Chapter 20: Not the Chair

"Seconded," called a woman from table nine.

"Seconded," called someone else, and then half the room was saying it.

I stood in the middle of the ballroom with my face on fire.

Four hundred people looked at me the way they had looked at me the day of the watch.

It was a different look now, and it frightened me more.

"Ms. Ketterman," the white-haired woman said. "Would you accept the Chair?"

I looked at Ramsay.

He was not smiling, and he was not asking me for anything.

He only stood there with his hands at his sides.

I walked to the podium, and the room made way.

"No," I said.

A murmur ran through the tables.

"I've worked here three months and I carry water for a living. You don't need a cart girl in a chair."

"I'd like to ask for something else, and I'd like it in writing tonight."

I put my hands on the wood.

"Eighteen years ago, when my father was fired, the club stopped paying into the groundskeepers' pension fund. It's still stopped. Birdie checked."

"There are groundskeepers on the ninth fairway on Monday who have been mowing this course for twenty years with nothing waiting at the end."

Behind me, the woman with the gray crew cut had come in at the back door.

She stood very straight, still in her work boots.

"Every dollar Stanford Lorring took goes back into that fund first," I said.

"His boat slip, his lake house, all of it. Before anybody else is paid."

"Reinstate every pension for every groundskeeper he cut. Start with the people who knew my father."

I took a breath.

"That's what I want from the Chair. Nothing for me."

For three heartbeats nobody moved.

Then the old member began to clap, alone, again.

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