The Bourbon Thief(55)

“What?” Tamara asked.

“Those were the best two weeks of my life.”

Tamara stared down at her white feet on the whitewashed floor of the landing.

“I was so mad at Mom for ruining it for me,” he continued. “I was going to tell her off after school that day, tell her to never come to my school again. I march home and there I see her—she’s on her hands and knees in the kitchen, scrubbing the linoleum. Whole day cleaning houses and she comes home and cleans ours. I was ashamed of myself, ashamed enough I got a rag and got down on the floor with her to clean. But I was more angry than ashamed. Those white kids had made me despise my own mother. I didn’t want to be one of them after that. My mother was worth a million of them. And you expect me to bring a child into a world that would do that to a kid? Make him hate his own mother? I’m family to Aunt Glory and Uncle Andre. They don’t care if I stick out like a sore thumb at family reunions. I’m their blood. And my own father gave me a job cleaning horse shit out of his stables. Where was my invitation to the Maddox family reunions?”

“But I saw a couple of your girlfriends. You dated white girls.”

“I fucked white girls. There’s a difference.”

“But why, if—”

“Because fuck them.”

They were the three coldest words she’d ever heard him speak. Cold and slow.

Because. Fuck. Them. Three slaps to the face.

“Is that why...you know, why you kissed me on my birthday?”

“No.” He exhaled, rubbed his forehead. She could tell he didn’t want to be having this conversation. “It wasn’t like that with you.”

“Why wasn’t it?”

“Because you were...sweet. But you’re not so sweet anymore, are you?”

A fourth slap. The hardest slap yet. She wasn’t sweet anymore. You didn’t hold your grandfather facedown in cold and nasty floodwater until he stopped fighting and come out still sweet on the other side. He took that from her, too, her grandfather did. He took her sweetness and she’d never get it back. Someday she would have to admit to herself that although she was glad he was dead, she could never be happy she’d been the one to kill him.

“I’ve spent the past year and a half thinking about how much I hate my family, how much I want to hurt them.”

“Them? They don’t exist, Tamara. The Maddoxes are all dead but for me, right?”

“I guess.” She knew of a few second and third cousins, but they weren’t part of the business, they weren’t part of the bloodline from Jacob Maddox.

“What are you going to do? Go back in time and murder them all?”

“I wish.” She said it so coldly that Levi stood up a little straighter.

“Rotten...what’s really going on here?”

“Daddy—Nash, I mean—wasn’t my father, but he was the only person in the family who loved me. And then Daddy killed himself because of Granddaddy making him marry Momma.”

“I know he did and I know that’s wrong, but they’re both gone now and there’s nothing you can do to take back what happened to Nash.” Levi put his hands on her upper arms. His voice was soothing, his touch comforting. But she wasn’t soothed, wasn’t comforted. “You can’t hurt people who are already dead.”

“No,” she said, stepping away from him. “But I can try.”

Levi didn’t say anything this time. He only shook his head.

“You can sleep in the blue room,” she finally said. “I want to sleep in this one.”

“It’s pink,” he reminded her. “You hate pink.”

“Daddy didn’t know that. He made this room for me. I’m going to use it.”

“Good to hear it.” He started for the blue room.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, and Levi stopped.

“Do what?” Levi asked, but she had a feeling he knew what she was asking.

“Me. Why did you do me?” Tamara felt heat rise to her face. She wished losing her virginity had magically turned her into a grown-up who could talk about this stuff without blushing like a kid. Not yet.

“The usual reason a man fucks a beautiful girl.”

“Is that all?”

“Finishing what we started on your sixteenth birthday. And we’re married now, right? Sort of.”

“Daddy and Momma never slept together. He said so in his suicide note.”

“Well, then, Rotten—there ya go. You’ve already beaten her.”

“Guess I have.”

“I’m going to sleep now. If you need me, you know where to find me.” Levi stepped past her into the hallway. The door to the blue bedroom was only a few steps away. “But, Tamara, you come into this room, it better be for a good reason. There better be a snake, a bear or a hillbilly with a gun coming after you. I mean it.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not going to jump you in your sleep.”

“No, you aren’t. And I’m not coming near you, either. If we’re going to make this thing work without killing each other before we get your money—”

“Our money.”

“If,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “we are going to live in this little house together for months while we wait, I’d appreciate it if you—”