“I’m going to have to use my key,” Hannah said, brows together and worry in her voice. “This isn’t like her.”
Hannah got her keys out of the pocket of her bright purple coat but was so shaken by the situation that she dropped them. Lila retrieved them and convinced Hannah to let her open the door.
“Does she have a security system we need to deactivate?” Lila asked before putting the key in the lock.
“No, even though we’ve been on her for years to get one,” Hannah said as Lila slipped the key in the lock, “said that she’s perfectly safe here.”
Lila knew that was wrong. Nowhere was perfectly safe. Some places just happened to be safer than others.
Lila opened the door and Hannah quickly pushed past her, calling out for her mother. But no response came.
“Mom?” Hannah kept repeating as she walked through a sitting room and into the kitchen, her repetitions getting more and more frantic with each recitation.
Lila stood in the small foyer of the home, feeling useless and desperate, and watching Hannah for any clues about what to do. When Hannah had finished sweeping the living room and kitchen areas, she brushed past Lila and headed down a hall to the left that looked like it led to several bedrooms.
When Hannah got to the door of the room at the end of the hall on the right, Lila could see something like relief or recognition flash very briefly across her face before her face fell.
“Mom!” Hannah screamed before disappearing from view and moving into the room.
Lila raced down the hall to the bedroom and found Hannah leaning over her mother, crying and trying to rouse her from the bed. But something told Lila that nothing Hannah could do was going to wake Emma.
“Hannah….” Lila said, and pulled Hannah away from the bed by grabbing her upper arms, “…don’t.”
“But she can’t—no—not now—not now—” and Hannah broke into sobs.
Lila turned away from a despondent Hannah and went to the bed.
There was Emma, covered up and on her right side in bed, looking peaceful. Lila put a finger on Emma’s cheek and knew that she touched something that no longer drew breath on this Earth. Nonetheless, Lila gently checked for a pulse along Emma’s neck. Nothing.
“Hannah…” Lila said, and swallowed hard, trying to choke back her own tears and memories that were threatening to overwhelm her, “…she’s gone.”
Somehow Lila managed to get Hannah out of that room and into the family room at the back of the house.
“Are you capable right now of calling Kyle?” Lila asked, but Hannah shook her head as she fell onto the couch.
Lila knew that she was not only going to have to call Kyle, but Bo as well.
She made the easier call first—Kyle. He was law enforcement and family and they needed to get an ambulance—or the coroner—there on the double. Kyle was audibly upset to learn what had happened, and promised he’d be there in minutes. Lila heard him crying as the call ended.
Then came the really hard part.
Lila called Bo’s cell but got no answer, so she tried again. He still did not pick up the phone, and she thought what a hell of time the man had picked to blow her off. Only a few days ago he had called her multiple times with pleas for a return call.
“He’s not answering me, Hannah,” Lila said. “Maybe you should try on your phone.”
Instead, Hannah shoved her phone into Lila’s hands. Since Hannah was still unable to clearly speak through her torrent of tears, Lila had to figure out how to call Bo by fumbling with the device, but was eventually successful.
“Morning,” Bo greeted upon answering the call. “Have you eaten anything yet? I could meet you at the café and we could—”
“Bo, it’s Lila,” she interrupted him.
“Oh,” he said, and she heard him suck in a long breath.
“Bo—” Lila said, her voice cracking.
“Lila, I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“Bo, I’m at your mother’s house. Hannah is here with me. I was supposed to meet Emma this morning at her house, but she wouldn’t come to the door, so I called Hannah because I was worried,” Lila said in a fast jumble of words strung together with sobs. “And we had to use Hannah’s key to get in and…and…we found her in her bed, like she was asleep, but…she’s passed on, Bo. She’s left us.”
There was only the faint hum of the telephone connection for several seconds, and then Lila heard Bo gasp and choke.
“I’m on my way.”
