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She looks at Lenart.
"She's an owner," Lenart says. "It's her decision."
"Copies, then," the warden says.
Tav holds out his hand, and Grady gives him the master keys. All of them, a big ring, warm from his pocket. Then they walk him out through the kitchen, and he doesn't look back at any of us.
Afterward, it's just me and William in Lenart's office. The others have gone downstairs. William's packing up the laptop, slower than he needs to.
"It's good," I say. "Isn't it? We caught him."
"We caught a thief."
"Yeah." I pull my knees up in Lenart's chair. "That's what I keep thinking about. He stole for six years and nobody noticed. That's the whole point of stealing. You don't want anybody to look at you." I look at him. "So why would he send me a picture of my car from Dez's window and tell me to go home?"
"He says he didn't."
"I want to believe him. I don't know if I do." I rub my eyes. "He didn't even ask about the picture. It's like it never occurred to him."
William sets the laptop down.
"I've still got the photo," he says. "I'm still looking at the phone it came from. That didn't stop today."
"Okay," I say.
He comes around the desk, and puts his hand on the side of my face. It's cool, and then it goes to stone. He leaves it there.
"Okay," I say again.
Corinne finds me at the bar an hour later with a long garment bag over one arm and a pincushion around her wrist.
"I know it's a bad day," she says. "I'm so sorry about Grady. I've worked with him for twelve years." She shakes her head. "But Lammas is Friday, and if this doesn't fit, I need to know today."
She unzips the bag.
The dress is green. Dark green, the same color as the oath ledgers in Dez's office. It's simple. A square neckline, short sleeves, a skirt that falls to just above my ankles, no beads or sequins, nothing I'd trip on. I reach out and touch the fabric. It's heavy and soft.
"Oathkeepers wear green at Lammas," Corinne says. "It's in the charter. Dez wore a green tie every year and complained about it every year."
I turn the skirt over in my hands. "It has pockets."
"You're a bartender," she says. "I assumed you'd want somewhere to put a bottle opener."
I laugh, which surprises me, after today.
She helps me into it in the staff room and does up the zipper, and pins the waist where it's loose, and kneels to check the hem, talking the whole time about the ceremony. Thursday night at midnight, the minute it turns into the first of August. The council will be there, and the members will gather upstairs in the bar. I'll go down to the stone, say the words, and sign the ledger. Five minutes, she says. Ten if somebody gives a speech.
When she stands up, she looks at me in the mirror on the back of the door.
"Dez would have been so proud of you," she says.
I don't know what to say to that. I barely knew him. He sent a card with a twenty in it every birthday, and I still have every one, in a shoebox in Merek's closet. I don't know if he was proud of anything. I don't know if he knew who I was.
But he left me the Club. And because of that, I found the four of them.
"Thank you," I say. That's all I can manage.
That night I'm back on my stool, doing the rest of the inventory with the bar lights low, when Merek leans across the bar on his elbows.