Chapter 1

Chapter Four:

The Man Behind The Hatred

Two days of him watching me. I got tired of it first.

I found him on the back porch cleaning a rifle. The parts laid out on a rag, straight line, like he’d done it a thousand times without thinking. My breath showed when I exhaled. I stood in the doorway a second. He didn’t look up.

“You’ve got a look on your face.”

“Why do you hate my father so much you can’t say his name without your jaw locking up.”

He set the barrel down. Slowly. Wind moved through the yard behind me, kicked up dust off the gravel.

“You want the truth or something easier to carry.”

“The truth. Three years I’ve been waiting on it.”

He wiped grease off his hands with the rag, knuckles first, and stood up. The wag went black at the fingers. He tossed it on the step.

“Your father was my sponsor in this club. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“It means he vouched for me when nobody else would. I put his name on the line for mine.” His voice flat. There was something under it, though. “Fifteen years I called that man family.”

“Then tell me what happened.”

“He sold names to people who used them to kill three men I rode with. One of them was seventeen the day he patched in.” He said it the way you say something you’ve said in your head too many times already. His eyes was on the yard, not on me. “Your father handed that over. Then he vanished before anybody could ask him why.”

My chest went tight. I kept my voice level anyway.

“That’s what you were told. Not what happened.”

“I was there. I buried one of them myself.”

“You buried the result. You didn’t see the reason.”

His eyes cut to me. I didn’t step back. Somewhere off past the shed a dog barked twice and quit.

“There isn’t a reason good enough.”

“You don’t know that. You decided that.”

“I decided it standing over a grave, Mara.”

Hearing him say my name instead of Voss did something I didn’t have time to look at. I kept going.

“My father loved this club. Everyone here who actually knew him says the same thing before they catch themselves and shut up.”

“Loving something doesn’t stop a man selling it out when the money’s good.”

“You don’t believe that. I can hear it.”

“Don’t tell me what I believe.”

“Then answer it yourself instead of reciting a story you’ve told so many times you stopped checking if it makes sense.”

He crossed the porch. Two steps. His boots loud on the boards. Close enough I had to tip my head back to hold his eyes.

“You didn’t know him. Not the version that sat in these chairs. You knew a father who tucked you in and called it a night. I knew the man who let three of mine die to save himself.”

“So I take your word for it just because you say it with a straight face?”

“I’m supposed to take a stranger’s word, when she’s defending a man she hasn’t laid eyes on in three years?”

“He’s my father. That counts for something.”

“He’s a name you’re attached to. Different thing than knowing somebody.”

I felt that one. I didn’t let it show. I kept my hands loose at my sides so they wouldn’t ball into fists.

“You keep acting like I walked in here asking you to forgive him. I asked what happened. There’s a difference between the truth and a pardon, and you’re too angry to hear which one I’m asking for.”

“I heard you fine.”

“Then answer the question instead of putting his guilt in my mouth like you watched it happen.”

“I was there the week after. That’s close enough.”

“Close isn’t certain. You wouldn’t still flinch every time somebody says his name if it was.”

His jaw tightened, chewing on the words before he let any of them out. The rifle still sat on the rail behind him, forgotten.

“So that’s it. You figure I’m angry ‘because I’m not sure.”

“I think you’re angry because part of you already knows the story’s got holes, and staying mad at a name is easier than looking at them.”

“Watch it.”

“Or what.”

Nothing, for a second. The wind again, cold enough to raise the hair on my arms. Then something shifted behind his eyes not the same heat as ten seconds back, something slower.

“You’re not what I expected.” He said it low, like it cost him something to admit.

“What’d you think I’d be?”

“Somebody who’d apologize for her father the second I raised my voice. Somebody who’d fold.” He looked at me like a problem he hadn’t asked to have. “You’re not folding.”

“Would that make this easier for you?”

“Yes.”

That answer felt wrong in my chest, in a good way, which made it worse.

“I’m not folding just to give you a version of me that’s easier to hate.”

“I noticed.”

His voice dropped when he said it. Not angry. I felt the air between us change before I understood what changed it. A porch light buzzed overhead, one of those bulbs about to go. Then he caught himself jaw tight again, eyes somewhere off past my shoulder, like he’d walked into a room he didn’t mean to walk into.

“Go inside. It’s late.”

“We’re not done.”

“We are for tonight.”

He turned first. He walked toward the dark end of the yard like putting ground between us was the only move left. Gravel crunched under his boots the whole way, until it didn’t, until I couldn’t hear him anymore.

I went in and laid on the cot a long time, staring at the ceiling I couldn’t see. Somewhere in the building a door shut. Pipes ticked in the wall.

Somewhere between the word family and the word fold, his hatred had stopped sounding so sure of itself. I couldn’t point to the exact second. But I knew it happened. And I had a feeling he knew it too, and hated that worse than he hated my father’s name.