Anvil novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

In the back lot Lizzie tells Tucker the truth and sets three rules for seeing his daughter. Rhett, the club's friendly vice president, pays for the table, and Birdie hands Tucker a drawing of a man on a motorcycle.

I did not say another word until I had Birdie back in her booth with a plate of fries.

The day cook watched her for me. He didn't ask why.

Then I walked out the kitchen door into the back lot, and Tucker followed me, because I knew he would.

The wind off the river smelled like diesel and wet leaves.

I stopped by the dumpsters and turned around.

He stood three feet away with his hands open at his sides.

His face had gone gray under the beard.

"She's mine," he said.

"She's mine."

"Lizzie."

"She's mine, and she has your eyes. That's the whole list of things you get to say about it."

His voice broke on the next word. "Six years."

"Six and a quarter."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I laughed. It came out ugly.

"Tell you how? You left before the sun came up and never sent so much as a postcard."

I kept my voice flat.

"I was twenty. I buried my mother that same week."

"Lizzie..."

"My brother Danny stood next to me at the grave, because you weren't there."

"I couldn't be there."

"I know you couldn't. You were gone."

He took a breath to answer me and let it out again.

I watched him decide not to defend himself yet.

It made me angrier, because the Tucker I had loved would have argued.

"I want to know her," he said. "Tell me what I have to do."

"Nothing."

"Lizzie."

"You don't get to ask me what you have to do. I'll tell you what you can do."

He waited.

I held up one finger.

"You see her in daylight. At my house or at the park, with me there. Never at night."

A second finger.

"No patch near her. No bikes, no club talk, nobody from the Forge. You leave the leather in the saddlebag."

His eyes moved to the vest. He nodded once.

A third finger. This one shook, and I hated that it shook.

"And nothing between you and me. Not a hand, not a look, not a word you'd say to somebody you used to love."

I made myself finish.

"I am her mother. You are her father for as long as it takes me to decide if you're staying. That's all of it."

"That's all of it," he said quietly.

"Say yes."

"Yes."

A rumble turned in at the end of the lot.

A single bike this time, a black one, easy and unhurried.

The rider took off his helmet, and I felt my shoulders come down.

It was only Rhett.

Rhett Lattimore had the best grin in the Salt Road Kings.

He had used it on me every month for three years.

"Liz! I heard the whole street went quiet. I figured it was one of two things."

He swung off the bike and looked at Tucker, and then at the two of us standing by the dumpsters.

"Well. It was the second thing."

"Rhett," Tucker said.

"Brother."

They clasped hands and pulled in close, and Rhett thumped Tucker's back hard enough to make him cough.

"Seven years," Rhett said. "You look like hell. Dutch said you'd be in by dark. Why are you scaring my girl?"

"I'm not your girl, Rhett."

"You're my favorite waitress."

"I'm the cook."

"My favorite cook, then."

He dropped the grin to a smile and lowered his voice.

"Hey. Is this a bad time? I can take your boys to the Forge and get them out of your hair."

"They didn't order anything."

"Then I'll cover that."

I almost laughed.

He had a way of making a mess smaller just by standing in it.

"I'll bring your groceries by tonight like always," he said.

"You don't even have to be home. Birdie knows where the spare key is."

"I'll be home," I said.

"Course you will."

He squeezed my shoulder and walked inside to tell the two men by the door to wait for him outside.

Tucker watched him go.

Something moved in his face and was gone.

"He's been looking after you."

"He's been bringing me groceries. It's not the same."

"No," Tucker said. "It isn't."

I went back inside before either of us could say anything worse.

Birdie was sitting on her knees in the booth, humming over her spelling sheet.

She looked up when I came in, and she looked past me at the man behind me.

She had a drawing folded in her hand.

She had made it the last week of summer and carried it in her backpack ever since.

I had never seen her take it out for anybody.

"I made this," she said, and held it out to him.

It was a man on a motorcycle, with a beard made of scribbles and a very large helmet.

Over his head, in careful capital letters, she had written DAD.

"Mom says my dad rode a motorcycle and went away," Birdie said.

Her gray eyes held steady on his face.

"Are you the one who went away?"

I opened my mouth to stop it.

"Yes," Tucker said.

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