Chapter 22: Free Board

Tillie's POV

The crowd at Oakhill Park was bigger than the first Saturday, hundreds of people packing the grass.

The free board stood where it had always stood, with the corkboard bare except for one new poster, my face above the word WANTED.

Dean stood on an overturned crate in front of it, holding the organizer's megaphone with both hands.

He had shaved and put on a clean polo.

Shelby was handing out flyers at the edge of the crowd with her sunglasses on.

"...so I'm asking this community," Dean was saying, "to stand with a man whose mother has been taken advantage of."

"Tillie Dougherty robbed a sick woman and ran off with a stranger."

I walked through the crowd with Giles on my left and my mother on my right.

Phyllis walked behind me, and behind Phyllis came Carol on her cane.

People saw us and stopped talking, one row at a time.

Dean noticed the silence and turned.

For one second his whole face lit up.

"There she is," he said into the megaphone. "She came back. I told you. I told all of you."

"Everybody, step aside. Let her come to me."

I stopped in front of the crate.

"I came back to Dayton," I said. "Not to you."

I held out my hand for the megaphone.

Dean looked at it, and I could see him wondering whether four hundred people would let him say no.

The organizer, a stout man in a feed-store cap, plucked it out of his hands.

"Let her talk, Kittredge," he said. "It's her name on the poster."

He handed it to me.

I climbed onto the crate beside Dean, who had to step down.

"Last Saturday," I said, and my voice rolled across the park, "this man priced me at one cent on this board."

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