Money, Guns, and a Merry Christmas novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Auld Lang Syne

My grandmother walked down the drive alone.

She didn't let me come.

I stood on the porch with Bennet and watched her go down between the ruts the surveyors had left, in her coat and boots, her braid over her shoulder.

She stopped on her side of the gate.

Deena stayed on the other.

I couldn't hear them.

I saw Deena hold out the envelope.

I saw my grandmother not take it.

Deena talked for a long time.

My grandmother listened with her hands in her pockets.

Then she said one sentence, and turned around, and walked back up the drive.

Deena stood at the gate with the envelope until her car got cold, and then she drove away.

"What did you tell her?" I asked.

My grandmother went past me into the house.

"I told her the fire hall opens at eight," she said. "And that I'll be in the front row."

The Pine Hollow fire hall had taken down the crepe paper and put up silver streamers and a hand-painted banner that said HAPPY NEW YEAR with the Y squeezed in at the end.

The trucks were parked outside in the snow to make room.

By nine there wasn't a folding chair left.

The whole town had heard about Mill Road by breakfast.

People kept coming up to my grandmother in the front row to hold her hands.

The man in the Santa hat had traded it for a party hat.

At ten o'clock the DJ turned off the music.

Deena walked up onto the little stage.

She wasn't in sequins.

She was in a plain grey sweater with her red reading glasses on their chain, and she was carrying the manila envelope.

The notary from the bank sat at a card table beside her with her stamp and her pen.

Deena took the microphone.

Her hands were shaking so badly the speakers picked it up.

"Most of you know me," she said.

Somebody near the back said, "We do," and it wasn't friendly.

Deena swallowed.

"I lied to my mother to get her house," she said. "And I lied to you about her."

The fire hall went silent.

My grandmother sat very straight in the front row and looked at her.

Deena's voice broke, and she held the microphone with both hands.

"The sheriff's office called me this afternoon," she said. "They want a statement about Spence Hargrave. I'm giving it to them on Friday. All of it. What I did too."

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