He Shielded Her, So I Left the Club novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Window
Mara is shot and left on the clubhouse floor while her husband carries another woman out, and four weeks later that woman walks into her kitchen with photos and a claim while Dot's phone records.
The clubhouse window came in on a Friday night while I was carrying the president's birthday cake.
Three shots, and the glass went across the floor.
Something hit me low on the left side, and I sat down hard with the cake still in my hands.
My husband was ten feet away, by the front door.
I said his name.
Gage didn't look at me.
A woman in a red leather jacket was standing beside him with glass in her hair.
I had never seen her before in my life.
"Cor," he said. "Cor, are you hit?"
She wasn't, but she was screaming, and he picked her up and carried her out to his truck.
"Gage," I said again, louder.
The taillights swung across the broken window and were gone.
Dot Mabry went down on her knees next to me and put both hands over the hole in my side.
She's an ER nurse and the treasurer's wife, and she was shouting for towels before I understood I'd been shot.
"Look at me, honey. Don't you close your eyes. Look at me."
I looked at her.
The ambulance came, and she rode in the back and never took her hands off me.
The surgeon told her afterward that five more minutes would have been too late.
Gage texted the next morning: "Club business. Handling it. Rest up."
He didn't come to the hospital, and he didn't come to the house.
Four weeks later I was standing at my own kitchen counter, still not allowed to lift anything over a coffee mug.
Dot was in the pantry, because she had come to check my dressing and stayed to alphabetize my spices.
The front door opened with a key.
The woman in the red jacket walked into my kitchen.
"You must be Mara," she said. "I'm Delilah."
My side hurt all at once.
"Get out of my house."
"Gage gave me a key." She held it up and smiled. "He didn't tell you about Hattie, did he?"
She turned her phone around on the counter and swiped through photos.
In the first one, my husband had his arms around her pregnant belly.
In the second he was kissing her forehead in a hospital bed.
In the third he was holding a newborn in a yellow blanket and he was smiling at her wider than he had ever smiled at me.
The baby was a little girl, and she had his dark curls and his dimples.
In the last photo the girl was about four and not smiling.
Her eyes were pale gray, and Gage's eyes are brown.
I said so, because it was the only thing I could think to say.
"She has his father's eyes," Delilah said, quick and smooth. "Everyone says so."
"His father's."
"Hattie is Gage's daughter. He's been in love with me for years."
She tilted her head at me, almost kind.
"He only married you because his father picked you and I'd told him no. He moved you into that house to punish me."
I held on to the counter.
"The second I called about Hattie's fever, he was in his truck. And when the shooting started, who did he carry out of that room?"
"You," I said.
"Me. He never even looked back at you."
I had thought the taillights were the worst of it.
Delilah was smiling, so I kept her talking.
"Why come here?" I asked. "Why tell me?"
"Because you're slow, and I'm tired of waiting."
She leaned her elbows on my counter.
"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."
"They arrested him Tuesday. He hated the president."
"Nobody's going to say that to the wives but you. And nobody listens to you."
In the pantry doorway, behind her back, a small red light was shining on the edge of Dot's phone.
Dot raised one eyebrow at me and didn't move.
I took my hands off the counter.
"Say that last part again," I said. "The part about why he married me."
Delilah rolled her eyes and said it again, slower, and added the part about the key.
She enjoyed every second of it.
At the door she turned around.
"Sunday dinner," she said. "Gage is bringing me and Hattie to the club to meet his father. Be gone by then. It'll be easier on everybody."
"I'll see you there," I said.
She laughed, and the door swung shut behind her.
Dot stepped out of the pantry with her phone in her hand.
"Got every word," she said. "Start to finish."
"Good," I said.
My hands had finally stopped shaking.
"I want it played at Sunday dinner. In front of the whole club."
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