Page 3 of Bone’s Choice

Exactly the way we liked it.

The club owned a good chunk of the land around us, which gave us room for the clubhouse and the buildings we used for the casket business. The shop was where the guys did most of the woodworking and custom orders. Beyond that was storage for finished caskets, lumber, equipment, and whatever else we didn’t want sitting out in the open.

Some of it was completely legitimate.

Some of it wasn’t. Again, nobody around here asked many questions.

There weren’t many people close enough to ask them anyway. The road from the clubhouse ran about two miles before you hit the nearest houses.

Two of them sat side by side and one belonged to my mother. The other had been empty for a while.

I didn’t know what was happening with that place. Didn’t particularly care, either. The old woman had died, and I’d stopped paying attention after that.

My concern was the house next door. Ma had lived there for years.

I’d tried more than once to get her to move closer to town and she’d told me to fuck off. Not in those exact words, because she was my mother and liked pretending she didn’t swear, but the message had been clear.

She liked her house. She liked the quiet. She liked having the club close enough that she could call whenever she needed something.

Mostly, she liked having me close enough that she could call whenever she needed something. The fact I was the President of an MC apparently didn’t excuse me from changing lightbulbs and moving shit around her garage.

I pulled a black T-shirt over my head.

Once the lumber was unloaded, I’d head over there. She hadn’t called and asked me to come by, which normally meant one of two things: she didn’t need anything, or she absolutely needed something but had decided she wasn’t going to ask.

I’d learned a long time ago it was easier to stop in than wait for the inevitable phone call where she casually mentioned she’d climbed onto a chair to reach something.

The woman was going to put me in an early grave. At least I knew where I could get a good casket and plot.

I snorted and grabbed my socks.

Peace View Cemetery was on the other side of Marshfield, and the Grave Prowlers had owned it for years.

Owning a cemetery made sense when you were in the death business.

Peace View was legitimate. Completely.

All we really had to do was deal with people buying plots, digging graves, and cutting the grass. Bull, Rowdy, and Dealer handled the cemetery for the most part.

The cemetery didn’t need to be dirty to be useful. Sometimes the best business was the kind nobody had to hide.

I pulled on my boots and stood, grabbing my phone from the bed.

My day was simple. Check the wood. Make sure whoever was unloading it didn’t fuck up slabs we’d waited months for, see if Myth needed anything, and then ride up the road and check on Ma.

After that, I’d come back, shower, eat, and see what the rest of the day brought.

Maybe take the bike out. Maybe drink a beer. Maybe do absolutely fucking nothing.

A deep horn suddenly blasted outside.

I glanced toward the window. “About damn time.”

The lumber truck was here.

I grabbed my cut from where I’d thrown it over the back of the chair the night before and shrugged it on. I ran my hands down the front, smoothing it into place, and caught my reflection in the mirror.

GRAVE PROWLERS MC.