My throat closed. I looked at my hands on the table. “I didn’t deserve that,” I said.
“Maybe not then.” Lindsay’s voice was steady now. “But you do now.”
Dutch stood. He picked up the cut and carried it to the wall behind the head of the table — the wall where the club’s history lived. Photos of fallen brothers, framed patches, the names of men who’d built this chapter. He’d already put a hook there. He hung the cut and stepped back.
Danny’s cut, on the wall. His name in the room where his brothers met. Not a memorial plaque. Not a photo. A cut — thething he’d wanted more than anything, the thing he’d died still asking for.
Dutch turned back to the room. “Anchor.”
“Anchor,” the room said. Every voice. One word. Fists hit the table and boots stamped the floor — one heavy beat that shook the room.
Lindsay was crying now. Betty shifted from the wall — then stopped, just for a second, and looked across the room to where Indira was standing. A question in it. Indira gave her a small nod. Betty went to Lindsay’s side and put her arm around her shoulders.
I stood. I didn’t plan it. I just stood, and I walked to where she was sitting, and I crouched beside her chair the way I’d crouched beside Danny in the dirt a year ago.
“He was the best of us,” I said. “He was patient, steady. He never cut a corner. He did everything right. He just did it slow.” My voice broke on the last word. “I’d give anything to watch him take twenty minutes on a rear wheel one more time.”
Lindsay put her hand on my face. Both hands. “He’s watching,” she said. “He knows.”
She let go. I stood up.
Dutch closed church. Brothers filed out slow, stopping to touch the cut on the wall as they passed — a hand on the leather, a nod, the quiet gestures of men who’d lost one of their own and were saying so the only way they knew how.
Handful was last. He stood in front of the cut for a long time, not touching it, just looking. Then he straightened the collar where it hung on the hook, the way you’d straighten a brother’s cut before a ride.
“See you out there, Anchor,” he said. He touched two fingers to his temple, held it for a second, then dropped his hand and left.
I walked Lindsay to her car. Betty had already said goodbye inside, holding Lindsay for a long time without saying anything, and now it was just the two of us in the parking lot in the late morning sun.
“Thank you,” she said. “For making sure he got his road name.”
“It was Dutch’s idea. The whole club voted.”
“I know. But you’re the reason they remembered.” She opened her car door, then stopped. “Tuesday. You’ll come?”
“I’ll be there. Yellow roses and all.”
She drove away. I stood in the lot and watched her go.
Then I went back inside to church. The room was empty now. Danny’s cut hung on the wall. I stood in front of it for a while.
“You earned it, kid,” I said. “You earned it.”
I stood there a while longer.
“You were the anchor. Then and now.” I put my hand on the leather. “You slowed me down. I hated it at the time. Turns out that was the thing I needed most — someone who wouldn’t let me skip ahead to the next plan, the next route, the next problem to solve.” I let my hand drop. “I’m here now. Present. Paying attention to the life I’ve got instead of racing through it. That’s you, Anchor. You taught me that and you didn’t even know you were doing it.”
I turned off the light and closed the door.
Chapter 36
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— Holden —
One year. I’d thought about how today would feel a million times. Wondered if it would hit different — heavier, sharper, worse. I woke up early and lay there for a while, waiting for it. The ceiling was the same ceiling. The quiet was the same quiet. I made coffee and it tasted like coffee.
Pete had moved the session to eight in the morning. I didn’t ask why. I knew why.
