Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
Some months later…
L orelai…
I wiped a bit of sweat from my brow with the back of my wrist and smiled at my mother from under the brim of my straw hat. We were working in one of the plots marked for perpetual care that didn’t really have any living or known family still about. While it wasn’t exactly volunteer work, neither my mother nor I were technically being paid to do this – there just weren’t always enough hours in the day for Hangman to do it all around here and if it was one thing my mother and I loved, it was gardening. Specifically planting bulbs and flowers.
We’d removed a few diseased and ailing azaleas from this specific plot, and we’d struggled a bit with the notion of replacing them only to have the new azaleas potentially struggle with the same disease. It’d been hard getting the old shrubs out, and if it was one thing that Bonaventure was known for, it was its riot of color and bursting azaleas in the late winter and early spring – so we’d spoken with the historical society, had gotten their input, and had decided to go a different direction with this plot to ensure the safety of the rest of the azaleas in the cemetery by planting something different here…
That was what we worked on today, planting the bulbs we’d ordered and that had come in, in careful arrangement in order to see if we could get blooms from spring, through summer and through the following fall. Things that would only need attention and care every three to five years or so by way of thinning and possible relocation to get the same blooms happening all around the cemetery in patches and plots.
It was a bigger undertaking than you might think… the soil around Bonaventure being a sandy and well-drained consistency. We’d needed to mix water retaining soil mixes and conditioned the beds to ensure the growth and happiness of the variety of bulbs we’d bought.
It was certainly an extensive labor and would incur a bit more cost over the coming years by way of maintenance, but again, this had become mine and my mother’s pet project and morphed into more of a labor of mother-daughter bonding and love.
While she wouldn’t say precisely why, she’d come down to Savannah with suitcases packed, and had announced she was divorcing my dad. It was a shock, but I was surprised to find one that filled me with a gladness and relief more than anything.
My mother had come from a well-off family, and she had her own wealth by way of inheritance that, like her father, she had invested wisely. My father, egotistical as he ever was, didn’t seem to realize that my mother wasn’t as entirely financially dependent upon him as he would have liked to believe… she just genuinely loved him and thus put up with all manner of bullshit. Mostly, in part, to try and give me the ideal childhood of having both parents together and in the picture.
Did I think my father loved me and my mother? Honestly, I’d like to believe he did, as much as he was capable of. It wasn’t all bad – but things weren’t always as wonderful as we portrayed to the outside world… and something had happened that had my mother showing up down here in Savannah with her car packed to the gills with the important and sentimental things and little else calling it quits and apologizing to me, of all people, for trying to stick it out for so long.
I’d been left befuddled by that, but she refused to elaborate, reminding me that she was the adult and even though I was an adult too, she was still my mother and thus didn’t feel like she should share everything with me in the interest of maintaining that child/parent relationship which I’d never realized how much was at the core of her identity.
I was surprised when she’d shown up at Bonaventure in the afternoon the day that she did. Surprised even more when Hangman wouldn’t hear of her staying in a hotel, but rather contacted Synister and the rest of the club members that lived in the heart of the Savannah historic district across from Forsyth Park. They’d readily prepared a guest room for my mother and told her to stay as long as she needed.
Honestly, it had been very sweet – though it felt more than a little bit uncomfortable for me having my mom live under the same roof as Reaper for any length of time.
She hadn’t stayed more than a few weeks before moving into her own home several blocks from Bonaventure. It was a fixer-upper that she had no problem pouring a considerable amount of money into to have it be the retirement home and cozy cottage core home of her dreams.
Of course it had a sizable greenhouse out back, and while it was about a mile to a mile and a half from the cemetery, I enjoyed walking there and spending time with her doing all the things that my father had always teased us rather mercilessly for.
Now a lot of those activities were paying off in the Fournier plot, as we unpotted lilies and planted them in the freshly mixed and conditioned soil around and just behind the ornate old headstones.
My mother sighed contentedly and sat back on her heels considering our handiwork and gave a nod.
“I think these were a good choice,” she said.
“I do too,” I told her and handed her the water bottle near me to make sure she kept hydrated in the muggy heat.
“I never in a million years pictured you living in a grave yard,” she said and I laughed.
