The Whiskey Tide (28 page)

     
"You!" Mrs. Hinshaw stood with a poker raised in her hand. The door to the back parlor had flown open when she appeared. There was light inside. She stared at Kate in angry disbelief. "How could you, Kate? It was no surprise to catch Aggie dragging home at all hours like a stray cat, but I expected better of you!"

Nineteen

     
Aggie leaned in the doorway behind her mother and wished her head weren't quite so woozy. She and Felix had drunk a good deal of champagne, and though the shock of finding her mother waiting when she slipped in ten minutes ago had sobered her some, she was finding it hard to grasp all parts of the unfolding drama.

     
"It didn't surprise me that Aggie... I expected better of you!"

     
Her mother's words sliced at her as effectively as Peg's sharp knife sliced into fish. Always second to Kate. Always, for as long as she remembered.

     
"Mama, please—"

     
Kate looked positively bedraggled. She was in the arms of a rough, unshaven man.

     
Her mother's furious glance raked over him. "Put her down."

     
"I can't. She's hurt. Her ankle."

     
"You've been drinking, too!" Mama curled her nose.

     
"Mama, everyone drinks." Aggie heard herself speaking before she even intended it, her tone blase.

     
Kate wasn't the sort to be slipping around with a man like the one who was holding her — or with anyone else. It occurred to Aggie he must be part of her rum-running crew. It was three in the morning.

     
"Well, if she's going to carouse and hurt herself, she can take the consequences. Put her down!" Mama ordered again.

     
Aggie thought she saw the man's fingers tighten.

     
"You were very kind bringing me home, Mr. Smith," Kate said faintly. "Please don't let me keep you any longer. I know your friends are waiting."

     
With a look in his eyes that warned against argument, the man holding Kate strode past them and lowered her gently into one of the chintz-covered chairs. Aggie felt her mother's fingers clamp her shoulder and turn her sharply back into the sitting room.

     
"Take off those horrid shoes before they ruin the carpet!" Mama snapped at Kate as the stranger left.

     
Kate stared down at her Keds. Aggie knew from experience how it felt when your shoes were too far away to possibly reach them. Swallowing visibly, Kate bent and obeyed.

     
"I don't deserve two of you like this! And I won't have it! Do you understand me?" Mama threw the poker at the hearth, where it hit with a clatter. She was going to wake the whole house. Aggie had never seen her so angry, though she also appeared on the verge of tears.

     
"All we have left is our good name. I'll not have it destroyed. If you don't care about your own reputations, you might at least have consideration for Rosalie! And me."

     
"I'm sorry, Mama," Kate said weakly. "We had some trouble coming back — taking on water — and then I tripped—"

     
"You both have had every advantage." Their mother's voice was brittle. "In the expectation you'd be decent, civilized women. It's time you stopped behaving like spoiled children and gave the rest of us a little support. From now on, Aggie, you will be in by midnight. Period. And you, Kate — it's time you gave up this tomboyish nonsense with that boat. Your uncle wants to sell the wretched thing, and I'm going to let him!"

     
Aggie watched the last scrap of color drain from her sister's face. There was something wrong with her beyond a twisted ankle.

     
"Kate's going to be sick." she said. "Do you want it all over the floor or shall I take her to the bathroom?"

     
Mama made a dismissive gesture and wiped at her eyes.

     
"Lean on me," said Aggie slipping an arm around Kate and helping her to her feet.

     
Kate made a gasping sound. "Other side," she whispered.

     
Without understanding, Aggie shifted.

     
"You've hurt more than your ankle, haven't you?" she said when they were alone.

     
Kate nodded. Her lower lip was cut as though she'd bitten it.

     
"I've got — a gash in my side. A piece of metal came loose and I fell into it."

***

     
"Oh, Kate. How terrible! How can you stand it?" Rosalie held the bandage which she'd had to tug to remove because of the dried blood gluing it to Kate's skin. She stared in dismay.

     
"It is wicked," Aggie said, strangely admiring.

     
Kate looked down at the ugly black stitches sprouting from her skin. She couldn't remember seeing them when they were put in, though she must have.

     
It was late afternoon. They were all in Kate's bedroom. Rosalie was changing her dressing in accordance with the neatly written instructions Joe's aunt had tucked into Kate's pocket.

     
"No sign of anything yellow, thank goodness," said Rosalie checking the list through the wire rimmed spectacles she was embarrassed to need for close work. "Heavens! Arthur's mother will be stopping by any moment to pick up some doilies I made for their sale at the church."

