He Chose Her. I Left Carrying His Heir. novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: What I Want

"No," I said.

The word carried across the lot, and the old men looked at one another.

Floyd lowered the hand he'd been holding out.

"No to which?" he said.

"All of it. I'm not naming a Chitwood to your table, and I'm not sitting your seat." I came down one step so I stood level with him. "And my baby won't sit it either."

"Girl, it's forty years of..."

"It's a parking lot and eleven acres of pasture, and a child is not a deed." I heard my voice shake and kept going. "You made a boy carry what his father did. You made a man go to prison for it. And you want me to hand the same thing to my son or my daughter before they can walk."

Nobody spoke.

"The baby will be born into this club," I said. "That's what the charter asks. Fine. They'll be born here, and they'll be loved here, and the day they turn twenty-one they can walk in or walk away."

"The seat has to be held," the white-bearded man said slowly. "By somebody."

"Then you hold it." I looked along the porch at the old faces. "You voted Cade out in front of a hundred people. You can vote someone in. A Chitwood shouldn't sit it just because of the name."

For a long moment, the lot stayed silent.

Then one of the old men laughed, short and rough, and said, "She's right."

"She's right," said another.

Floyd closed his eyes.

When he opened them, they were bright and tired.

"Mama," he said, to the barkeep standing at my side. "Go to my safe, and bring me the charter."

She went.

While she was gone, the old men put it to the porch, and the white-bearded man took the vote with a show of hands.

He won it by every hand in the lot.

He didn't smile.

He only nodded to me, and then to Rhett, and he put on the president's patch Mama had taken off the wall of the office.

Mama came back with a brown envelope, and Floyd took out a single yellowed page.

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