He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Lawn

Mara finds the locks changed and her clothes on the grass, tells the whole street what Gage did, and Jared steps between them, until her phone shows her savings gone.

Dot drove me home in her Buick, and neither of us said anything for the first mile.

"I'm sorry about the cornbread," I said finally.

"Don't be. Nobody was eating it."

We turned onto my street at a quarter past five.

My front door was shut, and there were six black garbage bags lined up on the lawn.

I got out of the car slowly because of my side.

My key slid into the lock and wouldn't turn.

I tried it again, and then I leaned my forehead on the door.

"He changed the locks," I said.

"Today?" Dot asked, coming up the walk.

"Before dinner. He had it planned." I looked at the bags. "He knew I'd be put out. He knew the whole time."

I pulled the nearest bag open.

My winter coat was inside, and my hair shears, and a framed photo of my grandmother on her porch with the glass cracked across it.

My throat shut, and I let it.

Then I stopped letting it.

The couple across the street were out on their steps, and a man two doors down was standing at his mailbox with no mail.

Everybody on this street knew what a club truck looked like.

Nobody had ever asked me a single question about it.

I picked up a bag with both arms, ignoring the pull in my stitches, and set it down in the middle of the lawn.

"Hi," I said, to the whole street. "I'm Mara Teasdale. I live here."

The man at the mailbox looked at his shoes.

"My husband changed the locks and put my clothes on the grass while I was at his father's dinner," I said. "Four weeks ago I got shot in his clubhouse, and he carried another woman out of the room. The woman has a four-year-old daughter, and he's had them hidden for years."

The woman across the street covered her mouth.

"That's the house I paid the down payment on," I said. "I'm not going to scream. I just want you all to know it was done on purpose."

A truck turned onto the street behind Dot's Buick.

It was Gage's black F-250, and it came up the curb fast.

He climbed out, and Delilah got out the other side with Hattie on her hip.

The little girl was still holding her horse.

"Get inside the house, Cor," Gage said.

"The door's locked," I said. "I'm told you have a key."

His hand closed around my arm above the elbow.

"What are you doing?" he said, low. "You're embarrassing me."

"I did it with a speaker, Gage. This is only a lawn."

He tightened his grip, and my stitches pulled so hard I couldn't breathe.

"Let go of her," Dot said, in her ER voice.

"Stay out of it, Dot."

A motorcycle came down the street behind him, loud.

It stopped in the middle of the road, and the engine died.

The man who got off was tall, and he had a scar through his left eyebrow and a road captain's patch on his chest.

I knew Jared Slattery from two years of Sunday dinners, though he had never said more than ten words to me.

He was Gage's cousin and the club's quietest man, and he had done eighteen months in county for a trailer of stolen tires that had been somebody else's mistake.

He took his helmet off and looked at Gage's hand.

His eyes were pale gray, the same gray as the president's, and the whole family had them except Gage.

"Take your hand off her," he said.

"Jared, go home. This is between me and my wife."

"She's not your wife on a lawn with a bleeding side."

Gage's fingers opened.

I stumbled back against Dot, and she caught my elbow.

Jared looked at me for a second, carefully, and then at Delilah.

Delilah smiled at him.

He looked away first.

His eyes dropped to the little girl on her hip, and he stood very still.

Hattie held up her horse for him to see.

Jared's mouth moved a little, almost a smile, and then it wasn't.

"I'll take the bags," he said, to nobody in particular.

"You'll do no such thing," Gage said.

"They're her clothes."

"They're in my yard."

"Then I'm taking them out of your yard."

Jared bent and picked up two bags in each hand and carried them to the back of Dot's Buick.

He came back for the last two.

Gage watched him do it and didn't say a word.

I think that was the first time I understood the club was afraid of Jared.

"You left her bleeding on the floor, cousin," Jared said, with the last bag in his hand. "Half the room saw it, and the other half heard it today."

"You don't know what happened."

"I know what I'm looking at."

He shut the Buick's trunk.

"Dot, can she stay with you?"

"She's staying with me," Dot said. "Don't ask silly questions."

"Mara."

He said my name quietly.

"Do you need anything else out of that house?"

"The deed," I said. "My bank card is in my coat. That's all that's mine."

"I'll make sure of it."

Dot started the car.

I buckled myself in, and my phone buzzed in my coat pocket.

It was a bank alert, and I opened it before I could think.

A transfer of $26,114.00 had left our joint account that morning for Marlow's Landing Property Management.

My balance read fourteen cents.

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