Page 63 of The Hangman's Rope

That in and of itself was still a pretty lucrative thing.

I wasn’t hurting for cash. Not in the slightest. Still, most of the motherfuckers I’d come up around could take their silver spoon and shove it up their ass.

I wasn’t interested.

I stood for what felt like several minutes sweating in the heat and oppressive humidity on the fancy front porch of the mansion, waiting on the help to come back and turn me away. Just when I was fixing to ring the bell again, the maid returnedand said, “This way,” holding the door open for me and stepping aside.

I nodded, tried to be gracious, not because I was, but because I knew it would be what Lorelai would want me to do, and I followed Consuela into the grand house.

She led me through tasteful, yet still opulent sitting rooms and through a kitchen that Torment would be tormented by if he saw it and didn’t get to play in it, out a set of French doors into a back yard that put the gardens in Bonaventure to shame.

I followed her down a set of steps off the rounded flagstone patio onto a garden path and to a pair of greenhouses out here, large, and damn near industrial in size, but with the flare of the old-style conservatories you could once buy in a Sears & Roebuck catalog.

I stopped in the doorway and looked down the center of the house and there she was, somber, withdrawn, her fingers in the dirt under some lush foliage as she re-potted some plant or another with colorful leaves.

“Lore,” the older woman across from my Sweetpea murmured, and Lorelai looked up, following the woman who had to be her mother’s gaze up the aisle to where I stood.

She startled, biting off a surprised yell and rushed me, and I braced as she flung herself into my arms and buried her face into my chest as my arms went around her.

“Hey, Sweetpea,” I murmured into her auburn hair as she shuddered in my grasp, fighting not to cry.

I hugged her tight and kissed the top of her head and let her stay in the circle of my arms for as long as she needed.

“You must be Hangman.” Lorelai was a carbon copy of the woman who spoke in a posh British accent, and I looked over my Sweetpea’s head down the lane opposite my girls at her.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said unfailingly polite. I knew how I looked and I also knew how to play the game.

“Marion Gantz,” she said, clipped, after she’d stripped off her garden gloves. She strode up the aisle with her hand out and I held onto Lore while I took it and gave it a firm shake.

“Benjamin St. John,” I said, giving her my government name. After all, what harm could it do? Citizens of her age and socioeconomic background tended to get squirrelly around odd names and I was here to try and make things better for our girl, not worse.

“My daughter says you met while she was in hospital,” she said and I nodded once.

“Yes ma’am,” I took a wild stab at it and said, “Was visiting a friend of mine, had himself an accident.”

“I see,” she said her eyes drifting to her daughter who was looking up at me.

Lorelai Gantz wasn’t short, by any stretch of the imagination. Nor was her mother. They both had to be around five-eight or five-nine, but still – compared to my six-three, I did look down at them somewhat.

“You got my message,” she breathed.

I nodded. “I sure did. What can I do?” I asked.

The pleading in her silver eyes told me everything I needed to know. She wanted to come back with me. I could do that.

“Pack yourself a bag,” I said quietly. “One bag, make it a backpack, keep things to some sentimental items and a few of your favorite clothes. You got it?”

She nodded eagerly, and I asked her, “You ever ride?” She shook her head. “You’re about to learn. Sturdy shoes, blue jeans, a leather jacket if you’ve got it.”

“Okay,” she murmured.

“Go on, now,” I told her and turned her loose.

She went to leave and her mother caught her arm. She looked at her mom, and her mom at her and her mother asked, “Lore?”

“I need this,” Lorelai beseeched her. “I feel trapped, and like a stranger in this house. I need quiet and someone who understands this – this- thisthingthat’s happened.” She looked back to me and said with the rawest honesty I’d ever seen in a person’s face, “Even if he doesn’t understand thispreciseawful thing, he understands how it’s affected me and I feelsafeand like I can be the me that I amnowin his presence without hurting him or making him uncomfortable. I need that, Mom. I can’t stand this feeling.”

She turned back to her mom who looked utterly devastated and who was starting to cry.

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