“I told you, I don’t know.” Tamara and Levi stood in the middle of the living room on opposite sides. She rested her forehead on the mantel as she stared into the fireplace. He sat on the sofa arm and stared at her like she’d grown a second head.
“Of all the things you’ve done and said that make no sense, this makes the most no sense you’ve ever made. Tamara, this is why you married me. This is why you made me marry you.”
“I didn’t make you marry me.”
“You threatened to marry some old geezer.”
“And if you didn’t care about me at all, you wouldn’t have cared if I’d done it.”
“I do care about you. I did and I do. But you drive me up one wall and down the other sometimes and I swear I’m looking down at you from the ceiling right now. What the hell are you thinking saying you don’t want it anymore? Millions of dollars and the company you swore to shut down. You just want to give it back?”
Tamara turned around and raised her empty hands.
“Levi, you don’t know how good it’s been to be here with you. How good it’s been for me. I didn’t think I’d ever feel normal again, like I felt before the flood, and this past month I have. And that’s worth a fortune to me.”
“Me, too, baby. Nothing matters more than you being happy. But you seem to think going back home for two weeks and signing some papers will take away all that happiness. Only if you let it. It’s not like we have to stay there forever.”
“I don’t trust Momma. I don’t.”
“I don’t trust her, either, but what’s she got to do with us anymore?”
“She doesn’t know where we are. But if we go back, she will. And she’ll try to take it all away. She’s taken you away from me before, and I know she’ll try again.”
“So let her try. We won’t let her.”
Levi stood up and stared at the ceiling a moment. She knew he was trying to calm down for her sake. He walked over to her and took her hands in his.
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen if we go back,” Levi began, rubbing her soft hands with his rough ones. “We’ll pack up our suitcases and get in the truck. We’ll drive one whole day to get there and spend the night in a hotel in Louisville. The next morning we’ll go to the judge’s office. We’ll sign our lives away on those papers, and then we’ll go back to the hotel. I’ll call whoever I need to call to tell them that Red Thread is shutting down. We’ll give all the employees six months’ severance pay. Nobody could complain about that. People won’t be happy, but what seventeen-year-old girl wants to be saddled with a big company to run? It’ll be news for a week or two and then it won’t be news anymore. We’ll go by Arden and you can get your things out of there or you can sell everything in the house in a flea market. God knows I don’t care. And your mother will show up sometime when we’re there. And she’ll tell you I used to rape her in the stables. Or that I used to steal money from the house. Or that I tried to kill her once. And you won’t believe her. When you don’t believe her, she’ll tell me you’re crazy. She’ll tell me the doctors wanted to put you in an asylum because you’re so sick in the head. And she’ll tell me you lied about being a virgin and you lied about being trapped in the house with your grandfather’s body during the flood. She’ll tell me you tried to murder your whole family once. And I won’t believe her lies about you any more than you will believe her lies about me. She might even send the cops after me, but that’s fine. She’s trespassing on our property, so we’ll have the cops arrest her and drag her away. And then we will go to whatever farm has your Kermit, and we’ll buy him back if we can find him. And we’ll have supper with Andre and Gloria and we’ll stay the night in their house and try not to bang the bed against the wall loud enough to wake them. Then we’ll invite them to come stay with us down here, hug them goodbye and come back here—you, me and Kermit. Let’s hope Rex likes the Muppets as much as you do. The only bad thing that’s gonna happen because you and I go back home and sign those papers is that Bowen’ll kill me when I tell him we’ll have to clear land and put up a real barn for all these damn horses. Okay?”
Levi had his hands on her shoulders, steadying her. He looked into her face and nodded.
“What about Charleston?” she asked.
“What about Charleston?”
“We could live there. We could sell, I don’t know, half the island’s acres to the timber company. We’d have plenty of money then without going back. We could move to Charleston and be together there like we were that week. Couldn’t we?”
Charleston. They’d gone there a week after Tamara recovered from her two nights’ stay in the forest. He told her she deserved a real honeymoon, and Tamara knew he wanted to take her mind off their fight, off her anger at her mother. He wanted a fresh start for them, so he’d blown what was left in his savings to get them four nights at an old house turned inn—supposedly haunted like every other house in Charleston. They wore their best clothes and ate at fine restaurants, took a carriage ride around town, toured old houses and sat outside their fancy room on their fancy balcony drinking wine and tea. And at night they could hardly sleep in their antique King Louis bed on their silk sheets for how much they wanted each other. The last night there they’d spotted a shelf cloud in the blackening sky, and sure enough a storm hit so hard the whole town lost power. The innkeeper gave them an oil lamp to light their room, and with thunder and lightning and rain pounding the walls and the roof, she and Levi had done things to each other that she could hardly think about now without losing her mind. She’d said words to him she hadn’t known were in her vocabulary, and he’d done things to her she hadn’t realized people did to each other. She’d spent half the night with her face in the pillow trying to stifle her own moans and screams as Levi turned her inside out. The next morning she’d woken up raw and sore and covered with enough love bites she could have passed for a spotted jaguar. When she chided Levi for making her walk funny, he disavowed all knowledge and insisted that if she’d been violated and sodomized the night before, it must have been the ghost of the inn who had done it because he’d slept all night long like a baby in a cradle. Tamara had said if it was the ghost of the inn who’d done all that to her, she’d be extending her stay.
