The Bourbon Thief(54)

“Yes, I think she might be,” Tamara said.

Levi exhaled and rested his forehead against the door frame. With the lantern between them at their feet, Levi looked like a ghost of some sort, and she imagined she did, too. Their shadows stretched upward to the ceiling. She’d never been this tall, tall as a man, tall as a monster.

“After your mother fired me, I had this fantasy,” Levi said. “I’d come back to Arden at night and knock on your window.”

“You knew my window?”

“Last window on the side of the house nearest the road. Yeah, I knew your window.”

Tamara started to open her mouth, to say something to that, but decided better of it.

“I’d knock on your window in the middle of the night and get you to let me in. And then, in your own bed, I’d fuck your brains out. I’d do it the next night, too. And the night after. And every night until I knocked you up. And then you know what I dreamed of doing?”

“No,” she said, her voice hardly more than a whisper.

“I’d leave you. I’d leave you pregnant and alone to face your mother and you’d have to tell her you were pregnant and it was mine, all mine.”

“That was your dream?” She’d had dreams like that, too. Not the part at the end. The part at the end was every girl’s nightmare.

He nodded. “My fantasy. My ugly awful fantasy to get back at your mother for what she said to me and what she did. I’m not telling you this because I’m proud of it. I’m not. Uncle Andre would kill me with his own hands if I did that to you or any other girl. And here you are, making me into that person I don’t want to be. Don’t do that to me. Do anything but that to me, Tamara.”

“That’s not what I want to do, I swear,” she said. “I had this idea, the same idea as yours. Momma hates you worse than anybody in the world. Me having your baby would make her madder than anything. It would kill her.”

“And you want to kill her.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Go to bed, Tamara. Get some sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

“It? What are we talking about in the morning?”

“What we’re going to do, I guess.”

“Are you going to divorce me?”

“Eventually, I imagine. That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but that was before...you know.”

“I know.”

“Do you hate me?”

“No, I don’t hate you. I’m not happy with you, but it’s as much my fault as yours. More my fault. I’m an adult. You aren’t. I should have taken care of this and not left it to you. This is on me.”

She knew what he wanted to say and it hurt. She knew he meant “You’re a stupid kid and I shouldn’t have trusted you.” And maybe he was right. Maybe he shouldn’t trust her.

But she wasn’t a stupid kid.

“I’ll go to bed,” she said. “If we have to... If we have to go to a doctor to take care of it, we can do that.”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah, there’s always that. It was only one time. We’ll see what happens.”

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll see.” She looked up at him. “Good night.”

“Right. Good night.”

Levi started to shut the door and then stopped.

“I know you hate her,” he said. “I hate her, too. But don’t ruin my life trying to ruin hers, okay?”

Tamara swallowed hard and what she swallowed tasted like guilt.

“I won’t. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. It isn’t. I shouldn’t have lost it. It’s my job to be in charge of this stuff, you know. Every girl on earth is on the pill. Except the one I happened to marry.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

He sighed—heavily. One of the old exasperated Levi sighs she’d always adored.

“Do you really think you could handle having my baby?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know he could be dark, right? I’m light, but that doesn’t mean my children will be. It happens sometimes. There are black women so light they can pass for white and they marry rich white men and every time they have a baby it’s a waiting game. Will the baby be light? Dark? You never know.”

“Is that why you don’t want to have children with me?”

“The list of reasons why I don’t want to have children with you could wallpaper this house. But if you want to know the number one reason, it’s because I don’t want to have children. Period. Not in this lifetime, anyway. I can’t trust this world with my children. I know what it does to kids like me.”

“But you’re light enough to look white.”

“But I’m not white.” He said it the same way she’d said, I’m not a Maddox. “I know you think you’re paying me a compliment by saying that, but you aren’t.”

“I didn’t think I was paying you a compliment. Didn’t think I was paying you an insult, either.”

Levi exhaled heavily.

“When I was fourteen, Mom moved us from Frankfort to Lawrenceburg. I started a brand-new high school. New kid at school. New start. Mostly white school. And nobody there knows anything about me. I take tests and get put into the top classes. Girls flirt with me. Guys want me at their lunch table. Coaches tell me to try out for the football team, since I’m half a foot taller than every other boy in my class. I was a new man, reborn. That school handed me the keys to the kingdom. Two weeks after school starts, Mom comes for a parent-teacher meeting. That was the end of Levi Shelby’s Renaissance. You know what I hate most of all?”