     
Kate expected Aggie to follow Rosalie out. Instead she rolled onto her side and studied Kate. Her eyes narrowed.

     
"Rosalie's sheltered," she said. "That's why she's such a peach when we need her. That place in your side didn't come from you stumbling into a piece of loose metal, did it? It came from a bullet."

     
Impulse told Kate to deny it. But Aggie knew her too well; would know if she lied.

     
"For God's sake don't tell anyone," she said wearily.

     
"Tell me about it."

     
"What's to tell? Another boat wanted to steal our cargo. They shot at us. I'd have been safe enough if I hadn't raised up when I should have stayed down."

     
"How did you get stitched?"

     
"Mr. Santayna knew someone."

     
"The man who brought you in last night?"

     
"Yes. I mean it, Aggie. Don't you dare tell Rosalie. She'd panic, say it was too dangerous for me to do this again."

     
How she'd manage another trip if the
Folly
was sold, she didn't know. That fear was worse than the pain in her side.

     
Aggie crossed her shapely legs and stretched like a cat.

     
"I won't tell if you cover for me when I'm out with Felix."

     
The determination shimmering in her green eyes warned Kate refusal was pointless. Kate rubbed her hands over her face and closed them into fists on her forehead. What had she gotten the others into with her rum-running scheme?

     
"Ag, you don't know what you're doing. The man is a... a crook."

     
"So are we."

     
"No. We're not!" Kate's fists hit the bed. "We're ordinary people trying to survive — like little shop owners and laborers and fishermen! We're not doing this because we're afraid to do honest work. And we're not doing it to make piles of money."

     
"Oh yes we are," Aggie said steadily. "Because piles of money is what we need to save us." Suddenly she smiled her dazzling smile. In a single movement she slid up and sat at the head of the bed. She caught Kate's hand and squeezed it in reassurance.

     
"It'll be all right, Kate. We can make it work, you and I and Rosalie." Her enthusiasm poured into the room like sunshine. "And we won't let Mama sell the
Folly
."

     
Aggie's optimism was so reminiscent of how she'd sounded in childhood scrapes that Kate laughed in spite of herself. In an instant they were leaning shoulder to shoulder, quivering with mirth.

     
"How in God's name are we going to stop her?" Kate was exhausted. Her side was on fire.

     
Aggie wiggled her toes, examining them as though they were a chalkboard containing the answer.

     
"We'll do what we always used to do when we got in a jam," she said with slow practicality. "We'll get Theo to help."

Twenty

     
"Are you out of your mind?" Theo paced with such agitation he outdistanced his cane. It wavered, nearly slipping from under him on the carpet of the back parlor.
"Smuggling?
You could go to jail!"

     
"I won't go to jail." Kate folded her arms, gently nudging her stitches, which were starting to draw and itch as they healed. "If I should get arrested, a payoff would get me out within hours. Pa said the corruption makes an absolute mockery of Prohibition."

     
Theo shook his head, more determined than she'd seen him since he came back from the war.

     
"Well, I'll not be a part of it. I'll cheer if Aunt Ginny sells the boat."

     
"Theo! You don't mean it. Not after all the good times we've had." Aggie turned from the door to the hall, where she was keeping watch, and faced him with a look of shattered trust. Kate saw their cousin falter, and wondered uneasily if Aggie was manipulating him as she did the swains who flocked around her.

     
Lunch with Aunt Helène and their cousins had been well-deserved penance for Kate and Aggie, from Mama's viewpoint. Kate wondered if anyone gave any thought at all to how being left constantly in women's company must affect Theo's spirits. After coffee was served in the parlor, she and Aggie had proposed a domino game, knowing Theo's sisters would refuse. Clarissa would think it childish and Ivy wouldn't like the arithmetic involved. Kate, Aggie and Theo had adjourned to this room, where Aggie had dumped out dominoes and shoved them quickly together to look like a game in progress while Kate described their predicament, to Theo's growing disbelief.

     
"All right. I'd hate to see the
Folly
lost," he amended grudgingly. "But this is madness, Kate. I can't believe the risk you've taken." He drew a breath and walked to a window. It looked out on the lilac bushes, which now were bare. He folded both hands on his cane, his hair made golden and his features gently handsome by a shaft of sunlight. "Listen. I have some money. My trust. Let me make you a loan. You can pay off the house and we'll settle whenever. We'll tell everyone... that I'd invested some money for you. How's that?"

     
Kate's arms tightened. "We don't want your charity, Theo."

     
"It's hardly charity when it's my father who's caused —"

     
"I don't want to be beholden to you! I can get us out of this jam. I just need the damned boat!"