Chapter 14: Sunday Table

The Bitterroot Wardens clubhouse sat at the end of a gravel road with forty bikes lined up in front of it.

I had counted those bikes every Sunday for nine years.

This Sunday I stood beside Boone's truck and counted them again, and my hand shook on his sleeve.

"You can still turn around," he said.

"I know."

"I'd turn around with you."

"I know that too." I took my hand off his sleeve and put it back, lighter this time. "Open the door."

He opened it.

The room smelled like beer, old wood, and lemon oil, and I had been the one to buy that lemon oil.

The long table ran down the middle of the room.

The bar stood along the back wall, and the bottles were in the order I had left them.

Forty men sat along the table, and every one of them stopped talking.

Nobody got up.

Amos Dawes sat at the head in the council chair with his reading glasses folded in his vest pocket.

Joelle sat beside him in the old lady's chair.

It was the chair with the high back, the one I had sat in every Sunday, and she had my mother's rose stitched across her shoulders.

She did not stand up either.

She smiled at me with her red mouth, and she turned a ring on her finger.

"Lena," she said. "How brave."

I did not answer her.

I walked the length of the table with Boone half a step behind me, and I looked at each man as I passed.