Chapter 28: The Vote

Church was called for six o'clock on Sunday, and every seat in the front room was filled by five.

The girl's fever had broken at dawn.

The clinic said an ear infection, and a bottle of pink medicine.

The girl and my son were in the back kitchen with the gray-bearded patch, a pan of grilled cheese, and a television turned up loud.

I sat in the second chair, with both brass plates in front of me.

Greet sat at the very back on a folding chair with her shotgun across her knees, and nobody had asked her to put it down.

Joost struck the gavel once.

"Two matters," he said. "The trust first."

He did not look at me.

"Truus."

Truus stood up with her glasses on and a paper in her fist.

"Page four of Pieter's instruction," she said. "I read it at three this morning, which is why I look like this."

A few men laughed.

"If the trustee is removed for cause, the trust passes to the mother of the grandson, to hold until he is twenty-one."

The laugh went out of the room.

"Pieter wrote her in as the second leash," Truus said. "He thought nobody would ever pull the first."

"The lawyer has been billed to this club for three years," Joost said. "He's in the sheriff's office today and he is not coming back."

"Hands to close his retainer. All of it."

Forty hands went up.

Even the old patch by the stove.

"Hands to hold the trust with the boy's mother."

Forty hands.

Joost looked at me then.

"Femke."

I stood.

It was the first time in three years I had stood at that table with something to say, and my knees were not quite steady.

"I'll hold it for my son," I said. "Here's how."

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