They’d learned things about each other that night.
And Tamara had learned something about herself. Every time they’d stepped foot in their fancy inn, the desk clerk or the porter would say, “Mornin’, Mrs. Shelby,” or “Evenin’, Mr. Shelby, Mrs. Shelby.” She’d been Mrs. Shelby-ed half to death those four days by those fine old-world Southerners with their fine old-world Southern manners. All day every day it was “Good weather we’re having today, aren’t we, Mrs. Shelby?” and then a tip of the hat and “Mrs. Shelby, don’t you dare pick up that suitcase, it is twice your size. You let Mr. Shelby handle it or wait for the porter.”
Mrs. Shelby. It had sounded funny the first ten times these strangers said it to her, not so funny the next ten. By the end of their trip, Tamara Maddox was long gone, never to be seen again. She was nobody if she wasn’t Mrs. Shelby. And Mrs. Shelby wanted to stay Mrs. Shelby. She wasn’t going to be a pretend wife biding her time until she had all the family money and she could run off to Majorca or Rome. She wanted to be a real wife to him for the rest of her life.
“Tamara?”
She looked up at him.
“I just... I don’t want to lose you. I finally feel like we’re really married. Not, you know, just doing this for the money.”
Tamara leaned into him and Levi put his arms around her.
“You’re not going to lose me just because we go back home a couple weeks. Your mother’s not God. She’s a mean woman, and trust me, I know how to handle mean women by now.”
“You won’t let Momma do something to us?” Tamara asked. “I know she’ll try to get between us.”
“You think I’d side with a woman who sicced the cops on me?”
“No. But I’m still scared.”
 
; “I know.” Levi sighed and her head moved over his chest. “I can’t say I’m excited about laying off all the Red Thread workers and dealing with that mess. But we’ll just do it. We’ll rip off the Band-Aid and get it done fast as we can so we can come back here and start our life up again. Then we’ll have all the money we need. We can buy a house in Beaufort. We can turn the island into a park. Or maybe just keep it for ourselves. And Bowen will be real happy to make all wine barrels instead of bourbon barrels. He says they’re more fun because they’re harder to make and you get to talk on the phone to French people all the time. He swears there’s a vintner in France who’s in love with him and he’s ready to go there to find out.”
Tamara laughed and wrapped her arms around Levi’s waist.
“See?” Levi said. “I’ve got all the good ideas. Just don’t worry so much. Your mother can’t hurt us if we don’t let her.”
“I want to believe that.” She linked her hands at the small of his back and squeezed him close. She wanted to tell Levi how much she loved him and how much she needed him, but he knew all that, and telling him again wouldn’t make it any more real. But times like this she felt like they were born to be together, and if they couldn’t be together, she would die.
“Whatever comes our way now, we’ll find a way to carry it. We’re married. We’re family. We’re in this together. Right?”
Tamara slowly nodded. “Right.”
“Good. Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”
She pinched him. Hard.
“Now, that was uncalled-for,” Levi said.
“Oh, it was called for. So was this.” She pinched him again.
“You’re asking for it, Rotten. One of these days...”
“What? You gonna finally turn me over your knee one of these days?”
“No. I’m going to turn you over my knee today. Right now and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
He hoisted her up over his shoulder, squealing and laughing, and carried her up to the bedroom. She called him every name in the book as he did it—monster and brute and animal and beast and the very devil incarnate—and he seemed to take them all as compliments. He yanked her jeans down to her ankles, threw her over his lap and slapped her ass so hard she screamed. It hurt so bad, laughing and screaming at the same time. Like being tickled times a thousand. Then he pushed her onto her back and finished what they’d started earlier that day before Bowen had so rudely interrupted them to tell them they were millionaires.
As they lay in bed afterward, half-naked and all tired, they made their decisions.
Levi was right. Running away to Charleston or anywhere else wouldn’t solve any problems. Whatever her mother threw at them, they could catch it. They wouldn’t let it stick. They wouldn’t let it hurt. They’d be smart and not let her anywhere near them. They’d get in and get out as fast as they could. They’d sign the papers and hire a good man to handle closing down Red Thread for good. And maybe while they were there, Tamara would finally work up the courage to tell Levi the whole truth.
Then, as he’d promised, they’d come home to Bride Island.
Tamara stretched out on top of Levi and wondered how he would take the news when she told him.
“You promise you won’t let anything get between us?” Tamara asked, tracing a heart on his chest over his heart. “No matter what happens?”
