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“Oh, don’t even try that baby-girl routine on me,” her mother said, shaking her head so hard her dangling gold-and-diamond earrings clinked like tiny bells. “You won’t talk me out of this. You don’t even know what you’re getting into with Levi. So decide and decide right now. You got three seconds to tell me—Kermit or Levi. One...”
“But Daddy gave me Kermit.”
“Your daddy gave himself a bullet in the brain, so your daddy don’t get a say in this. Two...”
“Momma, no. Please don’t make me.”
“Kermit or Levi. Tell me now.”
“You,” Tamara said. “You go take Granddaddy’s revolver and you put yourself down, and me and Kermit and Levi will ride off into the sunset, you nasty old bitch.”
Her mother slapped her. Hard. So hard Tamara gasped and nearly fell on her side.
“Momma...” Tamara choked out a sob. She pressed her hand to her cheek and felt the heat of pain and shame.
“One of these days, Tamara, I swear...you’re going to get what you want and it’ll be the last thing you want.”
Her mother turned and left, slamming the door behind her hard enough the pictures rattled in the frames. Tamara panted on the bed, her cheek stinging, her whole body burning with rage. And where was her mother going?
“Kermit...”
Tamara ripped her bedroom door open and tore down the hall after her mother. She knew her mother was going to shoot her horse. She knew it. The carpet scalded her naked feet as she raced toward the front door. It was too late; her mother was already out of the house. But she wasn’t heading to the stables, but to her Cadillac parked in the U-bend of the driveway. The car door slammed. The headlights flickered on and Tamara watched as the car—seemingly driverless behind the steamed-up windows—wended its way toward the main road.
Kermit wasn’t who Momma was after. Levi. Momma was going after Levi. What would she do? Go to the police and report him for molesting Tamara? Go to his home and fire him to his face? What was happening? Where was she going?
“Momma...come back,” Tamara whispered under her breath. If Tamara apologized, she could talk her mother out of it. If she swore to be good, if she swore she’d never go out to the stables again alone with Levi there...
“You’re letting the heat out, baby girl.”
Tamara turned around and saw her grandfather standing in the doorway of his study looking at her.
“Momma left. Do you know where she went?”
“I asked her to give us some time alone to talk. I think you two have had enough of each other for the day.”
“She said I had to pick between Levi keeping his job and Kermit. She said she’d shoot my horse. She can’t do that, can she?”
“You try to stop her.”
“She can’t fire Levi. Not for kissing me. Kissing isn’t a crime.” Burning tears, hot as steaming tea, ran down her face.
He walked over to her, so big and so strong, and wrapped her in his arms, his warm Granddaddy arms. He held her as she cried against his chest, not holding back, letting the tears flow and flow. Maybe her tears could touch his heart. Maybe her despair would convince him of just how evil her mother was acting. If her grandfather put his foot down with her mother, he could save Kermit and Levi. If... On and on she cried, on and on until she was half-sick from it and coughed.
“Enough of that now. Enough.” He stroked her back and her hair.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You go and take a long hot bath and put on your nightgown. I’ll bring you something to help you calm down and we can talk this out.” He put his fingertips under her chin and lifted her face.
“What’s gonna help me calm down? A hammer to my head?”
“I’ll find us something real good. No hammers.” He winked. “Go on now. I’ll come to your room when you’re done. You and I need to have a long talk.”
“About what?”
“Your mother and I made a decision about you today. We both decided it was high time you started earning some of what you’ve been given. Your mother’s idea, not mine. But if she says I gotta, I gotta. You know how your mother is.”
“What am I supposed to earn?” Tamara asked. She was only sixteen. Not like she could get a job or anything. What did they want from her?
“It’s high time you earn your place in this family. Your mother thinks you’re getting a bit too big for your britches. She told me to take you down a peg or two.”
“I’m down all the pegs I can go down.”
“Now, you and I both know that’s not true. Lot of girls would kill to wear your boots, Tamara. You’re a lucky girl and you take a lot of what we give you for granted. Your mother wants you to step up a little, start doing more around this house, doing more in this family, doing more for me.”
“I’ll do whatever she wants, I promise. Long as she doesn’t fire Levi or kill Kermit.”
He cupped her face in his big warm hand.
“That’s my girl.”
6 (#ulink_f720a950-0707-59fc-882f-522d42bf5dae)
Bonnie Tyler’s voice crooned on the radio and Tamara sang along. “It’s a Heartache” was her new favorite song. She was long overdue for one, having worn out her 45 of “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac weeks ago. Tamara sang along softly as she dried off with a plush pink towel. Granddaddy was a smart man. Taking a long hot bath had definitely made her feel better. When Momma came back, Tamara would tell her how sorry she was. Then she’d offer to be grounded from riding Kermit for as long as her mother said. That should take care of that. Kermit could stay and Levi could stay. Tamara would avoid the stables for a month, two months, six months...whatever term her mother deemed sufficient. It would all blow over once Tamara took all the blame.
She heard the door to her bedroom open and shut and she reached out her hand fast as she could to lock the bathroom door. She didn’t even have any clothes on yet.
“You finished, baby?” Granddaddy called out.
“Not yet.”
Tamara pulled on her panties and her nightshirt. The shirt didn’t go two inches past her bottom, so she had to put on the stupid ugly old-lady housecoat she’d gotten for Christmas last year that her mother insisted she wear over her nightclothes. Tamara usually ignored that order. The thing was ugly as sin and it would be a sin to wear it. With a mandarin collar that buttoned at the throat and a hem that landed all the way down around her ankles, it looked like a nun’s habit in pink. But it was either this or go traipsing around the room in her underwear in front of her grandfather. Neither one of them wanted that.
