Chapter 24: First Place

I drew the window with a 4H pencil on a pad of grid paper, sitting on the edge of my father's bed.

He watched my hand the whole time.

He watched me find the corner of the frame first, and then the sill, and then the long line of the ridge beyond it.

I did it the way I have always done it, with the pencil held low and the lines laid down in order.

"You start at the edges," he said.

"So I know where it ends."

"And then you work in."

"Yes."

"I never knew that."

He was quiet while I did the ridge.

When I put in the small arrow at the north line, as I always do, he laughed under his breath.

"There," he said. "That's the one. The arrow. It's on every map in the valley, and for years I thought it was a stain."

"It's a habit."

"It's yours."

I finished the sheet and signed the corner.

Roxana Radley.

I held it up so he could read it.

He put one thin finger on the name and left it there.

"First," he said.

"First," I said.

He fell asleep like that, with his hand on the paper.

My father died three nights later, with the window drawing on his quilt and Colt and me on either side of the bed, and neither of us let go.

The pack buried him on the south slope next to our mother.

Jonas stood behind me the whole time, with one hand on my back, and he did not say a thing.

That was a year ago.

The Long Hall was full again tonight, and loud, and every window was lit.

It was our twenty-seventh birthday.

The cake stood on the long table, white, with a blue wolf in icing and a pencil laid across the top.

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