Chapter 19: The Coats

Femke's POV

Joost came back to the shop at dusk with a folded paper in his fist.

He wore a look I had not seen on him in three years.

It was fury, but a quiet kind, the kind he used on a table of forty men.

He laid the petition on Greet's kitchen counter and smoothed it flat with his palm.

I read it standing up.

My son's birthday was in it, and the number of the Ludington record, and the words minor child of Femke Brandsma.

At the bottom was the yellow slip in a dead man's handwriting.

I want the boy.

My legs went soft, and I sat down on a kitchen chair.

"He knew," I said. "He knew in the hospital."

"He knew for three years," Joost said. "He put his lawyer on you and then he died so nobody could ask him why."

"He wants to test my son."

"He wants to set him at the head of a table and call him a trust."

Greet had come in from the porch with the shotgun broken open over her arm.

"Nobody tests anybody in this house," she said.

"No," I said.

I looked at the paper again.

"He can't take him on this, can he? It's just a petition."

"A petition gets a hearing," Joost said. "A hearing gets an order. An order gets a deputy on your porch."

"When is it?"

"The first Saturday of December, at the clubhouse. Three weeks."

"At the clubhouse."

"That was my father's instruction."

I thought of the long table, and the forty patches, and the chair beside his with no name on it.

"Then I'm not going," I said.

"Then they'll come here."

"Let them."

Joost looked at the kitchen, the lamp, the coffee ring on the table, my son's rain boots lined up by the back door.

"Can I see where he sleeps?" he asked.

I should have said no.

Instead I led him down the hall.

My son lay on his back in a bed too big for him.

One arm was flung up, and a stuffed catfish sat under his chin.

Joost stood in the doorway and did not breathe.

I watched his face, and I watched the exact second he stopped being afraid of his father's lawyer and started being afraid of himself.

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