Chapter 33 #3
The locks took most of an afternoon. The front and back doors carry a keyed deadbolt and a coded auxiliary lock above it.
Ryder’s key opens the deadbolt. His code opens the auxiliary.
Mia can void the code from her office in under a minute, and she cannot void the key, and the key is only issued while the code is live — so the day the code goes dark, the metal in his hand opens nothing, and the paper that gave it to him says so on its own page.
The third draft brought both attorneys into Mia’s conference room on a Tuesday afternoon, with me at one end of the table and Ryder at the other and Leah beside me because I chose her.
Ryder had marked one clause. Nine (c) allowed Mia to void the code on a credible third-party report of a violation, whether or not she reached me first.
“I object to nine (c),” he said, and put his copy flat where all four of us could see the line.
Mia didn’t look up. “Noted and rejected.”
“I’d like the reason on the record.” He turned the page toward his own attorney and then toward mine.
“A third-party report can be wrong. It can be a man who wants me out of this club telling you I raised my voice in a yard. I’d take that; I’ve taken worse and deserved most of it.
” He put one finger on the clause. “What I don’t take is somebody who isn’t Eden shutting down her home on a phone call while Eden finds out afterward.
That is exactly what I did to her in July.
She was the last one told. I’m not signing a paper that can do it to her again just because this time it points at me. ”
His attorney said something about the reasonableness standard and Mia talked over him.
“The clause exists so Eden isn’t required to adjudicate a threat at eleven at night with you standing on her porch. I have watched women talked out of their own protective orders in less time than this meeting has taken.”
“I know what it’s for.” Ryder didn’t raise his voice and didn’t look at me. “Write it so it protects the house without removing her. Give it a clock.”
Nobody had asked him for a solution. It was the only thing he asked for in eight months, and he asked for it in front of four people who could have said no.
I let everyone wait before I answered, because I wanted to hear my own choice before another lawyer turned it into a clause.
“He’s right that nobody else gets to decide for me, and you’re right that I may need one safe night,” I said to Mia.
“Emergency suspension holds the house while you reach me. Twenty-four hours, then it lapses unless I confirm it. It protects me. It doesn’t end my marriage on somebody else’s phone call. ”
Mia wrote it in and read it back twice and made both attorneys initial the margin. Ryder signed the final document at her desk the following Monday and let the one good correction stand by itself.
I signed after him and kept my copy under my hand while Mia completed the witness block.
“Occupancy begins only when Eden gives you the key and the code,” Mia said, sliding my copy toward me. “Until then you remain in the bunkhouse. The old house key stays with me as surrendered evidence. If she never hands you the new one, this paper gives you nothing.”
“Understood.” Ryder kept both hands beside his attorney’s folder.
“And if you make me use the suspension, I’ll choose the most inconvenient hour available to me.”
“Put Gage in charge of carrying my shit. He’ll drag it through mud.”
The civilian review sat that evening. I had a seat at that table because the permanent policy gives civilians one, not because I’m anybody’s wife.
Wade voted against restoring the patch. He has been patched longer than Bear has been president and he has fought the whole apparatus from the first meeting.
“Nothing personal in it,” he said, with his hat on the table in front of him.
“A Road Captain who has to get a signature from a woman with a clipboard before he can move a family down a county road isn’t a Road Captain.
He’s a dispatcher. You want to give the man his patch back, fine, but understand what you’re handing him.
I’d rather leave the office empty a year than put a name on a job we already took the teeth out of. ”
“The teeth went into a written policy that survived a live threat two weeks ago,” I said. “Three men with restraints, and nobody in that car was surprised by anything. That’s what the clipboard bought.”
“That’s what luck bought. You’ll find out which when it doesn’t work.” Wade turned his hat over. “And you’re the one person at this table he owes something to. You’re voting to give it back. That tells me the paperwork’s already doing your thinking for you.”