The Bourbon Thief(56)

“What?”

“Just leave me alone, okay?”

Levi looked at her like he wanted to say something else. She waited.

But instead, he went into the blue bedroom and shut the door. Funny, she’d known Levi since she was thirteen and came to live at her grandfather’s house. He’d called her young and dumb and crazy and spoiled and rotten. He’d called her a twerp, a brat, a hellion, a wildcat. He’d told her to behave herself, to straighten up, to grow up, to act her age, to run along and let him work. And none of it had hurt. Not a word of it had hurt because he hadn’t meant a word of it. But telling her to leave him alone? He’d meant it. And it hurt.

Wounded, Tamara slunk into her little pink room. Her lips were a tight line of tension and misery as she pulled down the covers on the bed and settled into the strawberry sheets. The rain still fell soft on the rooftop. In the dark night with the stars hidden behind the oak trees, the rain looked like Christmas tinsel waving outside the window. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep, but worn-out from the drive and the sex and the fight that had nearly finished her marriage before it started, Tamara fell asleep not long after her head hit the strawberry pillow. She slept, and as she slept, she dreamed.

*

She is in a house she’s never been in before. It smells of cooking smoke and chimney soot. She’s standing in a kitchen of sorts, but it’s not like any kitchen she’s ever seen except in the pages of history books. There’s no faucet, but there is a pump handle. There’s no refrigerator, no toaster, no big yellow-and-chrome KitchenAid mixer on the countertop. The floor is wood and covered in a woven rug. A witch’s broom hangs on a hook by the pantry. It’s hot in the kitchen, hot in the house, hot as hell with no breeze blowing through the open door.

There is a stove in the kitchen, an iron woodstove. A girl stands at the stove. A girl Tamara’s age. No, she’s a little younger. Fourteen? Fifteen. She has smooth dark skin and large dark eyes framed by long eyelashes, delicate as black lace. She wears a gray wool dress and a red ribbon in her hair. The hardwood floor makes not a single sound as Tamara walks from the doorway to the stove, where the girl stands and stirs a pot of something on the stove top. It’s like she’s not here. Not in her body, anyway. But something of her must be here because the girl with the red ribbon in her hair looks up at her. Tamara sees the girl has tears on her face and the tears fall in the steaming copper pot as the girl stirs and stirs with a heavy wooden spoon.

“What are you making?” Tamara asks her.

“Saltwater tea.”

“You make it with tears?” Tamara asks.

“I make everything with tears.”

“Does it taste good?”

“No. It tastes bitter. All I taste is bitter.”

“Can I help you?”

“How can you help me?” The girl with the red ribbon speaks softly as if afraid to be heard.

“Do you need my tears, too?”

“What good are your tears to me? I have enough of my own.”

“What can I do? Let me help. I’ve made this tea before, too.”

“Who drank your tea?”

“My grandfather. I made him drink a river full of it.”

“I don’t want to make this tea anymore. But they want it.”

“Who wants it?”

“Jacob and his wife want it. He loves to drink my saltwater tea.”

“I’ll serve it to him this time,” Tamara tells the girl. “If you’ll let me.”

“A whole river full of it?” The girl is so young, too young, and pretty, so pretty. Yet Tamara sees her stomach is rounded as if she, too, has been forced to swallow a river of salt water.

“A whole river.”

“I don’t want to make saltwater tea anymore,” the girl with the black lace eyes says.

“Neither do I. But I don’t know how to stop making it.”

“Your daddy knows,” the girl says, glancing up to meet Tamara’s eyes.

“Daddy’s dead. Is that how you stop making the tea? By dying?”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

Then the girl dips a ladle in the copper pot and Tamara sees the tea is a rusty red.

The color of old blood.

The color of old bourbon.

*

Tamara woke with a start, tangled up in her sweat-stained strawberry sheets. She got out of bed and walked downstairs in the dark, her hand clinging to the railing, her feet finding her footing, since her eyes were of no use.

Your daddy knows. Why don’t you ask him?

She couldn’t ask her father anything anymore, but still, she had to look for answers. This house was where her father kept all his secrets. The sand...she remembered the sand in his shoes and the wink he gave her. The room upstairs he’d prepared for her because he’d planned to bring her here to live. If this was where he wanted them to live, then this was where he’d keep his secrets.

The rain had stopped at last and her eyes quickly adjusted to the light of the half-moon that filled the office.

On top of the filing cabinet was another cabinet, a liquor cabinet. Anyone else would store his important papers in one of those filing cabinet drawers. But Nash was Granddaddy’s son by nature and nurture. She opened the door of the liquor cabinet and pulled out bottle after bottle of bourbon, of whiskey, of scotch and soda. There in the back behind all the bottles she found a business card. One little business card for one big business.