“You will,” Maria said firmly. “Hannah didn’t raise us to starve while we’re sad.”
Dalton snorted. “She’d haunt you personally.”
“She already is,” Maria said, glancing toward the hallway. “Every time someone leaves a coffee mug in the sink too long, I feel judged.”
Mac almost smiled.
The room felt fuller for a second. Not healed. Just held.
Footsteps sounded at the hallway door. Silas paused in the threshold like a man who’d learned doorways were power.Tailored shirt, cuffs unbuttoned just so. Hair too neat for this building. He carried a stack of folders and an expression that practiced concern in the mirror. If charisma had a smell, it would’ve been his cologne—expensive and a little oily.
“Morning,” he said, voice warm enough to melt butter. “Brought the vendor bids for the fundraiser, Mac. And I got the city to expedite the permit for the street closure. Should be in by end of day.”
Mac’s relief was visible enough to make me feel petty. “Good,” he said, clapping Silas on the shoulder like a man thanking a neighbor for bringing in the trash cans. “Appreciate it.”
“Always,” Silas said, holding his hands up likedon’t mind me, just helping. He took the seat at the edge of the table—that sly not-in-the-center, not-too-far-away spot that let you hear everything and be seen as little or as much as you wanted. He had a way of appearing exactly where the empty space was. The day Hannah died, he’d been there with paper plates and a schedule and the names of three different pastors on his phone, and nobody asked how he knew what we needed. You didn’t judge a man for handing you a life jacket while you were drowning. You took it and breathed, and the questions came later when your lungs stopped burning.
I didn’t have proof of anything. Not even a shape to my unease. Just a small prickle along the back of my neck when his eyes landed on me and slid away, like he saw me as part of a calculation, not a person. He’d always been around the edges—August’s oldest friend, the uncle who brought good cigars and bad advice. I had never paid him attention because men like Silas assumed women like me were standing too far back to matter. That’s how they miss us noticing.
“Meeting at three,” Mac said, flipping pages. “We’ll nail down the route and the press.”
Silas smiled. “I can invite Councilman Reyes—he loved Hannah. It’d be a good look.”
Maria’s jaw went tight. “It’s not a look.”
Silas spread his hands, apologetic. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” she said, and went back to her plate like cutting a man open with a fork was beneath her. I could tell Maria at least shared my sentiments.
Jackson’s knee pressed into mine under the table. A small, careful question.You good?I nodded once.Good enough.
The day moved the way days do when there’s too much to do and not enough of the right person to do it. People came by with envelopes and hugs and a hundred stories that started with “You know what she said to me once?” Men who had never cried wiped at their eyes, angry about it. Women who had never been welcomed anywhere but here sat at Hannah’s table and ate second helpings and laughed too loud because here they could. Kids ran through the side yard and got yelled at by three different bikers who then handed them popsicles.
August slept through most of it. When he woke, he asked for her like she’d gone to the store, and we told him the truth again, soft as we could. He nodded and stared at the ceiling and whispered something that made Dalton swallow hard and leave the room. One of us would tuck the blanket around August’s thinning shoulders and kissed the top of his head and pretended not to see how bones were winning.
Sometime after lunch, rain finally spat once and gave up. The heat came back angrier for having been interrupted. Jackson found me on the back steps, elbows on my knees, watching a line of ants transfer an entire feast crumb by crumb. He sat behind me and bracketed me with his legs, his chest to my back, his chin on my shoulder. I leaned into him like I’d been built for that angle.
“You holding?” he asked.
“Like cheap tape,” I said.
“Still works if you double it.”
He smelled like soap and road. His heart thudded steady against my spine. I could feel his breathing change when his thoughts did. He had tells now. He let me have mine.
“Meeting tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah. After the run. My sponsor wants me to share.” He huffed. “I hate sharing.”
“You’re good at it,” I said. “You make the hard parts sound survivable.” I turned my head so my mouth brushed his stubble.
He kissed the spot under my ear, a promise more than anything.
We stayed quiet until the shadows lengthened and the mosquitoes got cocky. Out front, engines rumbled and died in waves. The club gathered like weather. By dusk, the bikes were lined two deep, chromed bones catching the porch light. Men hugged like they were bad at it and pounded backs like they weren’t. The women settled into chairs with fans and secrets. Dalton stood on the porch and talked numbers and safety and respect into the air until it felt like a benediction. Mac added logistics. Silas drifted just close enough to place a hand on Mac’s shoulder at the end, like the punctuation mark a sentence didn’t strictly need.
The run was short and bitter sweet. A loop past the hospital where we’d waited for news that didn’t come. My father knew the surgeon who had tried to save her. I heard him tell Mom one night that the whole surgery team went quiet when the machines told them it was too late. Past the church with the hand-painted sign that said “Love is a verb,” and meant it. Past two storefronts Hannah had nagged into donating to every coat drive since forever. Past Momma Laverne’s who had shut down the restaurant for a week, opting to send plate after plate to the clubhouse. Her way of trying to fill the hole in everyone’s hearts.The air tasted like cut grass and gasoline. I rode behind Jackson, arms around him, forehead to his spine, the way we’d learned to breathe together when nothing else made sense.
People on sidewalks lifted their phones and their hands. Some put palms over hearts. Some cried. Every hat taken off and held over saddened hearts that mourned a woman who had changed this community so thoroughly.
