Chapter 21: Two Sledgehammers

Tilda's POV

I went down to the cellar doors in my husband's coat with my hair still wild from the pillow.

A ring of wolves stood in the snow at a respectful distance, watching.

Beatrix was alone at the bottom of the stairs.

She had taken off her jacket in the cold. Her sleeves were shoved up and her palms were bleeding.

She swung a sledgehammer at the stone wall, and the whole cellar rang.

She had already knocked a chunk out around the iron ring.

"Bea."

"Don't come down."

"Bea, stop. You'll break your wrists."

"Good," she said, and swung again.

I came down the steps anyway.

I had seen that room only once since I was eighteen.

The smell of it did not frighten me now.

It was only a damp stone cellar with a rack of jam on one side.

I stopped a few feet from her.

"Mother left at dawn," Beatrix said, between swings. "I watched her from my window."

"She walked all the way to the gate with that one bag, and she never looked back once."

"I thought I'd follow her."

"I stood there for an hour with my coat on."

The hammer came down. A seam opened in the stone.

"And then I thought about this room."

"I carried your dinner down these stairs once, and I never looked around."

"I'd like to see what I didn't look at."

She stopped, panting, and let the head of the hammer rest on the floor.

Her braid was gone. Someone had cut it off, or she had.

She looked more like me than she ever had.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," she said. "I can't ask that."

"Good," I said. "I'm not going to."

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