When the Road Went Silent novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Text
A text lights up on Cade's phone at the clubhouse table: his mistress is pregnant, and it started before Christmas. Maxine sets her ring in his plate and walks out. Ward texts her that church is at eight and Cade means to put her out.
Sunday dinner at the clubhouse was eleven brothers, their women and two pot roasts.
I set the last plate down and took my seat beside my husband.
Nobody touched a fork.
Nobody ever did until I picked mine up.
Cade told newcomers it was an old club habit. He slid the good gravy boat to my side before I asked, the way he always did. I lifted my fork and the table started to eat.
Cade's phone sat face up between our plates.
It lit up.
I wasn't looking for anything.
I only looked because the name on the screen was Kayla Brisco, and I didn't know a Kayla.
The message under it was short.
"Seven days to your anniversary and she still has no idea. I'm eleven weeks along, Cade. Tell her this week or I will."
I read it once.
I read it again.
Down the table, the vice president stopped chewing.
Cade reached for the phone and I put my hand flat on top of it.
"Tell me she's lying," I said.
"Max, please." His voice dropped. "Not in front of everyone."
"Tell me."
"Let me explain it at home."
Nobody at the table was pretending to eat anymore.
At the far end, the sergeant-at-arms sat with his hands on either side of his plate.
He was looking at me, not at Cade.
"How long have you been sleeping with her?" I asked.
Cade said nothing.
"How long?"
"Since before Christmas."
Christmas.
I had made him a leather jacket liner that Christmas, and I had stayed up two nights to finish it.
He had worn it to her bed.
"And the baby," I said. "Is it yours?"
My voice shook on the last word and I hated that it did.
I waited for him to say no.
He looked at the tablecloth.
He gave me nothing at all.
Somebody's chair scraped back.
Boone Tackett, the vice president, cleared his throat and shook his head at me, and I knew he wasn't sorry.
The woman across from me, who had sat at that table for twenty years, put down the bread basket and stared at her lap.
"Max," Cade said, low. "You're embarrassing us both. Sit down and we'll handle it quietly."
He had a baby on the way with another woman, and I was the one embarrassing him.
I almost laughed.
Quietly.
I had been quiet for seven years.
I had kept the books and poured the beer and washed his vest, and I had smiled at every woman who ever hung off his arm at a rally.
I looked down at my left hand.
The ring he had picked out was a plain gold band, and it was warm from the kitchen.
I twisted it off.
It came over my knuckle harder than I expected.
I set it in the middle of his pot roast.
The gravy closed around it.
"I'm leaving," I said.
"You're not going anywhere," Cade said. "It's dark. Sit down."
"It's six o'clock."
I stood up.
The chair legs scraped and every head turned toward me.
They didn't turn toward him.
I noticed that and didn't know what to do with it.
"Maxine." Boone's voice was soft and fake. "Think about the club. Think about what your daddy would want."
"My father would have broken his jaw."
Gene Pellham had founded the Black Hollow Saints, and he had been dead four years.
Somebody at the end of the table made a sound that was almost a laugh.
Cade's face went hard.
"Watch your mouth in front of the brothers."
"Or what?"
He didn't answer.
I took my jacket off the hook by the door.
My hands were not steady, so I did it slowly.
Under my shirt, on its chain, my father's silver ring lay against my breastbone.
I had worn it every day since the funeral.
I touched it once through the cotton.
Then I walked to the front door.
Ward Hennessy, the sergeant-at-arms, got there first.
I hadn't seen him leave his chair.
He pulled the door open and held it without a word.
I looked at him.
His jaw was tight and there was a muscle jumping beside his eye, and he still said nothing.
"Thanks," I said.
He nodded once.
Behind me Cade said, "Max. Maxine. If you walk out that door you don't walk back in."
I stepped out onto the porch.
The cold hit me, and so did the gravel and the long line of bikes in the lot, all of them chrome and quiet.
I didn't have a plan.
I had my keys, my jacket and my father's ring.
So I went to my truck and I drove away from the only home I had ever had.
I got as far as the gate before my phone buzzed on the seat.
It was a number I didn't know.
I pulled over and read it with the engine running.
"Church is at eight tomorrow. Cade is calling a vote to put you out. Come wearing your father's ring. Don't come alone. Ward."
I read it three times.
I looked in the mirror at the clubhouse lights through the trees.
Then I put the truck in gear and turned the wheel away from town.
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