Page 78 of The Hangman's Rope

…when you get home…

I liked the sound of that. It felt right. It felt…real.

“Okay,” I said and he put the cart into gear and zipped off in the direction of the house.

I paused to look into the cemetery, and breathed a big, contented sigh.

“Ever been through?” Lainey asked.

I shook my head, paused, and then nodded. “The day it happened,” I said. “I don’t remember it… or really only vaguely do. It’s like everything is shattered and falling and I only catch glimpses when the shards turn just right.”

“You should have Hangman take you after the gates are closed,” Madisyn declared. “Nothing like this place during golden hour.”

“Golden hour?” I asked.

“Happens twice a day around sunrise and sunset, when the light is just perfect and there are no hard lines or harsh shadows,” Lainey explained. “I had to ask too at first.”

I let them lead me arm in arm out the front gates to the cemetery all the while learning all sorts of things about what light was good for what when it came to painting. It was eye-opening, to say the least.

Chapter Twenty-One

Hangman…

Does this look like what I think it looks like to you?I texted out to Synister, and forwarded the screenshots of the texts from Lorelai’s father I’d sent from her phone to mine.

I got to work, waving at Madisyn and Lainey as they came through the gate on foot and headed up to my place. Her dad had clearly been pissed off all to hell making all kinds of noise through texting and missed calls that we hadn’t heard thanks to Lore turning the ringer off on her phone. What’d caught my eye was the drunker he got, and the more vitriolic he’d gotten, the more he’d started to sound like – to an outsider like me – that he knew a thing or two extra about what’d happened to his daughter.

Red flags had gone up in the back of my mind. Phrases like he wasn’t sorry any more that what’d happened had happened… which on its face didn’t seem like much, but I just had this niggling doubt that there was something there. You know?

After I’d seen the girls off, I’d checked my phone and there was a text waiting from Syn:

If you think that reading between the lines that Daddy Dearest here knows more than he’s letting on about what happened to his little girl… yeah, I can see it. It’s being handled. You handle your girl.

I thought a minute and typed back,Don’t hurt the wife. Her mom’s good people. I don’t think she knows shit about fuck.

My phone pinged a minute later. Two words.Copy that.

I had a feeling that he’d be dispatching Grim and Reaper. Reaper had a fucked-up sense of justice and making shit up to people. He’d probably insist it be him. I had mixed feelings about that. If her dad was just being a fucking dick – then I almost felt sorry for him. If he did have something to do with it? Shit. It was nice knowing whatever the dude had left by way of sanity.

Looking back through those awful texts that he’d sent to his daughter; I decided I didn’t much care what he went through. He’d put my Sweetpea through enough. The fact that she seemed unfazed; almostboredreading the vitriol on her screen told me I hadn’t gone to her soon enough. That I should have checked up on her way before she’d called.

I went about my day, digging a grave, fixing some of the drainage system around Bonaventure, that led back down to the river in the event of some hard rains, and when my phone went off telling me it was time to close and lock the gates, I tossed my shovel in the back of my truck and chased some straggling visitors and tourists out of the parking lot down by the river, rounding ‘em up like herding cats to the front gate.

I exchanged a nod with old Mrs. Kaplowitz sitting with her husband. She was slow, but she’d make her way to the gate herepretty soon. I always tried to give her a few extra minutes with old Arthur.

Shit, it wouldn’t be long now before her death date would go under her name on her side of the monument and I would be digging the trench to lower her ornate box into the sandy ground.

Morbid thinking, but true.

As I locked the cemetery gates behind Mrs. Kaplowitz, my phone buzzed in my pocket. It was far too early for it to be Syn about what shook loose from Daddy Dearest. I checked it, and it was my Sweetpea, letting me know what the girls had done and that they were heading to the club.

I smiled to myself, glad that Mini-Syn and Lainey had roped her into going to the club. It was barbecue night and Tor knew his way around a smoker and had been at it over the last couple of days.

I went up and took a hot shower, rinsing the sunscreen, sweat, and grit of the day down the drain. I took my time getting dressed, combing back my hair into a tight but short tail at the nape of my neck. It felt good to shrug into my cut, and even better that I would see if my Sweetpea could integrate into club life. I was worried about it. Mostly worried the guys would go too hard too quick and send her – I didn’t want that. I was pretty sure the rest of the boys knew it, but there were a couple I’d be lucky if they could or would give a fuck about it.

That was what happened when you had a mix of difficult personalities crammed into a unit – even with a clear-cut hierarchy. Sometimes a motherfucker just liked to test limits. Specter and Tor both immediately coming to mind on that front.

I walked down the road and was encouraged to hear a high peel of laughter from somewhere behind the building. Likely up or under the back deck. Voices traveled on the stagnant evening air, heavy with humidity and the promise of a thunderstorm.The breeze kicked up and brought with it the smell of petrichor – and I loved that smell. Always had. Wished someone could figure out how to bottle that shit; I’d pay a mint to wear it as a cologne – but everything that’d been named shit likeBefore the Storm,orAfter the Rain,or some other such gimmicky bullshit had never even really come close to the real thing. There was always something cloying and justoffabout it.

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