CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Halloway Bay buries its own the way it does everything else, plainly, thoroughly, the whole town turning out despite the cold, despite the fresh snow still banked along every road into the cemetery that overlooks the water.
The service is simple, the way my father would have wanted it, held at the small chapel two blocks from the diner he used to take me to as a girl, and I stand at the front between Gilda and Thane, my mother's tarnished cross finally polished and gleaming against my black coat, and I don't count anything at all through the entire service, not the wreaths, not the minutes, not my own breaths.
I just let myself feel every bit of it, present in my grief in a way I wasn't capable of being three years ago at a different graveside in this same cemetery.
I glance, once, toward the older section of the cemetery where Everhart's headstone sits, weathered now by three winters, and I feel something ease in my chest at the sight of it instead of the old, familiar tightening.
My father will rest near him, the two old friends reunited in the ground the same way they were inseparable through most of their lives, and there's a strange, quiet comfort in that continuity, one generation's grief finally settling into something like peace beside the grief that came before it.
Gunnar speaks, brief and rough voiced, about the man who built this charter from nothing and held it together through harder years than most people would survive.
Gilda sings the same low, old song she sang at Everhart's funeral, and this time I let the sound move all the way through me instead of holding myself rigid against it, tears falling freely, unembarrassed, held upright by Thane's arm around my waist and the weight of an entire community grieving alongside me.
Afterward, the whole town crowds into the clubhouse, the garage bay transformed with long tables of food that appeared, I suspect, from every kitchen in a twenty mile radius, the specific, generous chaos of a community taking care of its own in the only language it fully trusts, casseroles and coffee and quiet, steady presence.
I move through the crowd receiving condolences, memories, small kindnesses from people I haven't seen in three years and people I've only just met this past week, and by the late afternoon, the crowd finally begins to thin, leaving only the club itself behind.
Ravinia arrives partway through the afternoon, having driven up despite her own charter's demands, and finds me near the coffee station to offer her condolences in person rather than by phone.
"He sounded like a formidable man," she says, warm and genuine.
"I'm sorry I never got the chance to meet him properly.
" I thank her, and mean it, grateful in a way I wouldn't have predicted three weeks ago for the specific, easy kindness this woman keeps offering me despite everything complicated still sitting between us.
Gilda finds me near the oak table as the last of the mourners filter out, her expression carrying a weight I recognize instantly, the particular gravity of unfinished business that's finally ready to be finished.
"Your father asked for something before he passed," she says, quiet, private.
"A proper vote. Full table, full ceremony, not the hurried version we managed at the hospital that night.
He wanted it done right, in this room, with everyone present who should be present.
I think tonight's the night, if you're ready for it. "
I look around the garage bay, at the members still lingering, at Gunnar wiping down tables with more care than the task strictly requires, at Thane watching me from across the room with an expression that holds no pressure in it at all, just quiet, patient support for whatever I decide.
"I'm ready," I say, and I am, more fully than I've been ready for anything in three years.
Word moves through the remaining crowd quickly, and within twenty minutes the club has gathered properly around the oak table, full members only, the same configuration I remember from countless Sunday meetings throughout my childhood, except this time I'm standing in the doorway instead of sitting in my old seat, waiting to be called forward the way tradition demands.
Gilda stands at the head of the table, Thane beside her, and the room falls silent in the particular, weighted way it did the first night I walked back through that door, except this silence carries none of that first night's shock or grief.
This silence is expectant, warm, everyone present already knowing what the outcome will be and simply honoring the ritual of arriving at it properly.
I look down the length of the oak table, at faces that have watched me grow up, faces that watched me leave, faces I've only known for a matter of days, and I feel the specific, humbling weight of being witnessed this fully, this deliberately, by an entire community choosing to make space for me on purpose rather than simply allowing me to occupy it.
"Niamh Hargrove," Gilda begins, her voice carrying easily through the quiet garage bay.
"Daughter of this charter's founder, trained medic, and by unanimous acknowledgment of every member present, someone who has proven, time and again these past weeks, exactly where her loyalty and her competence actually lie.
I move that her seat at this table be formally, permanently restored, full standing, no conditions. "
"Second," Gunnar says immediately, no hesitation at all.
"All in favor," Gilda continues, and the response comes back instant and unanimous, a chorus of ayes filling the garage bay, warm and certain, not one dissenting voice anywhere in the room.
Gilda reaches into her jacket pocket and produces a small, worn brass nameplate, HARGROVE stamped into its surface, the same one that used to sit at the corner of the table my entire childhood, kept safe, I understand now, in a drawer somewhere for exactly this moment, three years of patient waiting distilled into one small, unglamorous piece of metal.
"This has been waiting for you," she says, crossing the room to press it into my hands, her eyes bright with tears she doesn't try to hide. "We all have."
I walk to the corner of the table, my corner, the chair scarred and familiar and exactly where it's always been, and I set the nameplate down in its old place with hands that are shaking, not from fear this time but from something fuller, harder to name, three years of exile finally, completely resolved in one small, deliberate motion.
I sit down.
The chair holds me exactly the way I remember, worn smooth in places by decades of use, my father's laughter still somehow present in the grain of the wood beside me even though his own seat sits empty now for an entirely different reason than mine ever did.
Around the table, the club settles back into its old rhythm, low conversation picking up, Gunnar already teasing one of the younger members about something trivial, the specific, ordinary sound of a family simply being a family again.
Dax, still sporting the last faint bruise from his splinted arm weeks ago, leans across the table with a grin. "Guess I really did talk you back into that chair after all. Somebody owes me consulting fees."
"I'll take it out of your restock duties for the next month," I tell him, and the table erupts into laughter, easy and warm, the specific, healing sound of ordinary teasing finding its way back into a room that's carried so much grief this past week.
Thane catches my eye from where he's standing at the head of the table, something fierce and proud and entirely unguarded written across his face, and I understand, sitting in this chair for the first time in three years, that the ache I walked back into eight days ago has finally, fully resolved itself into something whole.
I belong here. Not because anyone gave the seat to me. Because it was always mine, and I simply had to become someone capable of claiming it again.