Lila dropped onto the arm of the chair where Hannah was hunched and crying, and wrapped her arms around her grieving friend. She wanted to say she knew how it felt, and that it would get better after a while—but Lila knew that the pain would always be there. So Lila remained silent and simply held Hannah, whose sobs continued unabated and mingled with Lila’s own for the next few minutes until both women heard multiple vehicles pulling up to the house.
Kyle was the first into the family room, followed by the EMTs, and a man Lila suspected was the coroner. The sheriff immediately went to his wife, who managed to stand but then immediately collapsed into his arms in tears.
“Can you show them?” Kyle asked Lila, and dipped his head in the direction of the bedroom. Lila nodded and directed the group to Emma’s bedroom, and then rejoined Kyle and Hannah.
“What happened?” Kyle asked Hannah, and pulled her off his chest.
Hannah was sufficiently recovered from the immediate shock of her mother’s death that she could relate the simple story. Lila then filled in the part where Emma had called her the previous night and asked to meet.
At that moment, they heard the front door open again and Bo burst into the room. He was red-faced, cheeks wet, and apparently had run all the way to his mother’s house from the visitors’ center, judging by his windblown and breathless demeanor. Hannah tore herself away from Kyle and ran to her brother.
“What…why?” Bo asked his sister through unsuppressed, body-wracking sobs.
“I don’t know,” she spluttered. “She was—still in bed,” Hannah said through a few more sobs as she pulled away from Bo.
Bo then locked eyes with Lila. They threw themselves at each other, the bitterness of their last farewell long forgotten.
Chapter 23
For the past several weeks, Lila had felt as though all of Bourbon Springs and Craig County had been steeped in a sort of mourning for the lost rickhouse. The calamity had hit too close to home, and Lila had heard residents muttering about what could have been if the fire had started in another rickhouse or the wind had shifted and spread the fire in a different direction. Many people drove up and down Ashbrooke Pike every day, and the gutted shell of that building still stood, a reminder of the disaster and silently warning all to be grateful that what had happened hadn’t been worse.
And with Emma Davenport’s death following so closely on the heels of the fire, the residents of the town became dispirited. Through CiCi, Lila learned that the BourbonDaze planning committee canceled at least two meetings so people could attend the visitation (two days) and the funeral. Rachel and Brady likewise closed court for two days by joint order of the Craig Circuit Court. Bo and Hannah actually shuttered Old Garnet the day of the funeral, and the last time that had happened had been during World War II. According to Hannah, Emma had refused to close the distillery after her husband’s death, saying that he would have demanded that the gates remain open and for business to continue as normal. But the grieving siblings—especially Bo—had felt no such need to honor their mother in the same fashion. In fact, Bo had insisted that all non-essential operations be shut down for the day of the funeral so workers could attend. Lila silently agreed with the decision, knowing it was what Emma would have preferred.
Lila was with Bo and Hannah throughout their ordeal. Although Emma had possessed the foresight to make arrangements for her services and burial, thus taking that burden off her grieving children’s shoulders, the siblings still found it
hard to function in the face of such sudden and awesome loss. Lila took some time off from school to be with both of them during that sad time, and rarely left the distillery offices, Bo’s home, or Hannah’s house, unless it was to run some errand for them. Goose and Lucy Davenport were often her morose companions in these small, simple tasks. During those dark days, she dried Bo’s tears, let him cry on her shoulder, and held him as tightly as he could stand it.
Lila sat next to Bo in the front pew in church during the funeral, holding his hand the entire time, and she stood by him as they lowered Emma’s coffin into the ground that gray February afternoon.
After the burial, Bo didn’t know what to do with himself.
“You shouldn’t be alone right now, Bo,” Lila told him as they trudged across the muddy cemetery to Bo’s new truck. If the rickhouse fire had any silver lining, at least for Bo, it was that his insurance did give him enough money to buy a nice new truck—deep red, of course.
