Chapter Eight
Diane transformed the compound one flower at a time.
It wasn't dramatic—nothing she did was ever dramatic. But by Friday morning, the converted cotton gin that had been all chrome and leather and engine grease had started to breathe differently.
An arrangement on the bar, built from salvaged roses and wildflowers she'd found growing along the fence line.
A spray on the chapel door for a brother's anniversary—she'd overheard Levee mention it to Hollow and made the arrangement before anyone could tell her not to.
Cut wildflowers in mason jars on the loading dock, because she'd walked the perimeter at dawn and discovered that the Delta grew beauty whether anyone noticed or not.
The brothers didn't know what to make of it.
"The hell is this?" One of them—a prospect she hadn't learned the name of—picked up a mason jar and turned it over like he'd never seen a flower before.
"Wildflowers," Diane said without looking up from the stem she was trimming. "They grow along your fence. I assumed no one would mind if I picked them."
"You put flowers on the loading dock."
"I put flowers where people could see them."
He stared at her for a long moment, then shrugged and walked away. The jar stayed where she'd put it.
By noon, the arrangements had multiplied. The bar had two. The loading dock had three. Someone had moved one of her mason jars into the garage, and she'd spotted another in the window of the room where the brothers played poker.
She was making herself useful the only way she knew how.
"You're busy."
Diane looked up to find Ruth standing at the edge of her workspace, watching with the appraising eye of a woman who understood craftsmanship.
"Cut flowers don't wait," Diane said. "Use them or lose them."
"That's true of a lot of things." Ruth stepped closer, examining the arrangement Diane was building. "The brothers don't know what to do with you."
"They don't have to do anything with me."
"No, but they want to understand you. A woman who walks into a motorcycle club and starts putting flowers everywhere—that's not normal."
Diane snipped a stem. "Normal is overrated."
Ruth laughed, a short sharp sound. "On that, we agree." She picked up a wildflower from Diane's pile. "What do you do with the ones that are already dying?"
"Press them. Dry them. Turn them into something that lasts."
"Can you teach me?"
Diane looked up, surprised. Ruth was a distiller, someone who worked with fermentation and time and the slow transformation of raw materials into something potent. The request didn't seem to fit—but then again, nothing about this compound fit the way Diane expected.
"Sure," she said. "Pull up a chair."
The afternoon passed in a rhythm of petals and stems. Ruth proved to be a quick learner, her distiller's hands adapting easily to the delicate work of pressing flowers. Grace wandered over around two o'clock, curious about what they were doing.
"It's an art form," Grace said, examining a pressed wildflower Ruth had just finished. "Like cake decorating."
"Cake decorating is not an art form," Diane said.
"Excuse me?"
"It's a craft. Important difference."
"Oh, we're going to fight about this." Grace pulled up a stool. "Because I have made wedding cakes that would make your flower arrangements weep with jealousy."
"Wedding cakes are eaten in twenty minutes. Flower arrangements last for days. That's not art—that's snacking."
Ruth laughed so hard she nearly dropped her flower press.
The argument continued for an hour, drawing Megan and Nora into the fray. By the time they'd agreed to disagree—cake decorating was a craft that aspired to art, flower arranging was art that served a function—Diane had finished three more arrangements and taught two women how to press wildflowers.
She was finding her rhythm.
Around four, she gathered her smallest arrangement and made her way through the compound to Jolene's room.
The president's old lady had mentioned, on Diane's first day, that she missed having fresh flowers. Not a request—just an observation, made in passing during the assessment that wasn't really an assessment.
Diane knocked.
"Come in."
Jolene was sitting by the window, paperwork spread across a small desk. She looked up as Diane entered, her expression shifting from businesslike to something warmer when she saw what Diane was carrying.
"You didn't have to do that."
"I know." Diane set the arrangement on the windowsill, where the afternoon light would catch it. "But you mentioned you missed them."
Jolene was quiet for a moment, studying the flowers—wildflowers and salvaged roses, nothing fancy, just color and life in a space that probably didn't see much of either.
"You're settling in," she said finally.
"I'm trying."
"The brothers appreciate the arrangements. Even if they don't know how to say it." Jolene's mouth curved. "Cottonmouth found one in his office this morning. He stared at it for five minutes like it might explode."
