Page 85 of The Hangman's Rope

“Thank you for saying so,” she whispered, and turned her lips up to mine for a kiss.

It was alright for now that she didn’t fully believe me.

Everything in good time, just like cultivating a garden.

I settled her against me and closed my eyes.

It was all too easy to fall asleep to the pulsing rain against the roof of the old house, the thunder rolling further and further distant.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Some months later…

Lorelai…

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’texactlyvolunteer 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 gottentheir 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 agladnessandreliefmore 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’tallbad – 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 shareeverythingwith 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 thethings 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.”

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