He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Sunday Dinner

Mara plays Delilah's confession over the clubhouse speakers, Gage claims the child anyway, and the president puts Mara out of the club with nothing until Dot stands up beside her.

I walked into the clubhouse at ten to four on Sunday with Dot beside me and her phone in my back pocket.

The new window glass was still clean.

Thirty patches were already at the long tables, with their wives and kids and a pan of cornbread going cold.

The president sat at the head with a plate in front of him, and he looked up when I came in.

"Mara," he said. "Gage said you were resting."

"I've rested."

A wife by the kitchen door turned her face away, and I knew which story she'd been told.

I went around the bar to the sound system.

It was an old amp the club used for birthdays and funerals, and I had set it up a hundred times.

I plugged Dot's phone into the cable and turned the volume to the top.

"What are you doing?" the president asked.

"Giving the table something to listen to."

Dot pressed play.

Delilah's voice filled the room, bright and pleased with itself.

"He only married you because his father picked you and I'd told him no. He moved you into that house to punish me."

Forks stopped.

Every head in the room came around to the bar.

"Hattie is Gage's daughter. He's been in love with me for years."

A kid at the end of the table asked what a Hattie was, and his mother clapped a hand over his mouth.

The recording rolled on.

"The wives all think the man who shot you was after you. Somebody had to explain why a stranger was in the club that night. I told them you brought the trouble."

The wife by the kitchen door stood up very slowly.

I looked right at her.

"They arrested the man who shot me on Tuesday," I said. "He hated the president. He never knew my name."

Her face went red to the roots of her hair.

"Delilah told me," she said. "She said you had his number."

"Delilah told you a lot of things."

The recording ended with the sound of my front door closing.

Nobody spoke.

The president had not moved.

His plate sat in front of him, and his hand was flat on the table beside it.

The front door banged open behind me.

Gage came in with his keys in his fist, and Delilah was on his arm in her red jacket.

Behind them walked a small girl in a yellow coat, holding a stuffed horse by one ear.

Gage was wearing his public smile.

"Dad, I need to talk to you about something," he started, and then he saw the room.

He saw the amp, and the phone, and me.

Delilah saw it a second later and stopped dead.

"Turn that off," she said.

"It's finished," Dot told her.

Delilah's eyes went around the tables.

She found the wives, and the wives looked back at her.

"She tricked me," she said. "That's a lie, she set me up. She cut it together."

"You're welcome to say it again," I said. "Slower."

Somebody laughed, a short ugly laugh, and was shushed.

Gage let go of her arm.

He looked at his father, and then he looked at me.

He did not look at the girl in the yellow coat.

"Mara," he said. "Not here."

"You carried her out," I said. "I was on the floor. You didn't look back."

"It was chaos."

"Dot looked back."

He opened his mouth and shut it.

His father pushed his chair back, and the legs scraped the whole length of the floor.

"Is the child yours?" the president asked.

It was quiet enough to hear the little girl's coat zipper move.

Gage's jaw worked.

"Yes," he said. "She's my daughter."

Delilah put her hand on the girl's head, and I saw her breathe out.

The wives made a sound all together, low and furious.

I took the ring off my left hand.

It had been tight since the hospital, and it came off easily.

I walked down the middle of the room and laid it on the table in front of the president.

I unbuttoned the leather vest I'd worn for two years, the one with PROPERTY OF GAGE stitched across the back.

I folded it and set it next to the ring.

"I'm done," I said. "I'm taking my savings and my clothes."

"You shamed a patch in front of the table," the president said.

His voice was flat and tired.

"Under club law you're put out with nothing, Mara. You know the rule."

"I know it."

"Nobody feeds you, nobody houses you, nobody gives you a job for a month. The table decides it."

"Then decide it."

He looked at his son for a long moment.

Then he looked at the thirty men at his tables, and none of them looked back at me.

"The table decides," he said. "She's put out."

A chair scraped at the back.

Dot got to her feet with her reading glasses swinging on their cord.

"Then you can put me out too," she said. "I never liked your cornbread anyway."

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