I Set the Sheets on Fire, Then the Clubhouse novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Gavel

Cade's POV

Boone stood in the middle of the lot with no patch on his chest, and nobody breathed.

I had watched him run that club for nine years.

I had never watched him ask a room for anything.

"Everything she read out loud last night is true," Boone said. "I have nothing to add to it and nothing to take back."

He wasn't looking at me.

He was looking at Becky, who stood on the bench with the ledger against her ribs.

"I could have faced a vote," Boone said. "I didn't. I let my daughter walk into that room Wednesday alone."

A sound moved through the wives.

"She asked every man here how many knew," he said. "I sat at the head table and said nothing. That's the oldest lie I have, and I told it to her mother first."

He pulled the wrench-handle gavel from his back pocket and laid it on the oak.

"I resign the chair," he said. "I won't ask for it back."

The gray-bearded patch took a step forward, and Boone held up a hand.

"I'm not done."

He took a folded paper out of his shirt and set it on the table beside the gavel.

"The deed to the lot on Route 9," he said. "It's been in my name for twenty years. This morning it's in hers. Rebecca Pellam, signed and witnessed by Pearl."

Pearl lifted her chin from the edge of the crowd.

"Nobody here's going to rebuild a clubhouse on her land without asking her first," Boone said. "That's the only law I've left."

He looked at Becky then, finally.

"It isn't enough," he said. "I know that. It's what I've got."

Becky stood a long time on the bench.

I watched her face, and I knew every shift in it by then.

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