They got into the vehicle and sat in silence for a while.
“Where do you want to go?” she asked.
He looked straight ahead and his face became tranquil. “Let me show you.”
When he drove them to the distillery, Lila was a little annoyed that he’d chosen to return to work rather than his home or her place. Even going out to get a late lunch would have been a perfectly acceptable choice under the circumstances. But going back to the distillery somehow felt wrong to her, like he wanted to get back to work and forget what had happened.
But if that were the case, why had he brought her along?
After parking and helping her out of the truck cab, Bo led her to the old rickhouse. Lila said nothing as Bo pulled her by the hand into the limestone building and shut the door behind them and locked it, going so far as to pull the wooden bar down to block anyone’s entry.
“Not sure why I locked it since everyone has the day off,” he said, staring at the door.
“So we’re alone in here?” Lila asked, and craned her neck upwards to gaze at the towers of barrels.
“Yes,” he said, following her upward stare, “unless you count the angels.”
He walked away from the door and she followed him, confused as to why they were there and where he could possibly be taking her.
When they came around a corner and she only saw more and more racks of barrels, along with a few lonely barrels sitting on end in the corner that she suspected were empty, Lila was completely baffled.
“I like to come out here sometimes,” Bo said, reading her thoughts and walking to the far corner. Filled barrels were in the ricks on one side of them, and the rough, unfinished limestone wall of the rickhouse was on the other. He went to a lonesome barrel in the corner, leaned on it, and glanced up at the wall of wood and bourbon. Bo took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and Lila saw him relax. His shoulders fell and his face still possessed that sense of serenity she’d seen in the truck. “How do you feel when you go to the springs?” he asked and then opened his eyes.
It was an unexpected and odd question, but it was a strange afternoon. One doesn’t bury a parent every day.
“Sad sometimes, but mostly I feel a sense of peace, of belonging, I guess. I suppose part of that is knowing that my parents are there with me. But it goes beyond that.”
“Hannah told me she felt like it was a sacred place, at least for you.”
Lila nodded and drew nearer to Bo. “That’s true,” she agreed. “It is spiritual, if that’s the way you mean it.”
“I do,” he said. “And I think I know exactly how you feel when you go there. Because it’s how I feel when I come in here,” Bo said, and closed his eyes again. “You have your sanctuary, your refuge, your church. Whatever you want to call your springs.” He opened his eyes, reached to his right and put a splayed hand on a barrelhead, then looked heavenward. “This is my cathedral.”
Lila had never thought of a rickhouse as a thing to be admired as an object or place of beauty and reverence, but at that moment she knew she’d been wrong.
So very wrong.
Soaring shelves of bourbon barrels surrounded and towered above them like the supporting pillars of a large church. The scant, hazy light seeping in through gaps in the shuttered windows produced a warm, welcoming glow, like rays of sun through a stained glass window, and left dappled patterns of light on the dusty wooden floor. And the smell was marvelous—that pungent, woody scent of the spirits escaping the barrel, evaporating and ascending to a host of happy, waiting angels.
Lila put her hand over the hand Bo still had on one of the barrelheads. He took hers and pulled her to him, capturing her between his legs. He was leaning back against the barrel and nearly eye-level with her.
“I haven’t had the chance to thank you for everything you’ve done these past few days,” Bo said. “Rachel and CiCi have been there for Hannah, and so has Kyle, of course. But you were the one there for me. Thank you.”
Lila put her right hand aside his cheek. His face was rough, and it felt like he’d missed several spots that morning when he had shaved.
“You’re welcome,” she said, moving her thumb lightly over the unshaven spot. “I’m not going to insult you and say that I know what you’re going through, because all grief is unique. But I’ve been through this, and I know how it goes. And it will get better, with time.”
“And with you,” he said, and put his hands on her hips.
