Anvil novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Silver Ring
"He said no club," I said. "He said no patch on that road."
"He said no patch." Tucker had his phone in his fist. "He didn't say no old man with an oxygen tube who raised me."
"Rhett will know."
"Rhett isn't here."
"If he finds out, Tucker, she goes somewhere we can't follow."
"Then we do it so he doesn't find out." He looked at me. "I told you I wouldn't do anything behind your back again. This isn't behind your back. Tell me no and I put the phone down."
The cellar was cold and smelled of damp stone.
Danny's box sat between us on the washer.
I thought about the man who had signed out my daughter in a loop of friendly handwriting.
"Call him," I said.
Dutch came in twenty minutes, alone, in his old truck.
He climbed my porch steps with the cane in one hand and the green tank dragging behind him on its little wheels.
Tucker met him at the door.
"Son," Dutch said. "You said it was Birdie."
"It is. Come in the kitchen."
He sat at my table, where Tucker had sat that morning with the box open in front of him.
Now the box was shut and the notebook lay in the middle of the table.
I had taken it out of the flour bin with floury hands.
"Dutch," I said. "I lied to you on Sunday. I'm sorry. My brother left me something and told me to keep it from the club."
"Did he."
"Read this first. Then I'll tell you the rest."
He took the notebook in both hands and opened it to the first page.
He read for a long time.
I could hear his breathing, wet and slow, and the little hiss of the oxygen.
His face did not change when he reached the initials.
His face did not change at the page with the Hollow Dogs and the Mill Road Motel.
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