never talked about him unless someone else brought him up.
“I wish Momma would come back, too,” she said. But from the looks of the dark and the wet and the new rain coming down, it didn’t appear her mother was coming back anytime soon. She found her grandfather looking at her, studying her. He’d been doing that more lately, watching her. Sometimes it didn’t feel like his gaze was on her so much as his hands. She liked it when Levi looked at her. But not even he looked at her like this.
“Angel, I know it’s not easy being a Maddox. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. Your grandmother wanted to go to college instead of getting married. But her family had money trouble, so she got married. You do what you have to do for your family. Like Jacob Maddox.”
“What about him?”
“My grandfather Jacob Maddox got married for money, too. Married a lady named Henrietta Arden. That’s why this house is called Arden, because we wouldn’t have it but for her.”
“Did we get all our money from his wife?”
“No, ma’am. She got ole Jacob out of debt, but the real money? He made that all by himself. Back before Red Thread existed, Jacob had a hemp and tobacco plantation. That was the original Arden. Jacob, as it sometimes happened in those days, fell in with one of the slave girls. Her name was Veritas, but they called her Vera for short. They did love to give out fancy names to their slaves, and she was a fancy girl. Her mother had worked in the kitchens before she died and Vera had taken over her work. The house girls had to dress nice and look nice and act nice. Vera always wore a red ribbon in her hair. One morning Jacob decided he’d rather have Vera for breakfast than steak and eggs.”
Her grandfather chuckled again over the rim of his glass before taking another sip. Tamara was getting real tired of that chuckle.
“But Henrietta was not especially pleased when Vera’s belly started getting real big and it wasn’t because they were overfeeding the girl. One day Jacob went out of town on business, and while he was gone, what did Henrietta do? She sold little Vera. Sold her for a good price. The man who bought her got a good deal—two for the price of one.”
Tamara only stared at the bourbon in her glass. She didn’t want to drink it anymore.
“You can’t sell people,” Tamara said quietly.
“Oh, but you could back then. They say Jacob saw every shade of red when he came home to find nothing left of his favorite girl and his baby but the red ribbon she always wore in her hair and a thousand dollars he hadn’t had before. But he didn’t cry long. You know what he did with that money?”
“Started Red Thread?”
“That’s right. He started Red Thread. He bought a still, bought some corn and got to work making this family the wealthiest family in the state. But you know what? He must have loved that girl Vera, because when he started the bourbon distillery, he put a red ribbon around the neck of every bottle in her memory. Put her red ribbon on the very first bottle. We still have that bottle locked up in my office.”
“Can I see it?”
“Maybe later,” he said. She wasn’t allowed in Granddaddy’s office upstairs. No one was. “It’s been handed down from one Maddox son to the next. It’ll be your son’s someday.”
“We still have the ribbon?” Tamara asked, wanting to see it for some reason, wanting to have it. She should have it, and her granddaddy shouldn’t.
“We do. That red ribbon is what made us our money. Wives would tell their husbands, ‘Honey, go and buy some of that Red Thread bourbon because I want that pretty ribbon.’ Jacob Maddox was a smart man. Must have been a romantic, too. Red ribbon on every bottle? He must have loved that girl.”
“Or maybe loved waving that red ribbon in his wife’s face,” Tamara said.
“Well...maybe he loved doing that, too.”
“What happened to Veritas?” Tamara asked.
“Oh, hell, I don’t know.” Granddaddy waved his hand dismissively. “They sold her, and she wasn’t too happy about it. They say she swore at Mrs. Maddox, vowing she would come back someday and cut us off at our roots. She would end our line if it was the last thing she did. As you can see,” Granddaddy said,