“Nothing’s gonna happen, Rotten. And yes, I promise. But, you know...just in case...”
“What?”
“Pack your gun.”
28
“Nobody Does It Better” cooed on the radio and Tamara turned up the dial, sat back and let the highway winds buffet her face.
“This song’s about me,” Levi said as he merged onto I-75 going north. “I told Carly not to write it, that what happened between us was just between us, and if she wrote a song about me, women would be knocking on my door the rest of my life. But would she listen? No, ma’am. She would not.”
“I hate to tell you this, but a man wrote this song,” Tamara said.
“Okay, so maybe it’s not about me.”
“It could be, though.” She turned her head and smiled at him. “Nobody does it better than you.”
“High praise from an ex-virgin.”
Tamara laughed. “Just because I don’t have anything to compare it to doesn’t mean I don’t know it’s the best.”
Levi grinned behind his sunglasses, white teeth showing.
“Don’t make me pull this truck over.”
“Next rest stop, forty-seven miles.” Tamara read the sign on the side of the road.
“Don’t tempt me. We’re making good time.”
“Keep driving,” Tamara said. “We’re almost there, anyway. I can survive until we get to Louisville.”
“Maybe you can.”
Tamara squeezed his knee and went back to staring out the window. They’d packed up the truck last night and headed out at first light that morning. If they kept their stops to a minimum, they’d make it to Judge Headley’s office before five and could get the paperwork signed today. Tamara’s fears about going home had lingered right up to the moment they crossed the Tennessee border into Kentucky. Then, like magic, the fear evaporated like rain on a hot sidewalk. What did she have to be afraid of? This was her home. The road curved and rounded corners and everywhere Tamara looked she saw tall green trees and farmhouses hidden among them. As they traveled north, the trees turned to pastures, the small farmhouses turned to large farmhouses. White stables with red trim. White stables with green trim. White stables with black trim. White fences that stretched for miles. And horses and horses and more horses, grazing and running and making the whole world look like a summer scene from a Currier and Ives calendar.
“You’re smiling, Rotten.”
“I’m happy,” she said. “It’s so pretty here. I’d forgotten how pretty. And it smells good.”
“Doesn’t smell like a salt marsh, that’s for sure. And we’ve got hills again. Good to be back.”
“Feels like home,” Tamara said. “Is it home to you, too?”
“Of course it is. Born and raised here. Mom’s buried here. My family’s here.”
“I’m here.”
“That’s what I meant.”
“You know, we could buy a place in Louisville,” Tamara said. “I loved our house in town. It was nothing like Arden. It was a normal house. Only four bedrooms—not ten.”
“Normal? Is that why you loved it?”
“It was Daddy’s house and he made it a home. I had friends there.”
“You miss your friends?”
Tamara sighed and shrugged. “I feel so far away from them now. It used to be slumber parties every Friday night and birthday parties and we’d all go riding together on Saturdays. But Carol and Katie are going to college and Billie’s moving to Ohio for a job with her uncle. And I’m...”
“An old married lady?”
“A young married lady.”
“You can go to college if you want to,” Levi said. “I would never stop you going to school or working.”
“Momma wanted to go to college. She didn’t get to.”
“Family wouldn’t let her?”
“She got pregnant with me. That was the end of that.”
“Speaking of pregnant, Rotten... I hate to tell you this, but your stomach is flat as a pancake. You gonna wear a pillow under your dress when we see the judge?”
“I’ll wear something baggy and I’ll make myself throw up on your shoes. How’s that?”
“Sounds like a plan. I could use new boots, anyway.”
“Well, guess what?”
“What?”
“Now we can afford them.”
He kissed the back of her hand and kept on driving. The windows were open, and even with the wind blowing in, the August heat was stifling. The back of Tamara’s leg stuck to the vinyl seats and left little square indentions on her skin. She should have worn pants instead of a dress. The air
felt swollen with wet heat. Levi chugged Tab to stay alert and Tamara stared at barns and pastures and horses that she hadn’t realized she’d missed until she saw them again.
The bank clock read 4:37 p.m., so they drove into downtown Louisville to Judge Headley’s office. He hadn’t been expecting them until tomorrow, but he didn’t seem to mind at all that they showed up a day early.
“There’s my girl,” Judge Headley said, embracing her. “You’re as tan as your husband now.”
But Tamara only rolled her eyes at his joke as she sank into Headley’s strong arms. This man was her father. Her father was holding her. He didn’t feel like her father and nobody but Daddy ever would, but it gave her a modicum of comfort to know she came from this good man who gave such strong and gentle hugs.
“My girl,” Levi corrected. “But I’ll let you borrow her for a hug.”
“You’re a generous man,” Judge Headley said, shaking Levi’s hand with real affection. “Now, I hope you two aren’t too tired from your drive. I need y’all to sign a few hundred pieces of paper. Ready?”
Tamara looked at Levi, who cracked his knuckles as loud as he could.