Page 23 of Angel’s Doll

Laughter goes around the table and includes me without requiring anything from me. I eat more than I’ve eaten in a week. Phoenix refills my plate before it’s empty, which I suspect is policy.

“Anyway, Cash married her at the courthouse four days after the fence,” Birdie says. “And this woman wore his ring two and a half weeks as a Mrs. before he stood up in the yard on Sunday and claimed her in front of everybody.”

“I was busy,” Sweetheart says. “I had a stepfather to bury in paperwork.”

Claimed. Victor never used that one. He used mine and ours and family, but they’re all the same knife in my memory. My fork stops moving.

Darling catches it. She sets her water down and speaks to the table, not to me, which is its own kindness.

“Around here a man doesn’t claim a woman quiet,” she says. “He stands up in the yard in front of every armed idiot he calls a brother and tells them her problems are his problems now. Then he waits. Sometimes he waits a long time, and the whole club watches him sweat. It doesn’t count until she says it back.”

“The prospects have pools going on which Sunday one man will stand up for his woman,” Phoenix says, chin toward the plate dealer.

“They do not,” Bandit says.

“I know a brother who put forty dollars in his pool himself,” Darling says. “It’s already club legend.”

I laugh, and it comes out steadier than I expect. Under my shirt the ring sits warm against my sternum where my hand has drifted again.

Sweetheart has her phone out before the laughter dies.

“Opening a new book,” she announces to the table. “Which Sunday. I’m taking a date range and a buy-in.”

“On who?” I ask, and every woman at this table looks at me with the patience you’d show a slow child.

“Eat,” Phoenix says pointing at my plate.

Angel fills the kitchen doorway.

He doesn’t come in. He stops at the frame with a mug in one hand and looks at Phoenix, one beat, asking if the table is open. She tips her head half an inch. Permission granted, or maybe just measured.

He crosses to me, sets the coffee next to my plate.

“No word yet,” he says. “You’ll hear it when I do.”

Then he’s gone, back across the lot, and the screen door claps shut behind him.

The table is silent for exactly as long as it takes his boots to clear the porch.

“Huh,” Birdie says.

“Well,” Darling says to her bread. “That was something.”

“He asked first,” Sweetheart says. “Did everyone catch that?”

“Eat,” Phoenix says. The table obeys, and everyone is smiling at their food.

I don’t know where to put this warm feeling I have, so it sits in my chest next to the ring. Two weights, both new, both mine. I drink the coffee, which is exactly how I take it, which means at some point he learned that without me telling him.

Ifind him at dusk on the back steps with a clipboard of gate rotations, because apparently vice presidents have homework.

I hand him a mug. His coffee, black, one sugar, which I learned the same way he learned mine. He looks at the cup, then at me, and takes it. He moves over a few inches on the step. An invitation. I sit.

“They feed you?”

“Twice. Phoenix considers a clean plate a personal insult.” I wrap both hands around my own cup. “Sweetheart threatened what’s left of my uncle’s company at lunch. I think it was a bonding gesture.”

“It was. She’s been waiting years for Halcyon to bleed.” He sets the clipboard down. “You holding up?”