in September, a woman walked into the distillery tasting room in muddy boots and a rain jacket.

She was about 45. Black hair in a braid, no makeup, a notebook in her hand. She ignored the bourbon samples completely and asked to see the rickhouse.

“I’m with the state insurance department,” she said. “Your barrel warehouse insurance is up for review. I’m here to inspect the fire suppression system.”

She spent two hours climbing around my rickhouse in the heat, checking sprinkler heads and taking pictures.

She was funny. She was blunt. She told me my fire exits were “a disgrace to your great-grandfather.”

She was not on the list.

When she left, I realized I’d forgotten to ask her name.