The Taste of My Husband's Brother (A Wife's Revenge) novel · Chapter 7 of 32

Chapter 7: Landfall

Etienne set the lamp on the floor and knelt in the ring of jars.

He opened one himself.

Then another.

He tipped a pink pile into his palm and rubbed it with his thumb.

"When did you last open the vault?" he said.

"July. For the humidity check. I didn't open the jars. Nobody opens the jars."

"So any day since July."

"He has a key," I said. "He's the CEO. He's got a key to everything on this island."

My voice was getting louder.

I couldn't stop it.

"A hundred and twenty-eight years, Etienne. Through two world wars and the Depression and every hurricane since they had names. My grandfather picked those peppers. Your great-great-grandfather saved that seed in a coffee can. And your brother put it in a box and drove it off the island like it was a set of golf clubs."

"I know."

"He looked me in the face yesterday. He kissed me goodbye. He said don't do anything stupid for a greenhouse."

"I know, Josette."

"I carried feed-store seed up a hill in a hurricane!"

I threw the jar.

I didn't mean to.

It hit the parlor wall and burst, and pink seed rattled across Mémère's good floor.

Outside, a shutter tore loose and banged three times against the house and then was gone, and the wind came screaming through the gap.

I was shaking so hard my teeth clicked.

Etienne got up and pulled me off the floor.

Not gently.

He hauled me into the center hallway, where there are no windows, and he sat down on the floor with his back against the wall and pulled me down with him.

He wrapped both arms around me from behind and held on.

"Breathe," he said into my hair.

"I can't."

"Then just shake. I've got you."

So I shook.

The house groaned around us.

Somewhere upstairs glass broke.

I cried, finally, for the first time since Saturday morning, ugly and loud, with my wet hair stuck to his chest.

He didn't say anything.

He didn't tell me it would be okay.

He just held on, and his heart beat slow and steady against my back, and after a long time mine slowed down to match it.

When I could talk again, I said, "I'm getting your shirt wet."

"It was already wet."

"I'm getting it snotty."

"That's new," he admitted.

I laughed into my sleeve.

He dragged the mattress off the guest bed and down the stairs while I held the lamp.

We put it in the hallway, the safest place in the house, and sat on it with our backs to the wall and listened to the storm try to take the roof.

"Is it going to hold?" I asked.

"It's held since 1902."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got."

The lamp flickered.

He turned the wick up.

In the yellow light his face was tired and sunburned and so close.

"Can I tell you something true?" he said.

"Rule one."

"The first Monday you tasted, six years ago, I was in the barn. You were twenty-five. Mémère handed you the paddle, and you were so scared your hand shook, and you tasted the first barrel and told her it was salted heavy on the left side." He shook his head. "It was. She'd done it on purpose. To test you. Nobody else on this island would've caught it."

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