The Bourbon Thief(13)

There were three people in the universe and all its dimensions whom Tamara Maddox was afraid of. God and the Devil were two of the three and even God and the Devil ranked a distant second behind the one woman who could scare even Tamara Belle Maddox—she who got what she wanted when she wanted it because she wanted it—and that was the woman standing in the stables staring black ice at both her and Levi.

“Nothing, Momma.”





5

“Nothing? That was not nothing.”

Her mother’s voice hit her like a bucket of cold water. Levi let her go and turned and stood in front of her, giving her a chance to straighten her clothes.

“We were just kissing, Momma,” Tamara said, moving to Levi’s side. “It’s my birthday.”

“Mrs. Maddox, I swear it was a quick little birthday kiss,” Levi said. “Nothing more.”

“You are dead, boy,” her mother said. Her mother had never been fond of Granddaddy’s stable hand, but right now she wished him dead and buried, and she looked perfectly willing to do it herself.

Levi’s chin rose and his jaw set.

“What did you call me?” he asked.

“You heard me, boy. And if you ever lay a hand on my daughter again, what I call you will be the least of your problems.” She grabbed Tamara by the arm and dragged her from the stables.

“Momma, stop—”

“Not a word,” she said. “You wait until I tell your granddaddy about this.”

“What’s he gonna care?”

Her mother had hellfire in her eyes and her face was set in granite. She looked as scared as she did angry.

“He’ll care.”

Her mother marched her from the stables, up the path and through the back door of the big house. She was so angry her hair vibrated like jelly, and considering the amount of White Rain she put in that blond aura every morning, any movement was a bad sign.

Well, this was perfect, wasn’t it? Couldn’t Tamara have one single day without her mother blowing up at her about something pointless? Yesterday she’d blown her top over Tamara saying “shit” at the dinner table. And Friday when she’d come home from her school in Louisville for Christmas break, Tamara had gotten screamed at for hauling nothing but dirty clothes back with her. Why her mother cared, Tamara didn’t know. Not like Momma did any of the laundry. Cora, the housekeeper, did all the work. Her mother didn’t work. Her mother never worked. Her mother might not know how to spell work if they were playing Scrabble and the only tiles she had were a W, an O, an R and a K. She’d probably say crow started with a K.

Inside the kitchen Tamara kicked off her muddy boots while her mother watched her. Tamara did her level best to ignore her, a feat she’d nearly perfected in the past three years since Daddy died and “angry” had become her mother’s default expression, her go-to response to anything. In the beginning Tamara had taken each little slight, each cold reply, each insult, like a brick to her face. But after a few months Tamara had put those bricks to good use and built a wall—high, deep and wide—between her and her mother until she had a fortress of her own and her mother seemed like nothing so much as a villager throwing pebbles at the queen’s castle. Of course, even when her father had been alive, her mother hadn’t been much of a treat to live with. She and Daddy had whispered jokes to each other about her mother when she got in those moods. Daddy liked to say the Devil owed him a debt and Momma was how Satan paid him back.

Once Tamara’s boots were off, her mother grabbed her by the arm and dragged her down the hallway. Arden was a massive home, a hundred-year-old Georgian-revival brick box. Every room a different color like the White House. Following her mother, Tamara passed her pink princess bedroom and the blue billiard room and the green dining room all the way to the red room on the right—her granddaddy’s study. Upstairs her granddaddy had his office and for the life of her she couldn’t figure out the difference between an office and a study except one had a desk and the other one didn’t.

Inside his study her grandfather sat on a red-and-gold armchair, holding a tumbler of bourbon—probably a bourbon sour from the looks of it—in one hand and a newspaper in the other.

“I need to discuss something with you,” her mother said.

“You always do, Virginia,” Granddaddy said, turning a page in the newspaper without looking up.

“Granddaddy, Momma—” Tamara began, but her mother cut her off.

“You get to your room right now, and don’t you dare step foot out of it until I tell you.”

“What’s going on here?” Now Granddaddy was paying attention. He laid the newspaper on his lap in a neat heap of pages. In the overcast afternoon light he didn’t look much more than fifty years old, although he was well over sixty. He had a full head of hair and a face that reminded people of Lee Majors. Women called him the Six-Million-Dollar Man behind his back because they said that was probably how much money he kept in his wallet. Even sitting in his chair he looked big and strong and in control—the opposite of her twig-thin angry little mother.

“I caught your stable boy kissing my daughter,” her mother said.

“Levi? Kissing Tamara?”

“I asked him to, since it’s my birthday,” Tamara said quickly. “That’s all. Nothing else happened.”