Chapter 5: The Table

On Wednesday night Dot got called in for a double shift and left me a dressing kit, a list, and Jared Slattery.

"He's done field first aid," she said on the phone, twice, to both of us. "Do it exactly the way I wrote it."

I sat on the edge of her bathtub with my shirt rolled up to my ribs.

The old dressing had pulled at the scar, and I couldn't reach the back edge without my stitches screaming.

Jared knelt on the bath mat with the kit open on his knee.

"This is going to be cold," he said.

His fingers were warm and very careful.

They moved along the line of the scar, and he peeled the tape back one inch at a time.

I watched the top of his bowed head.

His breathing had gone uneven, and his thumb stayed against my ribs a second longer than the tape needed.

I told myself he was only afraid of hurting me.

"Done," he said roughly, and stood up and washed his hands for a long time.

On Thursday I stood at the foot of the club's long table with the closing papers in my fist.

The back room smelled of old coffee and leather.

Eighteen patches sat along both sides, and the president sat at the head with his hands folded.

Gage was on his right.

He looked at me and then at the wall.

"State your grievance," the president said.

"My husband took twenty-six thousand one hundred fourteen dollars out of our joint account on Sunday and sent it to his girlfriend's landlord."

I laid the cashier's check stub on the table and slid it up to him.

"That was my savings. I put it in as our down payment, and he put the house in his name alone."

"It's marital money," Gage said easily.

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