I was told that sometimes you allow people to work here. Cleaning, perhaps. Filing papers. Helping with little things. She paused, visibly gathering her courage. "I don't need very much. Just some work, if you have anything available."
No one answered.
Not because her request was strange, but because nearly every man in the garage had already understood that she wasn't really asking for a job.
She was asking for a way out.
Logan studied her face.
What should we call you?
Margaret Bell.
Mrs. Bell?
Margaret is fine.
All right, Margaret. He glanced at the empty chair beside the table. "Would you like to sit down?"
She hesitated before nodding.
Duke pulled out the chair and helped her lower herself into it. She winced when she bent her left side, then quickly concealed the pain.
Jax disappeared into the small kitchen and returned with a glass of water.
Margaret accepted it with both hands.
Thank you.
She took one sip, then another.
Her fingers continued trembling around the glass.
Logan crouched slightly so that he wouldn't have to look down at her.
You don't have to explain anything you aren't ready to explain, he said. "But if someone has hurt you, we can help you figure out what to do next."
Margaret looked toward the closed door.
The expression on her face changed so quickly that Logan almost missed it.
Fear.
Raw, immediate, overwhelming fear.
She seemed to imagine someone standing on the other side, one hand on the handle, already knowing where she had gone.
Her breathing became shallow.
I need somewhere to stay for a little while, she whispered. "Just until I can work out what to do."
Duke pulled a chair closer.
How long have you been without a safe place?
Margaret's eyes filled with tears.
Not very long.
It was the answer of someone who had only just admitted she had no safe place at all, and the tears that followed were not loud or dramatic. They simply came, quietly, the way rain comes after a long drought, and she did not try to hide them anymore. She sat in the chair the big mechanic had pulled out for her, in a room full of strangers in leather, and she let herself cry for the first time in longer than she could remember, because for the first time in longer than she could remember, no one in the room was going to use her tears against her.
Logan waited until her breathing steadied. Then he said it plainly, the way a man says something he intends to stand behind.
Then you'll stay here tonight.
Rosa Delgado did not ask Margaret what had happened. She asked her what she needed, and when Margaret said she did not know, Rosa nodded as if that were a perfectly complete answer and went to work.
The back room of the clubhouse had been a storage space for years, a place of stacked boxes and spare parts and a cot that nobody had slept on since a winter when a member's brother had needed a roof. Rosa cleared it the way a woman clears a room for a guest she intends to keep. She swept the concrete floor and laid down a rug she fetched from her own truck. She made the cot with clean sheets and a quilt patterned in faded blues, and she set a small lamp on the crate beside it so that Margaret would not have to wake in the dark. On the crate she placed a glass of water, a hand towel folded into a neat square, and a bar of soap still in its paper wrapper, because Rosa believed that dignity lived in small, ordinary things, and that a woman who had been made to feel small deserved to be offered them without having to ask.
There, Rosa said, standing back with her hands on her hips. "It's not fancy, but it's yours for as long as you need it. The door locks from the inside. Here's the key. Nobody comes in without you saying so."
Margaret turned the key over in her palm. It was warm from Rosa's hand.
Thank you, she said, and her voice caught on the second word. "You are very kind."
We try, Rosa said, and smiled in a way that made the room feel less like a garage and more like a place where a person might rest. "Supper's at six. Jax is making stew, which means it will either be wonderful or we will all pretend it is. Either way, there will be bread."
When Rosa had gone, Margaret sat on the edge of the cot and looked at her hands. The trembling had eased, though it had not stopped entirely. She unbuttoned her sweater cuff and looked at the bruise on her wrist, really looked at it, the way she had avoided looking at it for days. Purple fading toward yellow. A hand's shape, if you knew what you were seeing. She did not cry this time. She buttoned the cuff again, carefully, and set her purse on the crate beside the lamp. Inside the purse were her house key, a handkerchief, a photograph of Henry in his work shirt, and eleven dollars. That was everything she had carried out of her own house, and the smallness of it struck her all at once, so that she had to sit very still and breathe until the feeling passed.
A knock came at the door, soft and deliberate.
Margaret? It was a man's voice, gentle. "It's Sam Reyes. Rosa said I might come and talk with you. Only if you'd like."