Page 272 of Property of Whiskey

The front door opens before we reach it. Daddy stands there in jeans, an old gray T-shirt, and bare feet.

That somehow makes this worse. Sheriff Dix I can fight. Daddy is harder. His eyes go to Whiskey first, of course, then come back to me before he steps aside.

“Come in.”

Whiskey waits. For me to go first. I notice. Daddy notices too. I walk inside.

The house smells like coffee and lemon furniture polish, same as it has since I was little. My high school graduation picture still sits beside the television. So does Mama’s last Christmas photo, her blonde hair shorter from treatment but her smile still big enough to fool anybody who didn’t know.

I look away from that one.

Whiskey doesn’t. His gaze pauses on it. Daddy sees. Nobody says a damn thing.

“Kitchen,” Daddy says.

We follow him down the familiar hallway. Three coffee cups are waiting on the old oak table. That tells me everything. He planned for Whiskey to stay once he agreed.

Would never admit it.

Still did it.

I sit across from Daddy. Whiskey takes the chair beside me, leaving enough space that his knee doesn’t touch mine. He doesn’t put an arm around me, reach beneath the table, or stake any kind of claim in front of my father.

He just sits.

Daddy looks at him like he’s deciding whether killing a man at his kitchen table qualifies as bad manners.

Whiskey looks back. Quiet. Waiting.

I flatten both palms against the scarred tabletop. “You’ve been warning me away from Pearly Gates since I was sixteen.”

Daddy’s hand stops halfway to his coffee. Whiskey catches it too. I know without looking.

Daddy lowers his hand. “Who told you that?”

I almost laugh. “Nobody had to tell me. I remembered.”

“Twila.”

“Every time anybody mentioned that place, you shut it down. High school kids wanted to go out there one Halloween, and you threatened to arrest us. Lester Boone said something about it when I first started patrol, and you told him to quit filling my head with ghost stories. Now Pearly Gates is tangled up in everything we’re dealing with, and you’re ordering me away from it like the building itself is gonna climb through my window.”

Daddy looks into his untouched coffee. “Some places ain’t worth curiosity.”

“Bullshit.”

His eyes flick toward Whiskey.

I lean forward. “No. Don’t look at him. Look at me.”

Daddy does.

“You know something.”

“I know enough.”

“What?”

“Enough to tell you to stay the hell away.”