The Bourbon Thief(24)

Do not consider my death as you losing another son.

Consider it you losing everything.

I go to join my beloved Eric now, my brother and my friend. He knew what I was and who I was and loved me in spite of it all. I have missed him. It will be good to see my brother again.

Your son,

Nash

Tamara folded up the letter and slipped it back in the envelope.

One by one she pulled the papers out of the trash can, the books and the ledgers. She didn’t burn a single thing.

Instead, she went into her mother’s bedroom and took off her clothes, all of them. She opened the window and saw the river under the bottom sill. The cold air wrapped around her naked body and she felt clean again. She threw her soiled pajamas into the black night water along with the hateful pink housecoat. They floated away—good riddance. When she looked down into the water, she saw her reflection twisting and stretching. The face wasn’t her face anymore, but another girl’s face. And that girl was in the dark water with a red ribbon tied around her hair. It couldn’t be her... Tamara wasn’t wearing a red ribbon in her hair. Where had it come from?

She raised her hand to her hair. No ribbon. She looked at her fingers and saw they’d turned red. Blood. She was bleeding from a cut on her head. That was all. She must have cut herself with the glass from the lamp while fighting with Granddaddy. She laughed at herself for thinking she was someone she wasn’t. Silly girl. She closed the window and dressed in her mother’s clothes and wrapped herself in her mother’s blanket, which smelled of bourbon and cigar smoke.

She went back to Granddaddy’s office and pulled a chair to the window. In the distance through the trees she could see flickering lights—flashlights or headlights or both. Someone was alive out there. Someone would find her eventually.

But it didn’t matter anymore that someone find her. She’d found herself in her daddy’s letter. But not her daddy at all.

“I am not a Maddox,” she whispered. The ecstasy of the knowledge smoldered inside her, glowed, burned. She’d never spoken five more beautiful words in her life. She didn’t have Maddox blood in her veins, that vile blood that had raped Veritas, that had sold her and her baby. She wasn’t one of them. She wasn’t cursed. And that was why she’d lived and Granddaddy had died. The curse had struck him and spared her. Because she wasn’t a Maddox. She wasn’t a Maddox at all.

But Levi was. And yet he hadn’t been good enough for her grandfather. He’d wanted a white son, all white, and she’d been the chosen vessel for the chosen boy. A ripe teenage girl under his own roof. No wonder he had made her and Momma move in with him. No wonder.

Tamara smiled. She had an idea. Her mother had said she would let Granddaddy give a penny of Red Thread to Levi over her dead body.

Her mother hadn’t said anything about her live body.

More tired than she’d ever been in her life, Tamara closed her eyes and snuggled deep into the blanket to rest. She’d need all her strength to make it through the next few weeks. The water had stopped rising. She would survive this night. When the police came, she would tell them this story—that her grandfather had been drinking and she’d gone upstairs to sleep. Why upstairs? She’d need an answer for that. She’d gone upstairs to sleep because she wanted to sleep in her mother’s room so she’d know when Momma came home. There. They’d fought and Tamara wanted to apologize, so she waited upstairs on her mother’s bed. She’d fallen asleep and then woke up when the lights went out. She’d gone downstairs to check things out and found the house full of water and Granddaddy floating there facedown. It was too late. He’d drunk so much he’d passed out, and he’d drowned in the flood. What could she do except go back upstairs and wait to be rescued? She’d broken the glass of the liquor cabinet because she tripped in the dark. She had an answer for every question they’d ask. For now, for tonight, she was safe and she was free. And tomorrow she’d start figuring out how to shoot Granddaddy’s gun.

Although she’d had only a sip or two of Red Thread, Tamara felt drunk and happy. Happy because she was alive, yes. Happy because she wasn’t a Maddox, indeed. But happiest most of all for one very good reason.

Tamara Maddox had a plan.





8

Paris

“You were right,” McQueen said. “Maybe I don’t want to hear this story, after all.”

“Too late. The train has left the station. No stopping it until the end of the line.” Paris crossed her legs, long beautiful legs. He didn’t even want to look at them anymore. Nor her face, either. But she looked at him, stared at him. Her face was a sealed bottle, corked and capped and covered in foil. He could get nothing out of it.

“Tamara tied the red ribbon around her grandfather’s finger,” he finally said. “Smart.”

“You’re familiar with the tradition?” she asked, seeming pleased with him.

“I don’t know where it started,” he admitted. “But they said Red Thread drinkers would take the ribbon off the neck of the bottle and twist it around their fingers if they managed the manly feat of drinking an entire bottle in one night. A badge of honor.”

“A badge of dishonor,” she said, scoffing. “Drinking an entire bottle of bourbon in one night? That’s something to be proud of? Makes as much sense as keeping the panties from the prostitute you paid to lay you. Where’s the glory in that?”