He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Dot's Spare Room

Dot's spare room had a quilt on the bed and a cross-stitch on the wall that said BLESS THIS MESS.

I sat on the edge of the mattress with six garbage bags around my feet and read the bank alert again.

Fourteen cents.

"Dinner," Dot called from the kitchen. "Nobody is allowed to be tragic on an empty stomach."

Her husband sat at the head of her table with a fork in each hand, because she had handed him a second one and he had forgotten to put the first down.

He is the club's treasurer, a big gentle man with a gray ponytail who hardly talks at all.

He nodded to me when I sat down, and then he looked at his plate.

"I don't want to get you put out too," I said.

"They can't put me out, I do the books," he said. "They'd have to learn the spreadsheet."

Dot snorted and passed me the meatloaf.

"Tell her the rule," she said.

"The rule says nobody houses you," he said slowly. "It's my house, and my wife is the one who took you in. The table never wrote a rule about wives."

"That's a loophole you could drive a trailer through."

"That's the club."

I put my fork down.

"Gage took twenty-six thousand dollars out of my account this morning and sent it to Marlow's Landing."

Dot's husband went very still.

"Marlow's Landing," he repeated.

"Do you know it?"

"Gage's been signing for something over there for a while," he said. "I thought it was a bike swap."

He didn't say anything more, and Dot and I looked at each other over the salt.

"Can I call the table?" I asked.

"Any old lady can call it once in her life," he said. "Even a put-out one. It has to be a real grievance."

"Is stealing from your wife a real grievance?"

"Ask them Thursday."

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