"I put it there while he was in church."
"I know. He's been trying to figure out who had the nerve." Jolene's smile widened. "He'll figure it out eventually. Fair warning—he's going to pretend to be annoyed."
"But he's not?"
"He kept the flowers, didn't he?"
Diane found herself smiling back. There was something about Jolene—a steadiness, a warmth—that made the compound feel less foreign. These women had found their places here. Maybe she could find hers too.
"Thank you," Jolene said quietly. "For the flowers. And for... everything else."
"I'm just doing what I know how to do."
"That's more than most people manage."
Diane left Jolene's room feeling lighter than she had in days.
The compound was strange, the situation was dangerous, and Raymond Hebert was still out there planning violence—but right now, in this moment, she had flowers to arrange and women to teach and a place that was starting to feel less like a safehouse and more like somewhere she might actually belong.
She found Burial at the fire pit after dark.
He was sitting in his usual position—the last seat in the circle, facing back toward the compound gates, watching for whatever might be coming while everyone else looked at the flames. The brothers had dispersed to their own corners of the compound, leaving the fire to burn low and quiet.
Diane settled onto the bench beside him.
Her hands were dirty from a day of working with stems and soil. Her hair had escaped its tie hours ago. She probably smelled like roses and wildflowers and the specific green scent of things still growing.
She didn't care.
"You always sit facing the wrong way," she said.
"I sit facing the right way." His voice was soft in the darkness. "Everyone else faces the fire. I face what's behind them."
"The rear guard."
"Always."
She looked at him—really looked. In the flickering light, the scar across his jaw was a pale line, his grave-quiet eyes reflecting flames he wasn't watching. He sat like a man waiting for something that hadn't arrived yet.
"When did you decide?" she asked. "That the back of the room was where you belonged?"
Burial was quiet for a long moment. The fire crackled. Somewhere in the compound, someone laughed.
"The first funeral I worked," he said finally. "I was twenty-two. New to the parish, new to the spade. The service was for a man who'd drowned in the flood—his family couldn't afford much, so it was just the graveside, no church."
He paused, his eyes still on the gates.
"I stood at the back, waiting to do my part. And I watched the family—the widow, the children, the friends who'd come to say goodbye. They were all facing the grave. All looking at the hole in the ground where someone they loved was going to end up."
Another pause. Diane didn't speak.
"And I realized—somebody had to watch the other direction. Somebody had to make sure nothing came at them from behind while they were grieving. Somebody had to hold the space so they could feel what they needed to feel."
His voice dropped.
"That's what I'm good at. Watching the back. Handling the aftermath. Being the one who's still standing when everyone else has already moved on."
Diane's chest hurt.
Not from anything physical—from the weight of what he was telling her. This man who'd spent his life in the space between death and departure, who'd chosen to face away from the fire so others could face toward it.
"That sounds lonely," she said quietly.
"It is." No hesitation. No pretense. "But somebody has to do it."
"Does that somebody have to be you?"
He turned to look at her then. In the firelight, his eyes were dark and deep and holding something she couldn't quite name.
"It was," he said. "Until you."
The words landed in her chest and stayed there.
"What changed?"
"You called me." His voice was barely above a whisper.
"You were standing in an alley with blood on your hand and fury in your eyes, and you called me.
Not because I could save you—you'd already saved yourself.
You called because you needed someone who understood the kind of trouble that locks doors. "
Diane's throat tightened.
"And now?"
"Now I'm sitting at a fire pit with a woman who puts flowers in a motorcycle compound." His mouth curved, just slightly. "And for the first time in twelve years, I'm thinking about what it might be like to face the fire instead of what's behind it."
The honesty in his voice made her chest hurt in ways she couldn't explain.
This man. This gravedigger who handled death with soft words and scarred hands, who'd chosen to live his life at the back of every room so others could have the front. Who was looking at her now like she was something he didn't know how to bury.
"That's the most honest thing anyone's ever said to me," she whispered.
"I don't know how to be anything else."
She reached out and took his hand. His fingers were calloused, rough from years of spade work and violence and all the things he'd handled so others didn't have to.
They sat there in the darkness, facing different directions—her toward the fire, him toward the gates—their hands linked between them.
And his answer was so honest it made her chest hurt.