Some days were better than others, but she was in bad shape for the last year or two. I suspect she only hung on as long as she did for her family.
“She and Hank eloped.” She lowered her voice. “She was only sixteen, you know.”
My eyes flew wide. “No. I didn’t.”
“Her parents wouldn’t give their permission, so Hank took her down to Georgia. The age of consent was fourteen then.” Her eyes went wide. “Can you believe it?”
“No. It’s shocking.”
“I know.” She tutted her disapproval. “Hank was older. Twenty-one? Twenty-two? Her parents flat out forbade her to see him, so Hank and Mary saw gettin’ married as a way to solve that little problem.”
I picked up on of the wet towels and continue cleaning. “Why did they disapprove of him? I take it he hadn’t started his business yet, since you said it started with Mary. Was it just his age?”
“Well . . . you’re right. He hadn’t, and he wasn’t known for holding a steady job. It didn’t help that his parents were known as poor white trash.”
“Like Louise’s family?” I asked.
She paused before nodding—“Yeah,”—then made a half-hearted swipe across the table. “Mary’s folks had a little bit of money. They weren’t rich, mind you, but they were more than comfortable. Her father was a foreman at the lumber yard, and he had a hankering for her to wed Bart Drummond.”
“What?” I practically screeched.
Georgia laughed. “That was Mary’s reaction too. She couldn’t stand him. She went on a couple of dates with him to appease her father and Bart’s daddy, but he was a pompous ass even then.” She turned pensive, sinking momentarily into her thoughts. “Lookin’ back, I suspect she started datin’ Hank as a way to rebel against her father and take control of her own life.” A faraway look stole over her. “It may have started out that way, but there was no doubt she loved him. He worshipped the ground she walked on. He would have given her the moon if she’d asked.”
“I was surprised they lived in such a small house,” I said. “It’s nearly falling apart now.”
“That was all Mary,” she said, shaking her head. “Once Hank was makin’ money hand over fist, he wanted to give her something grand, but she insisted they stay in their tiny house. She wouldn’t even fix it up. Said it had been good enough for them in the beginning, when they were desperate for a home, and it was still plenty fine. I’m sure it was her way of provin’ her parents wrong, long after she’d buried them.”
“Did she have any brothers and sisters?”
“Oh, no. She was an only child. It broke her heart when she struggled to get pregnant with Barbara—even more so when she couldn’t carry another baby to term after she was born. She had several miscarriages, some of them quite late.” The painted tables forgotten, she sat in one of the small chairs. “If you ask me, the fact that her babies were buried on that land was the real reason she refused to move. She couldn’t bear to leave them. I still say it was a blessing she departed before Barbara did, but then again, Barbara might not have fled so far down that path if Mary had lived.” She gave me a sad look. “The grief’s what killed her. She started with Mary’s pain pills and worked her way up from there.”
Hank had told me that much. After witnessing his daughter’s decline, he was so against opioids that he’d refused to take pain pills when he’d come home after his leg amputation.
She inhaled deep, seeming to give herself a mental shake. “Anyway, Hank tried workin’ for the lumber mill and a few businesses in town. We had a lot of tourism back then. People loved takin’ road trips to small towns near state parks. But Hank wasn’t so good with customer service, and he got fired from the lumber mill once Bart’s father caught wind that Hank was interested in Mary. As for how he started his pot business, well, he grew it for himself and Mary, although he smoked it more than she did. Then he started sharing it with friends and realized he could make money from it.”
“Did Mary help him?”
She chuckled. “She organized the whole thing. Hank was a mighty fine-lookin’ man, but he wasn’t much with organization and follow-through. At least not back then. It all changed after the business started takin’ off. Mary was tryin’