Chapter 12: The Auxiliary Run

Hallie's POV

By noon on Sunday, three hundred people were standing on Birdie's gravel.

The Iron Pines had parked fifty motorcycles in a long chrome row along the back fence.

The ladies of the auxiliary had set up folding tables with pies and lemonade.

A banner over the diner door said CHARITY RUN FOR THE FLAGSTAFF FOOD BANK.

A flatbed truck sat in the middle of the lot, parked sideways, with a microphone on a stand.

The sheriff leaned against his cruiser with a paper cup of coffee.

I stood behind the diner kitchen's screen door and looked at all of it through the mesh.

"You don't have to do this," Birdie said.

"Yes, I do."

"You could sign the paper and let him win. Nobody would blame you."

"I'd blame me."

Jesse stood at my shoulder.

He had not shaved.

He hadn't slept either.

At four in the morning he had told me what Dutch said in his kitchen, with his eyes on his hands the whole time.

I had put my hand over his.

We hadn't said much after that.

"Delaney's ready," he said now.

I looked across the lot.

She sat on a folding chair near the pie table in a loose blue dress.

A plate of food sat in her lap, and she was not eating it.

Dutch's big silver truck was parked ten feet from her.

He was standing beside it with his wife, a small gray-haired woman in a church cardigan who was handing out raffle tickets.

She had a kind, tired face.

She looked up at her husband and laughed at something he said, and he put his hand on her back.

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