The Night He Left the Syndicate, I Took His Chair novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Table's Property

Hesketh tells her Orson traded her to the Table in his place; she refuses to be anyone's bookkeeper for life and says she'll take Orson's chair instead, and in the morning a driver is waiting outside Mavis's diner.

I got in.

Walking away from Percival Hesketh in the rain wasn't a choice anybody on Solmere Isle got to make.

The Lincoln smelled like leather and wet wool.

The driver pulled out without being told where to go.

Hesketh didn't look at me.

"Ten years," he said. "And he never once brought you to dinner."

"He didn't bring me anywhere."

"No. Orson keeps his things in drawers."

"He came to see me this afternoon," Hesketh said. "He wants to leave the Table."

"Nobody leaves the Table."

"Nobody leaves without my blessing. That's a different thing."

He turned his pale eyes on me at last.

"He bought it, Miss Rendell. Do you want to know what he paid?"

My hands were shaking in my lap. I put them under my thighs.

"Tell me."

"You."

He said it the way Mavis says the soup of the day.

"He says you've kept every dollar we've moved for eight years. The docks. The fuel. The ice house. The book."

The book.

A hundred and forty fishing families, thirty percent a year, one missed month and the boat was ours.

My father's boat had gone into that book before I ever touched it.

"Orson says you're clever and quiet and you have nowhere else to go," Hesketh said. "So you'll stay. You'll keep the books for the Table. You'll live where we put you. And you'll never leave the island."

"For how long?"

He smiled. He had small, even teeth.

"Don't be silly."

I thought about Orson leaning back against the headboard, saying "But you can."

He hadn't been talking about a life.

He'd been talking about a sentence.

"He told you that before he came home tonight," I said.

"At four o'clock."

So he'd already sold me when he tore my dress.

Something in my chest went very quiet and very cold.

"No," I said.

Hesketh's eyebrows rose a little.

"I'm not your bookkeeper," I said. "I'm not anybody's property. Orson doesn't get to trade me like a slip at the marina."

"Then what are you, Miss Rendell?"

"His chair is empty."

The driver's eyes flicked to the mirror.

Hesketh didn't move.

"I ran his chair for six years," I said. "Every fuel contract. Every dock fee. Every envelope that went to every harbormaster. He signed. I did the work. You've been doing business with me since before he got the chair. You just didn't know my name."

"You want Orson's seat at my Table."

"I want it or nothing."

He laughed.

It was a dry little sound, like paper tearing.

"Oh, he didn't tell me that about you," he said. "He said you were sweet."

"He didn't know."

"The Table meets Friday the twenty-third. Two weeks. Prove to me you can hold a chair by then, and the five of us will vote."

"And if I can't?"

"Then you'll keep my books for the rest of your life, and you'll be grateful for the job."

He tapped his cane on the floor.

The driver pulled to the curb.

We were outside Mavis's diner by the ferry terminal. The neon cup in the window was buzzing in the rain.

"Goodnight, Miss Rendell," Hesketh said. "Get some sleep. You'll be busy."

I got out.

The Lincoln pulled away before the door was fully shut.

I stood on the sidewalk soaked to the skin, with eleven dollars and a lighter.

Then I pushed the door open.

The bell jangled.

Mavis was behind the counter, wiping down the pie case.

She looked up.

She looked at my father's sweater and my diner jeans and my wet sneakers with no socks in them.

She set down the rag.

"What did that son of a bitch do?"

I opened my mouth.

Nothing came out.

She came around the counter and put both arms around me, wet and all.

"Okay," she said into my hair. "Okay. Sit down before you fall down."

She put a bowl of chowder in front of me.

I couldn't lift the spoon.

She sat on the next stool and lifted it for me.

"Eat, or I'll tell everybody you cried in my booth."

"I'm not crying."

"Then eat."

I ate.

Between spoonfuls I told her all of it.

When I said "But you can," Mavis put down the spoon.

"I fed that man for three years," she said. "Free. I should've put rat poison in his meatloaf."

"Mavis."

"I'm just saying. It's not too late. He still comes in for the meatloaf."

I laughed.

It came out like a sob, and then it was a sob, and she held my head against her apron and swore at Orson Garside in a low, steady stream until I stopped.

She made up the cot in the back room, the same one I'd slept on at nineteen when my landlady threw me out.

I lay there in the dark and flicked my father's Zippo.

Open. Light. Close.

Open. Light. Close.

Mavis woke me with a hand on my shoulder. Gray light in the window. The storm still going.

"There's a man outside," she said. "Been there an hour. Won't come in."

I went to the front window.

A black sedan was parked at the curb.

A tall man was leaning against it in the downpour, no umbrella, in a navy peacoat with the collar up.

Sandy hair plastered flat. A scar cutting through his right eyebrow.

He saw me in the glass and straightened up.

I opened the door a few inches.

"Who are you?"

"Zeke," he said. Rain ran off his chin. "Mr. Hesketh says I go where you go."

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