The Bourbon Thief(76)

“The man who was holding her hostage raped her and got her pregnant. And when his wife found out the girl was having his baby, they sold her for a thousand dollars. And the man took that one thousand dollars and opened his own bourbon distillery.”

“Someone we know?” Levi asked, looking at her over Rex’s back.

“Veritas. That was her name, but they called her Vera. And Jacob Maddox, my grandfather’s grandfather, raped her and his wife sold her.”

“My father’s grandfather. Not yours. Mine.”

“Now you know why I was so happy to find out I wasn’t really a Maddox.”

“Now you know why I was so damn angry to find out I was.”

“Levi...if I tell you something, will you believe me?”

“I’ll try. All I can do is try. What is it?”

“I think she talks to me.”

“Who?”

“Vera.”

“Vera? Vera who’s probably been dead a hundred years?”

“I thought I saw her the night of the flood. And then sometimes I dream about her. The night...after we were together that first time, I dreamed about her. And she told me Daddy knew things. I woke up and went down to the office and found the card for Athens Timber. I thought she was telling me that I was supposed to sell the trees, that that’s what Daddy was going to do. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Now that I say it, I hear how crazy it sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound crazy.”

“It doesn’t?”

“It sounds...sweet. Kind of.”

“Sweet?”

“I didn’t know you had such a tender heart, Rotten. Especially not for a black girl who lived a hundred years before you were born.”

“A hundred years isn’t anything, Levi. A hundred years is yesterday. If what happened to you happened to her, a hundred years is nothing.”

“You want to destroy the trees on this island because of what they did to that little girl?”

“You can’t sell people,” Tamara said. “You can’t. And they did. And because they did, Red Thread exists. It’s funny, you know. They always said Maddoxes have bourbon in their blood. It’s not true. But this is true—we have blood in our bourbon. Her blood.” She looked at Levi and found him looking at her. “You want to keep selling her blood? That’s what we’re doing. Brewing it, barreling it, aging it, bottling it and selling it with a red ribbon tied around the neck. A red ribbon like the one she wore every day, like the one Henrietta Maddox ripped out of Vera’s hair and left to show her husband what she’d done. A red ribbon like the one he wore on his finger to spite his wife. We still have that red ribbon, you know. It’s on a bottle at Arden. I’ve seen it. She’s real.”

“I believe she was real. Was real. She’s dead now and you don’t have to take orders from someone who’s dead.”

“What would you do if that had been me?”

“What do you mean?”

“What would you do if it had been me they raped and sold? Would you still love these trees just as much? Would you still keep Red Thread open?”

“Tamara, it was a hundred—”

“It was yesterday,” she said.

“You want revenge. That’s what all this is about. Revenge for what they did to her.”

“Revenge for what they did to all of us.”

“They’re dead. The Maddoxes who did that to her are dead. How are you going to get revenge against dead people? Dig ’em up and stake ’em through the heart?”

“I asked myself that same question, and I think I know the answer. You destroy what they loved, and you love what they destroyed.”

“So we destroy Red Thread?”

“And we love each other.” She looked at him and waited, waited and prayed. If he took the side of Red Thread, there was nothing for it—she would leave him—for her daddy’s sake, for Vera’s sake and for hers.

“Fine,” Levi said. He stood by Rex’s head and adjusted the horse’s mouth bit.

“Fine? What do you mean fine?”

“‘If you could not accept the past and its burden there was no future, for without one there cannot be the other.’ Robert Penn Warren said that, and he was probably right. When you told me George Maddox was my father, I was about five minutes away from setting a match to the entire state, so how can I say you’re wrong to want to cut these trees down? But if all you say is true, if you say my family did that to her, cutting trees down isn’t enough. If we owe her for what we did to her, then we pay in full, not half. We’ll close the company. Not sell it, just close it. Shut down production. Stop selling the stuff, all the stuff. That way we both win—I get the island and you get to send every Maddox in the ground spinning in his grave like a top for all eternity. How’s that?”

“You mean it?” She couldn’t believe what he was saying.

“Of course I mean it. I don’t feel any better about making money off the blood of that girl than you do. If we win the case, we’ll have plenty of money to live on. If we lose, then fine. I have a job and we’ll wait it out until you turn twenty-one. It’s not like we’re gonna starve to death. I’ve survived being broke before. Being broke on an island in a pretty house is better than being broke and living in a stable loft, you know.”