Chapter 14: The Wife

Nobody picked up the raffle tickets.

The pink paper curled across the gravel in the wind, and three hundred people stood and watched it go.

"Now, that's enough," Dutch said.

He said it to the crowd, in the voice he used for church night, and he stepped forward with his hand out for the microphone.

Delaney flinched back against me.

Jesse moved between them without a word.

"Get him down from here," Dutch said to nobody. "That girl is not well."

"Sit down, Dutch," the sheriff said.

He had crossed the lot while we were looking at the tickets, and he stood at the edge of the flatbed with his hat in his hand.

"I'll be talking to you, Miss Rooke, when you're ready," he said to Delaney. "Not before."

Delaney nodded.

Her whole arm was shaking against mine.

Then the crowd parted.

Dutch's wife was walking toward the flatbed.

She walked slowly, in her flat church shoes, with her cardigan buttoned to the neck.

The lemonade ladies drew back from her on both sides, and none of them said her name.

She stopped at the tailgate.

She was so small that her chin barely cleared the edge.

Jesse bent and gave her his hand, and she took it and climbed up one careful step at a time.

She stood in front of her husband.

"Is it yours?" she said.

She did not raise her voice.

The microphone was in my hand, and it picked up every word.

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