They had not been this physically and emotionally intimate since their argument, and Lila knew they had to talk about what had happened and what they had said to each other that night. Getting back to where they had been was going to require some work—mostly on his part, she felt. Emma’s death had thrown them back together, and Lila was at least grateful for that because she loved Bo, but their problems remained, rooted in stubbornness.
“Bo—”
“Wait,” he said, and dropped his head. “If you’re about to tell me you’ve got to go, please listen to what I need to say first.”
“I wasn’t about to leave, Bo,” she said. “In fact, I don’t want to go, although we do need to talk if I stay.”
He brought his head back up, and his face was full of hope. “I’m sorry, Lila. I’m sorry that I brought up the lawsuit, the land, said all those things. I’m sorry you thought I was trying to manipulate you,” he said, sighing deeply. “Not that it’s an excuse, but please remember what I’m like and how much I love this place,” Bo said, and looked around the rickhouse. “I know I’m a little crazy, obsessed. And I know that’s not a good thing. But that’s the man I am right now, although I’m not sure I want to be that man anymore.”
She looked askance at him. “Those are strange words coming from you, Bo Davenport,” she said, unsure of what he was trying to tell her.
“I haven’t even told Hannah what I’m about to tell you,” he said, and bit his lip. “And maybe I never will.”
“What is it?” Lila asked, a little alarmed.
Bo pulled her closer to him. “The last time I saw Mom and spoke to her was right here. I had come out here to get away, to think, and she came here and chewed me out for what I’d done to you. Told me that I needed to change.”
“So your last words with her were angry words?” Lila asked, her heart breaking for him.
“No, not at all,” Bo said, and he stared past Lila and some indeterminate point behind her. “They were kind words before she left. But before that she’d been very, very angry with me. And I just wonder whether—”
“Don’t go there, Bo,” Lila warned.
Emma had died from a massive stroke. And while stress could have played a role, the doctors said it was something that just happened. But Bo wanted to blame himself. Over the past few days, he had hinted at these guilt pangs, and Lila had batted them away. And it looked like she was going to have to continue doing just that.
“She wanted you to change?” Lila asked, prodding him to talk. She began to lean into him more. She was still comfortable with him, both
physically and emotionally, and comfortable talking about difficult and sad things.
He laughed. “She told me I needed to listen to her advice, as well as Hannah’s.”
“Well, that’s true, especially when it comes to your sister,” she teased.
He smiled, but quickly became serious again. “Mom said I needed to give up on my expansion scheme. Said that if I didn’t change, I’d lose the two things I love the most in the world. We’re here in the middle of one of those things, and the other I have in my arms right now. And I didn’t need to be told which one was more precious and irreplaceable.” Bo cradled her face in his hands as the tears began to fill her eyes. “I love you, Lila, and I am so sorry for what happened. I know I need to change, and I promise you I’m working on that, but it will be hard for me. But right now I’m asking for your forgiveness.”
She looked into his eyes and saw a man in the midst of pain and transformation. A man that was trying to get it right, even through his mistakes and through a haze of anger and grief.
“You have more than that,” she said. “You have my love.”
Their lips met and gave each other several gentle kisses before Lila snuggled her face into Bo’s shoulder. She had missed this. And that meant she had gotten used to Bo; Lila wanted to be around him, expected to be in his company, and ached to be the object of his affections. She knew that her heart was crossing into a different territory as they held each other in the stillness and cold of that rickhouse. She was leaving behind that giddy and intensely physical phase of a relationship and moving into something more meaningful and permanent. Or at least that’s what she hoped.
And from what Bo had just admitted to her, he was traveling with her toward that same future. A future that she now looked forward to, even if she still couldn’t completely trust it. But that was light years ahead of where she had been emotionally before falling for Bo. Because before he barged into her life, she didn’t care and didn’t want to try to love again. Maybe her fear of loss was finally, incrementally, starting to recede. Or at least it had caught up with her fear of being alone.
Angels' Share (Bourbon Springs Book 3) Page 21