Page 32 of Stolen Time
Molly tipped her head to one side. “That’s a wonderful idea, Seth,” she said. “One of you can hold the ladder while the other goes up into the attic.”
“I suppose that would work,” Charles replied. While he didn’t sound entirely enthusiastic, neither had he shot down thescheme, making Seth think this whole ploy to get him alone might work after all.
Which it did, with the two brothers dutifully trooping downstairs after dinner to fetch the ladder, and then hauling it back up to the third floor where the bedrooms — and the ceiling access to the attic — were located. The setup would help to keep their conversation private, since their parents had remained on the second floor to clean up after dinner and then retire to the living room to listen to the radio. With any luck, they wouldn’t hear a single thing.
Charles positioned the ladder directly under the opening, and Seth, who’d already volunteered to be the one to go into the attic, climbed up. As he went, he had to wonder why their particular attic didn’t have a drop-down ladder like he’d seen in other homes, but maybe it had been a question of space, since the attic itself was cramped and with a low ceiling barely five feet above the floor, adequate for storage but not useful for anything else.
To his relief, the box with the bunting was situated near the access point, on the opposite side from the spot where a nearly identical box filled with their Christmas ornaments sat. He reached out and got the desired box by one corner, then shimmied it closer to the place where he stood at the top of the ladder so he could grasp it with both hands. With that maneuver taken care of, he was able to slowly back his way down, bumping the box along from rung to rung until he reached solid ground once again.
He began to set the box of bunting on the floor, but Charles stopped him, saying, “Let me take that.”
Even better. He could follow his brother into the spare room that had once been his and confront him there, in a place where they were the least likely to be overheard.
Charles headed into the bedroom, which, in the several years since Seth had moved out, had turned into a dumping ground for any spare odds and ends anyone in the family couldn’t quite decide what to do with. More than once, his mother had made noises about clearing out the junk and turning the space into a sewing room, but so far those plans hadn’t materialized — mostly because no one had time to work on the project.
After setting down the box on the table that had served as Seth’s desk when he lived here, Charles turned, clearly ready to go back downstairs.
Now or never.
“I saw you up at the exploratory shaft last night,” Seth said, and Charles paused almost midstep, one foot awkwardly poised a half-inch or so above the floor before he remembered to set it down.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Well, that was his first mistake. Both brothers took care not to swear around their parents, but they also tended to toe the line around each other and do their best to be courteous. For Charles to slip like that meant Seth had caught him off guard.
“I saw you,” he said calmly. “You drove up in the truck and went in the shaft, then loaded about ten or so jugs of moonshine into the cab. After that, you went up and over the mountain — to take the liquor to Prescott, I assume.”
Charles stood so still that he looked almost more like a waxwork figure than a living, breathing human. Then he spoke.
“Let it alone, Seth.”
No denials, no pretensions of innocence — at least, not after that first falsely shocked exclamation.
“I will not,” Seth said. Although he’d gotten into a confrontation here and there with a belligerent miner who thought it was a good idea to come to work drunk, he’d never had to face down someone he knew before. A thrill of fear wentthrough him as he wondered what his brother might do next. Charles’s magic wasn’t anything too frightening, only a gift for knowing where a particular item was located at any given time — useful for managing the stock at the mercantile — but he was still tall and fit, if not quite as muscular as his younger brother.
A physical altercation was the last thing Seth wanted, if not least because his parents would be sure to hear if he and his brother started throwing punches at one another.
“Let it alone,” Charles said again, and Seth crossed his arms.
“I can’t do that,” he replied, and now he tried to make his voice as persuasive as he could. Shouting would only attract attention…and turn his brother into even more of a stone wall than he already was. “You’re not just putting yourself in danger — you’re endangering the clan as well, consorting with people like that. And you don’t even drink!”
Now his brother’s mouth curved in a smile that bordered on contemptuous. “No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t see the point in losing control. But that doesn’t mean I won’t help other people indulge if it means getting some extra money in my pocket.”
Seth stared at Charles in disbelief. “You’re breaking the law and putting us all at risk, just for a little money?”
“It’s more than ‘just a little money,’” Charles retorted. “You’d probably be surprised by how much it actually is.”
Seth’s jaw set. He didn’t want to hear any of his brother’s terrible justifications, but he’d stirred up this hornet’s nest and wasn’t about to back down. “Mother and Father pay you a very good wage.”
An amused chuckle. “I suppose it’s good enough for survival, but I want something more than the bare minimum.” He stopped there and ground his hands into his pockets, as if he hoped by doing so he could prevent himself from taking a swipe at his little brother. “I want Mary back, and the only way to do that is to have a lot of money in the bank and a big, fine housethat’ll make that holier-than-thou mother of hers — and the rest of her family — look the other way.”
About all Seth could do was stare at his brother in horror, wondering if he’d lost some part of his mind after his fiancée ended their engagement months earlier. “And you think she’ll be just fine with marrying a bootlegger?”
Charles’s lip curled. “Do you honestly believe she’d know anything about that? All she and her family will have to know is that I’ve come into my own and can give her the kind of life she deserves.”
Clearly, Charles was convinced that this terrible scheme was the only way to woo back the woman of his heart. Seth searched desperately for any counter-arguments, anything he could say to let his brother understand what a terrible mistake he was making.
“You don’t even know if she’s already found someone else,” he said, and now Charles laughed outright.