Chapter 19: The Only Family

The wives found me at the truck before I could get the door open.

There were six of them, in puffy jackets, still holding their paper cups.

The one with the gold chain stood at the front and looked at her boots.

She was the one who had slipped me the statement. It sat in my jacket pocket, with Kendra's name on my ten years of money.

"Thank you for the paper," I said. "I'll use it."

"We never should've let it go on," she said. "All spring. I'm sorry, Stephanie."

"You didn't do it."

"We watched it." She lifted her chin.

"Your stool at the end of the bar is still yours. Nobody's sat on it."

"Come Saturday night," said another. "We'll put the coffee on and you can tell us everything about that Rafe."

They meant it. I could see that.

For ten years I had stood at the edge of that bar and wanted to be asked in.

Now the door stood open.

The room behind it was warm and loud and full of women who had known my name.

"Thank you," I said. "I mean it."

"Then you'll come?"

"No."

The gold chain blinked.

"Not because of you," I said. "I'm not coming back to that room."

"I'm going to say what I came to say, and then I'm going home."

"Where's home, honey?"

"Bend."

I glanced at the truck. Rafe sat behind the wheel with the window up, looking straight ahead.

He had not said a word since the wall.

He didn't say one on Route 21, either, with the heater ticking and the wipers going.

He drove with both hands on the wheel, and his eyes never left the road.

"You're quiet," I said.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"How you looked in that ring."

I waited.

"They loved you," he said. "Every one of them. Half of them cried. The old ladies asked you in."

"They did."

"You could have it back, Stephanie. The bar, the wives, forty men who'd stand up for you now."

"It's the only family you've known."

"Rafe."

"If it's what you want, I won't stand in front of it."

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