The Bourbon Thief(70)
“Tamara!” He called out to her and she turned and waved at him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, all innocence.
He strode toward her, not an easy feat in soft shifting sand.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
“Nothing. Walking.”
“I came home to surprise you and saw a logging company truck driving down my road. What the hell is a logging company doing on our island?”
Tamara’s eyes flashed with surprise.
“You saw them?”
“I saw them. Now you answer me. What the hell is going on here?”
“Those trees are worth a fortune, Levi. You know that.”
“I know that. So?”
“So we can sell them for a fortune.”
“We could. We could do a lot of things. We could even sell our bodies on the streets or cut off our arms and legs and be circus freaks, but we’re not going to do it.”
“We’re going to inherit Arden, Red Thread, the whole thing. We don’t need this island.”
Levi glared at her, chin high and furious. He could have screamed or spit he was so angry.
“You sell this island to a fucking logging company over my dead body.”
Tamara pointed at the trees. “I’m selling it over my father’s dead body. He sold his soul for this island and he died here. You think I want to live here forever?”
“Maybe you don’t, but I do. Do you care about that?”
“I care about what I have to do.”
“I will stop you if it takes my last breath.” Levi turned away from her, too angry to look at her. He shook his head, kicked the sand. “Goddammit, what more do you want from life, Tamara? We have a house. We have each other. We have a whole fucking island that’s like paradise. We’re happy here. We have friends here—”
“That’s not what I’m here for.”
“What the hell are you here for, then?”
“I have a job to do, Levi.”
“There are only two people standing here and only one of the two has a job, so try another one on me.”
“I have to finish what I started the night of the flood.”
“Putting me in the loony bin? Is that the job you have to finish? You’re doing a real good job of it by the way.”
“I saved your life, Levi. You’re alive and going to be very rich because of me.”
“You did and I’m grateful. But I’m not so grateful I’m going to bend over and let you sell this island out from under me. I have never loved a place like I love this place.”
“Love it? It’s a swamp, Levi. It’s supposed to be a swamp. A man bought a little girl, married her and drained the swamp because he went nuts after she died. They kept slaves on this island. Where do you think I got the idea of cutting down the trees? It was Daddy’s idea. No trees, no Red Thread. That’s why he wanted the island from Granddaddy. Ask Bowen. Bowen’s the one who told me that.”
“He might have had the idea, but he didn’t do it.”
“Only because he killed himself. He was going to do it. He wanted to punish Granddaddy and this was the best way to do it. He wanted to make things right.”
“Make things right? Make things right? Tamara, you can’t make things right by cutting down hundreds of acres of trees.”
“If you know what kind of man Granddaddy was you would know.”
“Oh, I know what kind of man he was. The kind of man who’d fuck a girl over to get her pregnant just so he’d have a son of his own. That’s what kind of man he was. Don’t tell me I don’t know what kind of man he was. I know better than you do. Ask me if that matters? It doesn’t.”
Tamara’s eyes went huge, big as the sky.
“You know what Granddaddy did?”
“Of course I know. I’ve known a long time.”
“You knew and you didn’t tell me?”
“I know and I don’t care. Not one bit,” Levi said. Virginia Maddox had lost all his sympathy the day Tamara told him her mother had beaten her. From what Bowen had said, George Maddox hadn’t even forced her to sleep with him. She’d probably done it for the money.
“You know,” Tamara said again, her voice sounding so far away he barely heard. “And you don’t care.”
“I care about the island. I care about the trees. I care about the plan we made that you don’t seem to remember anymore because you’re so damn obsessed with getting back at your mother and your grandfather.”
“Your father,” she said. “Not my grandfather. Your father.” It was the cruelest thing she could have said to him, and she’d said it.
Tamara turned away from him and stared at the ocean.
“Tamara—look at me.”
She took a step toward the water. Levi grabbed her by the arm, yanked her back, seized with a sudden fear she’d punish him by throwing herself in the ocean.
“Tamara.”
She looked up at him. All the fight had left her eyes. All the fight and all the fire. Gone. Tamara wasn’t home anymore.
“Tamara?”
She stepped away from him, and he released her arm.
“Tamara, where are you going? We aren’t done here.”