My Son Is the Secret That Will Break Them novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Boathouse

At the family dinner Arlo's eyes flash gold at the river, Thea and Torin nearly touch in the boathouse where it began, and Talbot stands to claim the boy.

"Count what you like," I said. "Then count how many times you called in five years."

Torin kept his hand on the button.

"You changed your number."

"I changed it because of what was sent to it."

His jaw moved. "We aren't doing this in a lobby."

"We aren't doing this at all."

I stepped out of the elevator and left him holding the doors.

The dinner was at eight, at the riverside house, and I went because I wanted every one of them in a room where I could watch them.

The house had not changed.

The same long dining table stood under the same iron lamps, and the same river ran black beyond the windows.

At the head sat the Alpha, Torin's father and my mother's widower.

He had gotten thin, and his hands shook around his glass.

"Thea," he said. "You came home."

"I came to file a registry form."

He nodded and looked at Arlo.

Cora sat at his right hand and poured his water for him.

Talbot sat across from me in the same dark suit.

Rowan sat at the foot, eating bread and not looking up.

Torin took the chair at my left.

Nobody had asked where I wanted to sit, so I took Arlo onto my lap and kept my back to the wall.

For twenty minutes people said careful things.

Cora talked about the relief fund, and the Alpha said she worked too hard, and Talbot said she always had.

I watched Arlo's eyes drift to the windows.

He slid off my knee while I was answering a question about LA weather.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"I want to see the water."

"Stay in the yard."

"I will."

Torin was already standing.

"I'll go with him," he said.

"I'll go," I said.

We went out together without looking at each other.

The lawn ran down to the river in the dark, and at the bottom stood the boathouse, grey and low, with its door half open.

Arlo had reached the dock.

He was crouched at the edge with his hands on his knees, looking into the water.

"Arlo, back from the edge."

"There's a fish."

Torin walked down the dock and stopped beside him, and the moon was bright enough to show Arlo's face.

For one second his eyes went gold.

It was a thin, quick light, and it was gone when he blinked.

Torin went very still.

I didn't say anything.

A child's wolf doesn't wake before five, and nobody's wolf wakes at the sight of a fish.

Arlo yawned and leaned on Torin's leg without noticing he was doing it.

I took Arlo's hand and led him toward the lit windows.

He wanted his blanket.

I got him as far as the porch steps, and then I sent him inside to Rowan with a promise of bread and butter.

I went back to the boathouse for my coat, which I had thrown on a hook by the door when I was twenty-two.

Torin was inside.

He stood in the dark with one hand on the old rowing bench, and he did not turn around.

This was the room.

The same smell of cedar and river water and rope.

The bench he had sat on, after my mother's funeral, with his tie in his pocket.

The wall I had put my back against.

I knew every inch of it with my skin.

"You shouldn't be in here," I said.

"Neither should you."

He turned.

He crossed the floor in three steps and stopped with the bench between us, and he was close enough that I could smell the rain on him.

His eyes dropped to my collar.

I had pulled it up that morning, and I did it again without thinking.

"Don't," he said, low.

His fingers lifted toward my shoulder and stopped an inch away.

I stood there and let him be that close and wanted him to finish the movement, and I hated that I wanted it.

Then I thought of the duck.

"Are you going to check the water temperature again?" I said.

His hand dropped.

"That isn't funny."

"It's a little funny."

For a moment something in his face almost gave way.

Then a voice came across the lawn, bright and carrying.

"Torin? Thea? Dinner's getting cold!"

We walked back up the hill with a yard of dark between us.

At the house, everyone had stopped eating.

Talbot was standing at the table with his napkin folded beside his plate, and Cora's hand was at her throat.

Arlo sat in Rowan's lap with a crust of bread.

Talbot looked at my son.

He looked at me.

"Five years ago you left within a month of our pledge," he said, loudly enough for the whole table. "I've counted it. I know what I'm looking at."

"Talbot," I said.

"The boy is mine."

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