Chapter 33 #4
“It tells you I can want him ruined and still know what the club needs. Those aren’t the same instrument.
” I put my hand flat on the policy binder.
“I’m voting for restoration because Jax keeps final authority over civilian and family routes, because the policy held, and because his rank no longer depends on everybody pretending his instincts are orders.
And I want this board to revisit that separation every six months, on the record, so that when it stops working we find out from a calendar instead of from a hospital. ”
Wade lost, six to two. He didn’t walk out, and he shook Ryder’s hand afterward with the flat unhappy courtesy of a man who intends to be there when he’s proved right.
Ryder took the patch from Bear, made no speech, and kept his eyes on Bear the whole time, which left my vote outside his apology. Then he reported to Jax for the next route assignment under exactly the restrictions he had been working under without rank.
The following evening I found him outside the garage finishing Jax’s inspection sheet on two club trucks. He closed the clipboard and waited beside the Silverado.
“Walk me home,” I said, with the new key in my coat pocket.
He put the clipboard in the garage office and fell in beside me. At my porch he stopped below the steps.
I held the key out. “Deadbolt, front and back. The code is the four digits I’ll give you inside, and Mia can turn the code off. It doesn’t open the bakery, the Civic, the fire box, or my accounts. If I tell you to leave, you go before we discuss whether I’m angry enough to mean it.”
He didn’t take it until I put it against his fingers. “I agree.”
“One bag tonight. The rest comes Saturday, and I’ll open every box on the porch and say which room it goes to. Anything I don’t want in the house goes to the bunkhouse loft.”
“Saturday.” He said the limit back to me and left it there.
“You sleep in the bedroom because I invited you to live with me, not because signing papers bought access to my bed. If that changes, the guest room is there unless I’ve told you to leave the house.”
He put it on the ring that holds the Silverado, the Harley, the garage and the club keys, where there was no copy of the old one. “May I unlock the door?”
“Yes.” I stepped back and gave him room.
He climbed the steps and used it. The bolt went over with the heavy double click the new hardware makes, a sound I chose in a shop in August with a locksmith who kept calling it peace of mind. Ryder opened the door, stepped aside, and waited for me to go in first.
I moved to his right before I crossed the threshold. That place used to be automatic. He gave it to Jess because he knew I’d understand it, and I spent months speaking from his left until he had to ask me to repeat myself.
“Come home,” I said from his right side, hearing my own invitation and forgetting none of the doors I closed first.
He came in beside me and locked up only after I nodded, left the key on his own ring, put nothing on the key hook, and followed me toward the bedroom with his hands at his sides. On the table by the window the original game still stood where we abandoned it the night before the porch.
“Your bag’s in the bunkhouse,” I said.
“I’ll get it tomorrow.”
“Get it now. I want to watch you come back.”
Ryder looked at me long enough to make my eyes burn, then went out and crossed the road. Several men were inside. Nobody followed him out, carried the bag, slapped his back, or made his return a club victory. He came out with one worn duffel, and the room stayed available if I sent him back to it.
He let himself in with the key. The agreement gave him that much. He set the duffel down inside the door and left the empty side of the closet alone.
“Open it,” I said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Inside were jeans, shirts, underwear, hearing-aid supplies, toiletries, and one framed photograph from our second anniversary. No weapons, no club papers, nothing that was property meant to reclaim a room.
I picked up the frame. We’re on this porch in it, Ryder behind me with both arms around my waist and my ring showing where I have hold of his wrist. The woman in that picture had never heard of Jess. She thought the man smiling over her head would tell her if somebody put a rifle sight on her body.
“This one lives in the hall cabinet,” I said. “Not because I can’t look at it. Because she doesn’t know anything, and I’m not putting her over my kitchen table where I have to agree with her every morning. It stays there. That’s where it belongs now.”
“All right.” He carried it out to the cabinet and came back.
“Clothes on the empty side. Hearing supplies in the right nightstand. Club papers in the locked office cabinet after I approve the drawer. Guns follow the agreement.”
He put each thing where I sent it and left the duffel folded on the closet floor. His shirts took less than half the space he used to fill.
“We’re not finishing that game,” I said, and touched the abandoned queen.
“No.” Ryder lifted the white king out of its square and waited for me to open the box.
We took the pieces off together. I set the black queen into its slot while he laid the white king beside it, and neither of us tried to remember whose move had been next. When the board was bare we put every piece back on its starting square. The board was the same board. The game wasn’t.
Then I took his hand off the edge of the table and put it on my waist, and told him to close the door, and he closed it after I asked and not before.