Page 75 of Whiskey Chase
“And your mother?” Devlin asked.
“She hung in there for us. She didn’t know what happiness was. But she knew what was right and wrong. Made me make that promise not to get married before thirty and made my brothers promise not to get married for any reason other than stupid in love.”
“Did he ever hurt you?” Devlin asked.
I leaned back and looked up into those stormy eyes. “Daddy? No! Of course not. At least not physically.”
He relaxed his hold on me.
“If not physically, then how?”
I shrugged and pressed my cheek against his chest. It was my new favorite place to be. “I just wanted to be important enough to him that he didn’t need to drink,” I confessed.
“Baby.”
Devlin said it so softly, so sweetly.
“I know. I know that he was an alcoholic, and I know you can’t just matter enough to someone to make them quit. But I really, really wanted to,” I told him.
Again, he ran his hand through the tail of my hair.
“I can’t remember a time growing up that I wasn’t worried about Mama and Daddy gettin’ a divorce. Looking back, I don’t know why they didn’t. I mean, it wasn’t like they were happy.”
“Maybe they felt like it was the right thing to do,” Devlin offered gruffly.
“But the right thing shouldn’t be so unhappy. Should it?” I asked.
“Easy doesn’t mean right,” Devlin pointed out.
I sighed. “There was a time—right after Callie disappeared—that things were good. Everyone was trying. Even Gibson,” I recalled. “I think it scared everyone and made them want to hold on to what we’re all lucky enough to have.”
“But it didn’t last?” Devlin asked.
I shook my head. “Never does, I guess.” I looked into the front yard at the trees I used to climb as a kid, pretending I was in the jungle far, far away. “Anyway, thanks for listening.”
Devlin leaned in and stroked his thumb across my cheek. “Scarlett, anything that’s important to you is important to me.”
God help me, I believed him.
My sigh this time was one of relief. “Thanks, Dev. How do you feel about snooping for important papers?”
He grinned. “I feel pretty damn good about that.”
29
Scarlett
Even with Devlin present for moral support, I wasn’t prepared to tackle Daddy’s bedroom so we headed upstairs. “Mama and Daddy used to use this bedroom,” I told him, shoving open the white painted door. It creaked like a dang haunted house.
The walls still boasted that English rose wallpaper that Daddy had sworn he’d take down. The mattress still sagged on its old iron frame. There was a bookcase built into the wall, the one change my father had managed to make in his years here. It was a jumble of paperwork and books and old magazines. Judging from the layer of dust, no one had been up here in a few years.
“Gross. Let’s start with this allergy factory,” I suggested. “We’re makin’ sure there’s no outstanding bills, looking for anything on property taxes, any titles to the house or his truck or whatever. At least we don’t have to worry about any life insurance or retirement paperwork,” I said dryly.
“Paperwork is my specialty,” Devlin said. “Why don’t you look for photos and mementos? I’m sure Jonah would be interested in seeing what your childhood looked like.”
It was a thoughtful gesture that I don’t know if I would have thought of making on my own. I knew just where to start. Mama’s trunk was shoved in the corner by the closet and buried under an entire family history stashed into shoe boxes and manila folders. Photos, report cards, drawings. We’d never made it through the mess when she died. And we’d ended up just adding to it in the years after. After pawing through some of it for pictures for Mama’s funeral, we’d left it for Daddy to take care of and—as expected—everything sat exactly as he’d left it.
I cleared the top of the trunk, making neat stacks on the bare mattress. Keep. Recycle. Burn to the Motherfucking Ground.
