The Bourbon Thief(48)
Levi started up the wooden staircase off the front room, carrying the lantern held out before him. Two bedrooms up there built into the roof, one to the left of the stairs, one to the right, vaulted ceilings, wood floors. Nice place. One and a half stories was enough space for two people. And both rooms were furnished, a relief, since it meant he and Tamara wouldn’t have to sleep together.
His relief felt strangely like disappointment.
The larger bedroom had a full-size brass bed and a nautical navy blue rug. It was the smaller room that got Levi’s attention. The twin bed had a brass frame like the one in the first bedroom, but the rug was pink. Pink? Didn’t seem like a color a man would choose if a man were doing the choosing. He took a closer look around and found books on the shelves—Daddy Long Legs, The Secret Garden, Black Beauty, Anne of Green Gables. Books for children. Books for girls. A pink cowboy hat hung from the closet doorknob. No, a cowgirl hat. And a silver horse statue sat on the windowsill, forelegs high in the air and wild mane flying. When Levi turned to leave, he saw wooden blocks above the door frame, letters painted on them.
T-A-M-A-R-A
Well, fuck it all and then some.
Tamara’s father had tenderly fashioned a room for her, picking out books for her and rugs and ponies. He’d planned on bringing her here to live with him but had killed himself instead. Had hearing the news that Tamara wasn’t his biological daughter killed his love for her? No. He’d read the suicide note. Nash Maddox loved his daughter to the very end. So why had he killed himself instead of bringing her here to live? Levi knew Nash Maddox didn’t desire women. He didn’t understand it, being a lover of women himself, but he never judged any man or woman for their bedtime predilections. As his uncle Andre told him at age sixteen, “As long as nobody gets hurt and it doesn’t spook the horses, do what you want and keep the details to yourself.” Good advice that he’d always held on to. Didn’t sound like Nash Maddox had spooked the horses. Tamara said he’d been a good father and surely she would have been happier with him here than with her mother. The dead were good secret keepers and Levi made his peace with never knowing the answer. Easy for him to do. Harder for Tamara.
Levi left the room as it was. It would hurt Tamara to see it, but love hurt and he wasn’t about to deny her a last sign of her father’s love.
But he wasn’t her father. They weren’t blood at all, Nash Maddox and Tamara. But Nash was Levi’s blood. For the first time since learning George Maddox was his father did it occur to Levi that it meant Nash Maddox had been his brother. Now passive acceptance of Nash’s life and his death turned to active anger. His own brother, threatened and bullied into marrying Tamara’s mother. His own brother, plotting to rescue Tamara from the influence of her mother and grandfather. His own brother, left with no recourse but suicide when that plan failed for whatever reason. Levi allowed himself one private moment to grieve for his half brother. Any man who could love a child who wasn’t his own blood as his own was a good man, and Levi wished he’d known his brother, wished he could have saved him. But instead, he’d save Tamara. For the sake of his brother he’d take good care of his wife. He’d protect her from her mother the way Nash wanted. He’d even protect her from himself.
Levi took a steadying breath, letting go of his anger, at least for now, at least for Tamara’s sake. Back downstairs he inspected one last room. An office of sorts, small with a wooden desk by the window and nothing much else in it but an armchair and a chest-high filing cabinet. He opened one drawer full of invoices and index cards and a liquor cabinet. Nowhere did Levi see blood or bullet holes or anything Tamara shouldn’t see. There was a faded patch on the wood floor beneath the desk where a rug used to be. Was this where Nash had shot himself? Had the blood stained the rug? One pane of glass in the window looked cleaner, newer and brighter than the rest. That must have been where the bullet had gone through. Thankfully someone had replaced the pane. They’d removed the rug, fixed the window and cleaned up. Someone had prepared the house for them. But who?
Levi opened the desk drawers looking for spare keys. The top drawer stuck on the track, and when he yanked it back, a piece of paper was dislodged from where it had been trapped. Levi turned to the window and examined it in the light.
“Nash, you devil,” Levi said.
It was a Polaroid picture of two men sitting on a yellow beach chair in the sunshine. One was a white man who Levi instantly recognized as Nash Maddox. The man sitting next to him was black and about Levi’s age. Nash looked the way he’d looked when Levi had last seen him a few years back. So he guessed this picture was taken not that long before Nash killed himself. Nash looked good in the picture, with his black hair slicked back and a big grin on his face. The black man in the picture was movie star handsome. His eyes had an upward slant to them that put one in mind of pictures of the old pharaohs. He looked lean and tall and strong and had his arm casually draped over Nash’s shoulder. Both men were naked in the picture but for their smiles.
So lo and behold, here was the reason Nash came down to Bride Island every chance he got. Levi could think of no other explanation for them to be together in such a pose in the picture. A black man in South Carolina did not sit around naked on a beach next to a white man without a compelling reason. If they were sleeping together, that was a very compelling reason.
Nash...his brother. His dead brother.