“Don’t let Lainey hear you call it that,” I said. “It’s a cemetery. There’s no church.” I rolled my eyes a little and my mother chortled.
“She’s a regular Wednesday Addams, that one,” she said.
I shook my head. “Morticia to Fear’s Gomez, for sure. Wednesday doesn’t have the capacity to be that happy.”
My mom thought about it for a second and nodded, “I do believe you’re right.”
We worked quietly for a moment and she sighed and said, “You’ve found yourself an unlikely family among these people.” She looked up at me and I knew she didn’t mean a single disparaging thing with her use of ‘these people’ but rather spoke with a fondness as she’d said it. “I’m both proud and happy for you that you’re with someone who treats you so well.”
“You sound like you had your doubts,” I said blushing faintly and thinking about just how well Hangman, ah, took care of me , the night before.
She smiled faintly and nodded. “I did, but I’m your mother – I’m pretty sure there was at least some pre-requisite on doubt, don’t you think?”
I laughed a little and nodded and said, “You raised me to be empathetic and understanding… but when it comes to landing myself with a man named ‘Hangman’ I kind of feel like that may have been a bridge too far even for you.”
She grinned at me and raised her eyebrows and asked, “Oh, you bloody well think so, do you?”
“He treats me very well, mother dear,” I told her and my mother smiled.
“I know. I’m glad I took the leap of faith as much as you did – the names and all that leather is rather off putting, though – and I still worry about the reputation.”
I looked at my gloved hands and picked up the hand trowel I’d been digging and back filling with.
“Their reputation keeps me safe,” I said quietly and I felt her stare boring into me, even though I didn’t quite have the fortitude to look her in the eye.
“Oh, my darling girl…” she trailed off and thankfully, that was the moment Grim and Reaper wandered up the row.
“Well, if it isn’t two of the prettiest magnolias in Savannah!” Grim crowed and I snorted at the ridiculousness of it. He was always such a flirt – charming to everyone, while Reaper just sort of stood by, silent and stoic.
I smiled up at Grim and asked, “What brings you out here? You’re rarely if ever in the cemetery.”
He smiled at me and put his hands in the pockets of his suit slacks.
“Why a funeral, of course,” he said.
“Oh.” My mother’s expression went from politely cheerful to somber in a flash.
“It is the business,” he said with a shrug.
“That’s true,” my mother said, all while Reaper stared at me from behind those circular blue-tinted lenses of his. Stoic, silent, hands in his own pockets and I imagined balled into fists. He didn’t like social interaction too much. He usually just kind of stood or sat nearby while his much more extroverted counterpart did all the charming and talking.
“See you at the manse tonight?” he asked us.
My mother sat back on her haunches and asked, “Oh? What’s going on tonight?”
I blushed faintly and said, “Madisyn is having a party with some of her benefactors from her art shows.”
“Oh! That sounds delightful,” my mother cried as she did love a good social event… but this wasn’t one I particularly wished her to attend, as I had done some dressing up and some posing for one or two of Madisyn’s latest paintings. It wasn’t as though I was in any way embarrassed or what have you – it was just… I loved my mother, but sometimes she could and would gush to the point it could get a little overwhelming or embarrassing and I didn’t want to be the center of attention on Madisyn’s night.
I gave Grim a pleading look from behind my mother’s back as he looked about to say something about my part in the paintings that had been shown and Reaper came to the rescue.
“I have a body,” he said, looking at his watch.
“Oh?” Grim asked, looking at his and frowning. “Well, duty calls apparently,” Grim declared and he graciously bid farewell to me and mom and both men went wandering up the aisle toward the gates.
I smiled at Mom, and she smiled at me, and she asked after Madisyn and Lainey as she hadn’t seen them in a while.
We wrapped up our work a little while after that, gathering up the thin plastic black planter pots and tools we’d used, smoothing the dirt with our hands around the freshly planted lilies and over the other bulbs in their almost tiered and layered growing patterns we’d laid.
“This will do for now,” my mother said, looking at our handiwork with her hands on her hips. “We’ll need more mulch, though.”
I nodded. “Hangman says the shipment will be here by middle of next week.”
“Good.” She nodded. “Without any rain in the forecast for the next little bit, I’ll have to come back out and water.”