She quickly braided her wet hair and with towel in hand emerged into her bedroom. Granddaddy sat on the window seat with a bottle in front of him and two glasses.
“Is Momma back yet?” Tamara asked as she walked over to the window. The soft rain had turned to a hard rain. It had rained all week and Tamara wasn’t sure if she’d ever see the sun again.
“She’s not coming home tonight.”
“What? Why not?”
Was her mother that angry with her? That wasn’t a good sign.
“She knows you and I need to have a long talk.” Granddaddy uncapped the bottle of Red Thread he’d brought in with him. “She’s going to stay at the little inn in town. Just you and me tonight.”
“Are we safe here? The news said the river’s overflowing.”
He shook his head as he poured a finger of bourbon into one glass and two fingers of bourbon into the other. He set the two fingers in front of her.
“Don’t you worry about that. This house has stood for over a hundred years with the river right behind us. We’ll make it another hundred.”
“If you say so,” she said, not sure she trusted his judgment as implicitly as he did. Granddaddy was the richest man in the state and everyone knew it. People bent to his will all day long—she’d seen it with her own eyes. He’d get pulled over for speeding and the cop would look at his license, laugh and let him off with a warning. Restaurant owners would bring him drinks on the house. One hotel he stayed at in Louisville assigned him his own personal concierge to fetch and carry for him. People were one thing, but something told her the river wouldn’t bend to his will quite so readily. The river had been here before Granddaddy and it would be here after.
“You’ve had quite a day, haven’t you, little lady?” He took up twice as much room as she did on the window seat.
“Happy Birthday to me, right?”
“Want to tell me what’s going with you and ole Levi?”
“Nothing’s going on with me and ole Levi.”
Granddaddy raised his eyebrows and his glass. He took a sip and so did she, wincing. She’d had a taste of bourbon here and there—the house was full of the stuff—but she hadn’t had nearly enough to get used to it yet. She hadn’t even figured out coffee yet.
“Your mother claims she caught you two rolling in the hay.”
She flushed crimson. Bad enough talking about Levi with her mother. If she had a shovel, she would dig her own grave with it right now.
“There was hay, but no rolling,” she said. “I asked him to kiss me on my birthday, and he kissed me on my birthday. Tomorrow’s not my birthday, so he won’t kiss me tomorrow.”
“You sound a little disappointed about that.”
She shrugged and sat back, her arms clutching her pillow. When she exhaled through her nose, the window turned into a cloud.
“You like him?” her granddaddy asked her. He reached out and pinched her toe. How drunk was he? Very, she guessed. Very very. “Tamara, answer me?”
She laughed at the toe pinch. “Yes, I like him.”
“How much do you like him?”
“I don’t know. A lot?” She finally met her grandfather’s eyes. He was smiling, but the smile didn’t make her feel any better. This was the last conversation in the history of conversations she wanted to be having with her grandfather.
“A lot, huh?” Granddaddy sat back and kicked his boots off. They landed on the little pink rug by her rocking chair and left a boot polish stain. She didn’t care. She was so sick of pink she was ready to burn the house down to get rid of it all.
“A lot. More than a lot, whatever that is.”
“I’ve noticed you and him talking before.”
“Only talking.”
“He dotes on you.”
“He does not. He’s mean to me. He tells me I’m lazy and he makes me muck the stalls and he says I’m spoiled rotten. He even calls me Rotten. I don’t think he’s ever called me by my name.”
“I used to call your grandmother Ornery because she was the orneriest woman I ever met. Drove me crazy when she was younger. I couldn’t keep my hands off her.”
“Granddaddy, really. I don’t want to hear any of that at all, now or ever.”
“You’re old enough now to hear about things you don’t want to hear about.”
“I still don’t want to hear about them.”
He sighed and nodded.
“Such a pretty girl you’ve turned into,” he said. “I’m surprised Levi’s the only boy we’ve had trouble with over you.”
“Y’all send me to an all-girls school, remember?”
“It’s a good school.”
“It’s an all-girls school,” she said again.
“I went to an all-boys school, Millersburg Military. Best school in the state.”
“Great. Can I go there instead?”
“And you wonder why we try to keep a close eye on you,” he said, giving her a smile. “Maybe we should have kept a closer eye.”
“Momma’s only mad because she hates Levi for no good reason.”
“She has good reason.”
“I know he’s older than me, but he’s not that much older. And he’s good with the horses. And Momma said either I had to let her fire Levi or she’d give Kermit to the glue factory. I can’t live without Levi. I can’t live without Kermit. Is she trying to kill me?”
“You won’t die without Levi.”
“Maybe I will,” she said. She might. Stranger things had happened. “I don’t get why Momma hates him anyway, other than I think she hates everybody.”
Granddaddy sighed another one of his Granddaddy sighs. She smelled cigar and bourbon in that sigh. She wanted to open the window.
“There’s something you don’t know about Levi you need to know. Long time ago, Levi’s mother used to work for me. She cleaned the Red Thread offices.”
“She was a janitor?”
“Cleaning lady.”
Tamara felt a stab of pity for Levi. Growing up the son of a cleaning lady must not have been easy. She knew his mother was already dead, but he’d never mentioned that she used to clean for Granddaddy. “Momma hates him because his mother used to be a cleaning lady?”
“Tamara, honey, his mother was black. You didn’t know that?”
Tamara narrowed her eyes at her grandfather.
“What?”
“She was.”
“But he’s—”
“He’s light skinned. But he’s not white.”
