wife, that was who. He saw she was shaking, shivering, not a demon or angel or goddess, but a girl again. A girl who’d looked death in the face and held it in her hands. Levi picked her up in his arms and carried her into the house. He set her down on the sofa, kissed the top of her head, then went back out to bury the beast. In the shed he found a rusted shovel and used it to dig a hole in the soft earth at the edge of the woods. He used the shovel to toss the head into the hole. Its maw was open, its fangs exposed, its eyes open, staring, accusing. Levi covered it with pile after pile of dirt. Then he scooped up the lanky body and tossed it deep into the trees. Some animal would have a nice midnight snack, probably another snake.
When the snake was dead and buried, Levi leaned on the shovel and breathed and breathed.
What was wrong with him? How could he have thought for one moment that Tamara was going to kill him? This was Bowen’s doing with his ghost stories and his talk of curses and graves and warning him to never love a Maddox. She had saved his life and there he’d been, worrying she’d destroy him. Levi felt like the worst fool on earth to think that little girl had plotted some sinister scheme behind his back. He ought to grovel at her precious feet and kiss her purple toes for saving him. And then he would wring her neck for picking up a poisonous snake with her bare hands.
He marched back into the house, slamming the door behind him.
“Tamara!” he called out ten times louder than he needed to. “Where the hell are you?”
“Bathroom,” came the small scared voice in response. He didn’t care what she was doing in there. He threw the bathroom door open and found her at the sink, scrubbing her hands with lava soap.
“Tamara?” he asked, quieter.
“I thought it’d be slimy,” she said, her voice rattling like dice in a cup. “But it wasn’t slimy. It was real smooth and slick. Like a muscle. It was so strong. I could feel how strong it was in my hand.”
“Tamara...” Levi stepped to the sink and took the bar of soap from her hand. Tears covered her cheeks and her hair was plastered on her forehead. He turned on the cold water and rinsed the soap off her hands. “Tamara, you shouldn’t have picked that snake up.”
“I know,” she said in a hollow whisper. “I thought if I missed, I’d shoot you by mistake. And if I missed, the snake might get scared and bite you. And if I missed, it might bite me and then I wouldn’t have another chance. I didn’t know what else to do. And I thought...” Levi brushed her hair off her forehead and kissed it.
“What did you think?” Levi whispered. “Tell me.”
“I love you,” Tamara said, looking up into his eyes. “I mean, I have to love you. There’s no reason for me to pick up a snake if I didn’t love you, is there? I’d have to be crazy or in love. I’d rather be in love.”
Her eyes looked crazy—wide-open with her pupils fixed on him like a blind man trying to remember how to see.
“You were scared, that’s all. Being scared makes us do crazy things. Andre drove a truck for a long time. Big rig. Some drunk girl ran a stop sign and hit him and her car caught on fire. Andre ripped the door off her car and pulled her out. He can’t do that. A man can’t rip a door off a car, but he did. Fear gives us powers we didn’t know we had. And love. They’re the same thing sometimes.”
“I loved you before the flood. And I loved you after. You’re the only thing I still love from before. You’re the only thing I love that I’ve always loved.” She raised a hand to her forehead. “I didn’t mean to say all that.”
“You can say that to me.” Levi took her face in his hands. “You can say whatever you want to me. God knows you always did.” He grinned at her, trying to connect to the Tamara he used to know. She was in there somewhere.
“When you made love to me, I felt like I did before the flood. I didn’t feel like this.”