Chapter 11: Inside the Bell

I took the tribunal notice to Rita before breakfast.

She read it while bread browned in the pan.

"Three days," she said.

"Damon's people searched the rear room. If the countercopy was there, it's gone."

Rita turned the bread with her bare fingers.

"Your mother didn't trust that desk near the end."

"Where else did she keep things?"

Rita looked toward the yard.

An old freight bell hung beneath the depot roof.

No train had used it in fifty years.

"I saw her climb up there once," Rita said. "She carried a canvas packet up and came down empty-handed. Then she told me never to ring it."

"You never looked?"

"I thought she was hiding a private keepsake."

I was laughing before I could stop.

My mother had loved eating in places where nobody could ask for a bite.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I didn't know it mattered."

We borrowed a tall ladder from the repair bay.

Valerio held it while I climbed.

"The iron bracket is loose," he said.

"I see it."

Halfway up, pain tightened through my left leg.

The pressure of the wolf pushed under my skin again.

I stopped and put my forehead against the cold rung.

Valerio looked up.

"I can climb instead."

"My hands fit through the slot. Yours won't."

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