I nodded. “If you can’t make it out for whatever reason, I will.”
She smiled and looked up the aisle toward the brick house I lived quietly in with Hangman, cozy and safe.
“Well, I suppose it isn’t out of your way,” she said and I laughed.
We finished putting everything into the back of the small, old, pickup that Hangman and Haint had gotten running for us and drove back up to the groundskeeper’s shed nice and slow waving to the occasional tourist.
“Who is that?” my mother asked curiously when I waved rather enthusiastically to a woman with short greenish blue hair standing on the steps to the house, outside the still-coming-together visitor’s center doors of the first floor.
“That’s Enocha. She’s a member of the board for the Bonaventure Historical Society.”
“Oh, nice!” my mother said, turning the wheel of the pickup and pulling under the shed. We got out and put tools away on benches and in cabinets.
We were just finishing up when Hangman rolled into the shop in his much bigger work truck. He sat with it running, finishing some kind of a call, before shutting off the big diesel engine and opening the door.
“Hey,” I called softly, and he didn’t so much as make a face. I was used to that by now, though. He rarely made any kind of emote with his facial expression around my mother or even his club brothers. It seemed he saved all of his smiles and soft looks for me, behind closed doors, in our little apartment – our oasis of quiet among the sea of mausoleums and graves.
I liked it like that.
It made me feel special.
I went to him, and he wrapped his arms around me.
“Good day?” he asked levelly and I smiled up at him and nodded, tipping my lips up for a kiss. He flashed a quick smile and humored me, kissing me soundly but chastely, once, twice, and a third time while my mom looked on.
He gave her a respectful nod and asked, “Feel good about it?”
“Absolutely!” she answered warmly, and I couldn’t tell if she meant our work at the Fornier plot or if she meant seeing me with Hangman. I didn’t ask for clarification… some things are just more comfortable not knowing, you know?
We parted ways with my mom and traded hugs goodbye and were told to have a good time that night, and when all was said and done, we wandered slowly, hand in hand, to the cemetery gates to lock up.
“I thought you said you weren’t going to tell her,” he said to me as she turned down the lane to exit Bonaventure.
I smiled a little wryly and said, “Well, Grim and Reaper happened by and let the cat out of the bag on that one.”
“Ah,” he said with a nod. “How much did they say?” he asked.
“Thankfully not enough to let her know that I’m the subject of some of Min-Syn’s paintings,” I said, breaking into a broad grin. “Never would have gotten away with her not coming in that case and honestly, I’m just not comfortable with that… some things you just don’t want your mom to see, you know?”
He chuckled and nodded his head. “Not like they’re paintings of you nude and suspended in rope,” he said. “Bet some motherfuckers would pay top dollar for that shit.”
I leaned into him to knock him off balance a bit and shrieked my indignation on a laugh at the mere audacity of his thinking such a thing into existence.
No, the paintings Madisyn had done of me were actually quite nice. Me dressed in regency era attire, tea set out, sipping while reading among the graves.
She sort of specialized in painting the cemeteries around Savannah, they made up quite the body of her work and people loved them, for whatever reason. Only recently had she begun to incorporate living models, and even then, she tended to work from photographs that Lainey took for her.
It was really a concerted and team effort, a special sort of collaboration. I dressed, Valory had dressed me, Lainey had photographed me and Madisyn had painted an image made from several into one moving image.
It was very special and I was thrilled to have been a part of it.
We showered together, kissing slowly under the spray and washing one another sensually. It was honestly becoming one of my favorite parts of the day. Even when we just took care of ourselves while chatting amicably – it was one of those couple’s rituals I looked forward to.
I took more time to get ready than he did when it came to doing my hair and makeup after our couple’s adventure in bathing. It was hard to focus when he got me so hot and bothered, but I was happy enough and managed to muddle through.
I had laid out my outfit on the bed earlier that day and just needed to go across and dress but my jaw hit the floor when I slipped into our bedroom to see him standing in front of the dresser, dressed in a very nice black tailored suit, struggling with a pair of cufflinks in one sleeve.
“Sweetpea, can you help me get this damn thing?” he asked distractedly from my reaction as he fiddled with metal and cloth trying to get his thick fingers to work the cufflink through the small eyelet in his cuff.
