“I’m surprised you didn’t find this, Nanny Lucy,” April whispered as she opened the bottle and took the first long drink. “I left it here years ago, but the storm stirred up too many memories tonight. You telling me that you had sinned reminded me of my own sin in hiding it on your property. I’m not an alcoholic, but tonight I need a drink, or two or three. I can’t imagine you ever sinning.” She sat down on the end of the cot and threw the quilt off her shoulders. “I actually thought that you had angel wings under those cardigan sweaters you always wore. There was no way I could ever measure up to . . .”—she turned the bottle up again and then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand—“someone as perfect as you, so somewhere along the line I stopped trying. I just wanted you to love me, Nanny Lucy, but evidently you thought I was unlovable. How could you put Aunt Gabby on a pedestal and your own daughter in a deep hole?”
The storm raged, both outside and inside April’s heart, as she kept taking drinks right out of the bottle. She could visualize her grandmother sitting in the old ladder-back chair at the end of the cot and giving her dirty looks.
“Well, at least I didn’t disappoint you.” April held the bottle up toward the empty chair. “I’m just as worthless as my mother. There will never be angel wings on my back or a halo above my head.”
When the bottle was half-empty, she screwed the cap back on it, set it on the concrete floor, and curled up on the cot in a fetal position. “I think I’m drunk, Nanny Lucy. That’s one more thing you can send me to my room for doing. ‘Go on in there and be just like your mother.’ That’s what you used to tell me. I hated that room because I thought it was what made me . . .” She passed out and dreamed of her grandmother slamming the door to her old bedroom.
Nessa awoke when the second wave of the storm seemed to take up residence over Blossom, Texas. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it down deep in her soul when she sat up in bed and pushed back the covers.
Had she left the windows down a little in her SUV? No, she remembered seeing the clouds coming and going all day as they painted three sides of the house. She’d checked the vehicle twice before she went to bed. She looked at her phone and found that it was three o’clock, and then she fell back onto her pillow.
“Something still isn’t right,” she whispered as she got up, padded out into the kitchen, and turned on the light above the stove so she wouldn’t wake April. She poured herself a glass of milk and took a fistful of peanut butter cookies from the jar in the middle of the table. She sat down with her back to the living room and had eaten the first cookie when Waylon came up the hallway, meowing at the top of his lungs.
“Shhh . . . you’re going to wake April,” Nessa scolded.
“She might as well get up. We’re both awake. Damn cat must be afraid of storms.” Flynn yawned and stopped beside the sofa on his way to the kitchen. “Where is April?”
“She’s right there.” Nessa turned around and pointed, pausing. “No, she’s not.”
Her blood ran cold in her veins, chilling her to the bone. She remembered that April had been terrified of storms in their youth, but she absolutely hated the cellar. She might have gone to the waterfall, which was a horrible place to be when lightning was flashing every few seconds.
Flynn turned around and looked down the short hallway. “Bathroom door is open, so I don’t think she’s in there. Did she leave us in the middle of a stormy night?”
Nessa stood up so fast that her chair wobbled before she stretched out her hand to right it. She hurried around the sofa bed and peeked out the window just as another streak of lightning lit up the sky. “Her car is sitting out there, so she must be here somewhere. I hope she didn’t go to the waterfall in all this mess.”
Waylon became a blur as he ran through the open garage door, still caterwauling loud enough to give the thunder competition.
“I understand why he wants to go out there. That’s where his litter pan is.” Flynn started that way. “But why would April be in the garage in the middle of the night?”
“Cellar? It’s storming, and Nanny Lucy was terrified of storms. Remember how she’d stand out on the porch and tell us if we heard thunder, we were all going to the cellar?” Nessa brushed right past Flynn and pointed at the open cellar door. “You ever been down in that thing?”
“Nope, but I do remember her being afraid of storms,” Flynn answered. “Have you ever gone down in the cellar? Is it concrete or just dirt?”
“Nanny Lucy sent me down there for a jar of peaches one time,” Nessa answered. “It’s dark, damp, and kind of spooky, but it’s all concrete, even the floor. There was a whole bunch of granddaddy long-legged spiders there. I hate spiders, but I got the peaches and hurried back up the steps as fast as my legs would go.”
“Why would April go down there?” Flynn looked down the wooden steps.
Nessa led the way, and when she reached the bottom, she picked up the whiskey bottle. “I found the reason. I wonder when April hid it. Nanny Lucy thought the devil would come up out of the ground, grab you by the ankles, and pull you straight to hell if you took a single drink of alcohol.”
“She told me that very thing when I was a little boy,” Flynn said as he started down the stairs. “Scared the bejesus out of me. I went home and cried when Mama poured herself a glass of wine that evening.” Flynn seemed to fill the small space when he reached the bottom of the steps and saw April passed out on the floor. “What do you think happened here, Nessa?”
One of Nessa’s shoulders rose in half a shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the storm. One thing’s for sure: if April is ever going to get fixed, we need to help her figure things out. How are we going to get her up to bed?”
“Like this,” Flynn said as he scooped April up in his arms like a baby and carried her up the steps.
Nessa followed behind him and closed the cellar door to keep Waylon out. “Put her on the bed in her old bedroom. I’ll pull out the trundle and sleep on it. She may need me before morning.”
“What she’s going to need if she drank that much whiskey is a bucket or a trash can.” Flynn carried her across the living room and down the short hallway. He gently laid her on the bed.
“So sorry, Nanny Lucy,” April muttered. “How did you sin?”
Nessa lined the small trash can next to the dresser with a plastic bag and set it within arm’s reach. If April started gagging, she could at least hold the can with one hand and hold her blonde hair back with the other one.
Flynn dragged the trundle bed out for her. “Call me if you need me. I’m going to leave my door cracked so Waylon can get in if he wants to.”
“Thanks,” Nessa said. “I wonder what she’s talking about. Nanny Lucy was a saint. She never sinned. She had mood swings, but she was too close to God to sin.”
“Just the ramblings of a good old-fashioned drunken stupor, I’d guess.” Flynn started out of the room. “But, honey, I don’t think there’s a saint on the face of this earth. We’ve all sinned.”
“And come short of the glory of God,” Nessa quoted from scripture. “I wonder how April knew that Nanny Lucy sinned, and what it was.”