The Bourbon Thief(94)

“I’ll take you to a doctor tomorrow. I know one.”

“No,” Tamara said.

“He’s your brother. You can’t have his baby.”

“I’m having it.” Tamara made the decision as she said the words.

“Surely he wouldn’t want you to.”

“He’s gone,” Tamara said. “He left me. It’s not his decision.”

“He’s your brother,” her mother said again. “You have the same blood. It’s not natural for you to have his child. It’s against everything. It’s against God’s will.”

“If God wants the baby back, God can take it back. I don’t care if it’s a sin. I want it.” She did want it, this child. Vera had been forced to have a child she didn’t want. Tamara would not lay down the cross Vera had had no choice but to carry.

“This sin is mine,” her mother said. “This is on me. You can’t blame yourself. Neither of you—not you or Levi—can blame yourself for this.” She grabbed Tamara by her upper arms and looked her in the eyes. “Do you hear me? I did this. You had no idea who you were and he had no idea who you were. And I knew. I knew who you both were and I never told you because I didn’t want you to hate me. And you loved your daddy so much. I couldn’t take him away from you by telling you the truth. He didn’t want me to tell you. I didn’t want to, either. And now we’re paying for how selfish we were. We’re both paying.”

Tamara slowly came to her feet. She put her hand on her mother’s head, soft, like a benediction.

“It’s not your fault,” Tamara said.

Her mother looked up, her face stricken as a new widow’s.

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” Tamara said. She’d go back to Bride Island and back to their house. And she’d wait there until Levi could look at her again, and if he couldn’t, it didn’t matter. She would see him in their child’s face every day.

“This is your home.”

“This wasn’t ever my home.”

Tamara walked out of the room and into the gloom of the hallway and toward the front doors so grand and silent. And there was her suitcase sitting by the door, where she’d left it. Except she’d closed it up and now it sat open on the floor.

Kneeling, Tamara dug through her clothes, calmly at first and then frantically searching and searching for something she knew wasn’t there anymore.

“Baby?”

“It’s gone,” Tamara said.

“What’s gone?”

“My gun. Granddaddy’s gun.”

“Levi took it?”

Slowly Tamara nodded. So Granddaddy was right, after all. Perfection was for heaven, and when you tried to bring perfection to earth, you paid a heavy price. A perfect face withered with age. A perfect love died from neglect. Bourbon was a perfect spirit, which was why the angels took so much of it while it aged. She and Levi had been perfectly happy there for a while. No wonder the debt collector had come knocking on their door.

And this was the price Tamara had to pay. She would never see Levi in this life again.

She rose from the floor.

“I have to go,” Tamara said, turning to her mother. She kissed her on the cheek. Her skin was smooth and cool and smelled of roses.

“Don’t.” Her mother grabbed her by the arms. “Don’t leave me. I’m sick, Tamara. My doctors gave me less than a year. At least you can stay with me until I’m gone. I can see the baby. And you and I, we can make it better between us. We can find a way.”

Tamara almost laughed at her. She did laugh at her. Did she laugh the way Nash laughed when her mother told him the baby was Daniel Headley’s? Now her mother was dying? She appreciated the lie. She took it as a sign her mother loved her enough to try anything to get her to stay. But Tamara couldn’t stay, not in this house. In this house she was a Maddox and her child would be a Maddox. She’d go back to Bride Island, where she’d been a Shelby and her child would be a Shelby.

“There is no way.” Tamara shook her head. “Goodbye, Momma. You can live in the house.”

“I’ll die in this house.”

“You wouldn’t be the first.”





32

Tamara drove to Red Thread in her baby blue Triumph. On her way to the warehouse, Tamara stopped at the groundskeeper’s shed, where all the tools were stored. A fire ax hung on the wall and she took it down. It was exactly what she needed.

She found a book of old matches in the shed, too. She shoved them down into her pocket and that was all she needed. Nothing else. Nothing more. Time to finish what she’d started.

When she arrived at the warehouse, she was glad to see the parking lot all empty and abandoned. They always shut Red Thread down in August. The heat was too much for anyone or anything but the bourbon.

With a shaking hand Tamara unlocked the warehouse door and stepped across the threshold. The scent of the bourbon hit her hard, cold bread baking, pungent, almost rotten and yet sweet. It made her head light and her eyes water. She shut the door behind her but didn’t lock it. There was no way to lock it from the inside.

Tamara needed a plan of attack. She’d need a whole army to bust all the barrels in the warehouse. Everywhere she looked were row after row of giant fifty-three-gallon oak barrels resting on wooden ricks. The task seemed Herculean now that she faced it. The ax seemed woefully inadequate. She should have brought a machine gun.