Chapter 21: The Order

"You can't be here," I said.

I stood on my father's front step with the painting under my arm and a dozen people behind me.

"Your father invited me." Chisolm smiled. "I came to see how the family agreement went."

"The order says five hundred feet."

"Then I won't come closer."

He tilted his head and gave me a long look.

"Wednesday," he said. "Your mother's hot shop lights its fire. I understand it's going to be a great occasion."

The foreman stepped up beside me, and so did two of the furnace men, thick-armed, saying nothing.

Chisolm glanced at them and got back into his sedan.

He drove down the gravel with his headlights off.

By the time the police car came up the lane, he was gone, and all they could take down was the plate.

"We'll issue a warrant," the sergeant said, writing.

"He's good at not being where he's supposed to be."

On Wednesday at ten in the morning, the old hot shop opened its doors.

It was a long brick building on the north lot with a roof of black iron trusses, and it had been dark for eight years.

My mother's friends had swept it.

The foreman's crew had relit the furnace on Monday, and fed it for two days, and the glory hole breathed orange at the far end.

A hundred and forty people stood in a half circle on the clean concrete.

My mother's oldest friend, in her white cap, held the blowpipe.

I wore my mother's leather apron.

Last night I had signed a note to buy this room back.

I had done it at the office table, with the Granger Family Trust's lawyer and the old woman with the cane.

It would take me fourteen years.

I had insisted on fourteen.

Rhodri stood at the edge of the crowd with his hands in his pockets.

Every time I looked at him he looked somewhere else, and I knew he was thinking of a ring.

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