“Half of me wants to help you get out of it, the other half just wants to stare at you a little longer,” I said, and then clapped my hands over my mouth.
He looked at me in stunned amusement and his eyebrows went up before he started to laugh.
“Good to know I clean up nicely,” he said, holding out his wrist to me. I stepped forward and helped him fix the cuff and mumbled something about that being the understatement of the year.
He laughed at me, picked up his jacket from the bed, and slapped me on the ass over my towel wrapped around my body on the way out to the kitchen.
I sighed, rubbing over the swat just a bit, recognizing that he was nervous about being around so many people we didn’t know. I was, too, quite frankly – but this was one of those things that Synister had orchestrated in a bid to catch my assaulter… or at least one of them.
There had been no luck in finding Calrose Pierce, which had to be some kind of assumed name to do what he did, just in case a girl like me remembered…
I swallowed hard, and put on my clothes, each layer going on like battle armor, the fabric chic and shimmering, covering my body but also fitting close. Sexy without being too revealing, black as this was a black-tie affair and themed some type of noir…
I put on my necklace and earrings, slipped on my rings and took my tennis bracelet out to Hangman for help.
“Your turn,” I said, rounding the corner in the living room and he smiled from the kitchen island. The smile was a brittle thing, and he had a finger left of the two he’d poured of the whiskey in his glass.
He held it up and tipped the glass, swirling the golden amber liquid in it in a tempting offering to me.
I shook my head.
“I’ll get something to carry around at the party,” I said. “But whiskey isn’t my thing.”
“It’s scotch,” he said with a half-smile and I made a face.
“Then it’s definitely not my thing,” I said. “That shit tastes like a rusty bucket of haunted bog water and I don’t know how you can drink it.”
He burst out laughing and came around and fastened my bracelet for me.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said and we smiled at each other.
“Cone here, sit down,” he ordered gently taking me by the hand and leading me to his recliner. I sat, and he knelt down in front of me and took up my shoes, one at a time, slipping them onto my feet and buckling them across the arch. I smiled and reached out, cupping his handsome face with my hand, smoothing my thumb over his softly bearded cheek. He’d used the nice beard oil that I’d bought him, the one that smelled of the outdoors closer than anything I’d ever known.
“Thank you,” I murmured and he smiled at me.
“Anything for you,” he said, capturing my hand and turning his lips to kiss the inside of my wrist.
I felt my pulse jump, my heart set to pounding, blood racing beneath my skin, through my veins, carrying with it the heat of my desire.
“Are you as nervous as I am?” I asked softly.
“In some ways, in others I feel like I’m marching right into another combat situation.”
“These clothes are much cooler than body armor, I suppose,” I said, trying to make light of things just a little bit.
He flashed a smile and said, “The body armor is oddly more comfortable.”
I smiled back at him and let him help me to my feet in the heels I now wore.
“Shall we?” I asked.
“I believe that’s supposed to be my line,” he shot back.
We went, me gathering my clutch off the table by the door as we passed through into the muggy heat of the outdoors.
We walked to the club just a scant block and half outside the cemetery gates, and I stayed close to Hangman. It was a quiet street – nothing ever really happening here, but still. I felt vulnerable in a way I couldn’t describe being out here, dressed so nicely. I hadn’t dressed to impress since that night and it felt odd to be doing so now.
We got into the garage portion of the club and Hangman went for the expensive yellow Porche, opening the door for me on the passenger side.
It wasn’t his, but one of his brother’s. I didn’t know who’s though.
He got in on the driver’s side, and started it up and I swallowed hard. He shifted gears, working the pedals expertly and when he took his hand from the gear stick, he placed it on my knee every time.
I liked that touch. It seemed to steady me.
I suddenly wished I had asked him to put a harness on me under the dress, wondering if it was too late – wondering if it would ruin the line of the dress.
“What are you thinking about so hard over there, Sweetpea?” he asked me.
I smiled and it felt brittle, even to me in the moment and I told him.
He looked surprised and then pleased.
“I think when we get there, I might be able to cook something up,” he said.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“Anything for you, babe, and especially this. You know how much I like to play with you.”
I smiled then, genuinely, and it wasn’t brittle or scared.
I loved the way this man tended my spirit and how he loved to watch me flourish.