Page 80 of The Hangman's Rope

“Show me what you got today,” I said gently, and drifted with her purchases to the kitchen island.

“Oh!” she said and blushed a bit of a pink. “I’d love to, actually.”

I slid up onto one of the seats and set the shopping bags onto the kitchen island. She slipped up onto a seat beside mine and drew one of the fancy paper bags with handles over to her.

She showed me a lovely teapot, with a matching pair of cups and saucers. The pot something out of Victorian England in style, white with gilt edges and flourishes with pink peonies painted or glazed on it. The cups matching and the set lovely, matchingherin her white sun dress with pink flowers today.

“You did good with these, baby,” I told her, carefully turning one of the cups between my battered hands.

“Yeah, you like?” she asked, beaming proudly.

I smiled and said, “All that matters is thatyoulove them, but yeah – I like what you picked.”

She smiled and it was sweet and wholesome as she moved onto the smaller bag within the larger one with baggies and packets of two or three teas. She had me smell them all, and some of them were nice, while others I could only describe as, well, not my cup of tea.

She hesitated as she reached into another bag from the tea shop and extracted a box.

“I was hoping, since these teas are so visually appealing in addition to smell and taste that you might let me put them all in these apothecary jars against the back splash along that wall. She pointed and handed me the box, and I opened it up. Sure enough, it held a fancy glass jar with a glass lid with this sort of copper lace overlay that went with the kitchen and the copper kettle on the stove.

“Shit, yeah,” I said. “That would look real nice. These are great, baby.”

She looked equally relieved and pleased at the small praise and after reading her dad’s texts to her that morning, I realized, she probably was starved for positive male attention. I didn’t see a man like her dad praising her very often. Her mom probably did a majority of the actual parenting and smoothing things over between father and daughter.

It was some food for thought, and enlightening…

I helped her wash the jars at the sink and dry them carefully before loading them with her teas and she had an eye alright. She had more jars than teas, for sure, but she’d also bought just enough to line that back wall just perfect.

She also had a small service tray that was likewise, copper, and held a little copper box for sugar rocks, another pot for regular sugar, and another for raw sugar. It was kind of wild how seriously she took her tea, but adorable, too.

“What’s in that bag?” I asked when we’d folded up the ones from the tea shop and discarded the unwanted packaging in the trash under the sink.

“Books,” she said with a soft blush. “We’re going to do something of a book club and all three of us chose something. We rock, paper, scissored for it, then flipped a coin to see who would go first, second, and third. I won.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah – since Valory wasn’t there, she has to go last. I kind of felt bad about that but she seemed fine with it, but we all chose our books and we’re all going to read them in order. I pickedPersuasion,it’s my favorite. Lainey pickedMary Shelly’s Frankenstein,and Madisyn chose some modern romance thing written about faeries or something. Valory texted her choice which was another romantic something or other and we’re all going to startPersuasiontomorrow.”

“That sounds great,” I told her with a smile. “I’m glad the girls are lifting you up.”

She smiled faintly and said, “I’m not used to havingrealfriends, but this feels like it might be that.”

“I get what you mean,” I said quietly. “Did you have any other friends other than that ho?” I asked.

She snort-laughed and nodded, “A few, but they all went off to college elsewhere while I stayed where I was comfortable in Charleston, took a year or two off after high school to read andsort of figure myself out and what I wanted to do… most of my friends are graduating or have graduated. I’m still a year or so off from any kind of degree and I’m honestly not sure what a generalized business degree will do for me. I still am just sort of aimless.”

She shrugged almost apologetically and I reached out and cupped her face, smoothing a thumb along her cheek, “It’s alright if you don’t have it all figured out. Most of us really don’t. We’re just hoping to pretend to look like adults to the other adults.”

She smiled and half laughed at me, nodding.

“I kind of figured, but still… I am my father’s useless daughter.” She rolled her eyes.

“And you’remybeautiful Sweetpea, and there’s no pressure here.”

She looked almost relieved at that and I cocked my head, “Is that what’s got you feeling so anxious?” I asked.

She stopped and thought about what I was asking and slowly and reluctantly nodded.

“I guess, maybe?” she said.

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