Chapter 10: Doubt

The boy didn't look away.

I'd forgotten that was something a person could do.

"I'm sorry," he said. "My sister says I'm not allowed to talk to you."

"Your sister is Sanna."

"She says you're careless and sad and you tried to take the credit."

"And what do you say?"

He scuffed a boot on the gravel.

"I was five. I remember the wolf's teeth."

His voice shook.

"I remember somebody's arm, and then I was in the grass, and it was dark, and somebody was screaming. That was you."

My throat closed.

"Nobody told me that was why you looked like that until last year. I found the report in my dad's office."

He lifted his eyes to my face, straight on.

"Thank you for getting in the way."

Niko stood absolutely still beside me.

I couldn't speak, so I knelt in the gravel and put my arms around the boy.

He smelled like soap and woodsmoke and wet dog.

He hugged me back, awkward and fierce.

Then he ran off down the drive.

I stayed on my knees.

Someone had looked at my face and said thank you.

I had no idea where to put it.

Orvo found me alone at four, in the empty hall kitchen.

I was scrubbing a stockpot nobody had asked me to scrub.

I didn't hear him come in.

I smelled his aftershave first.

"My son tells me you've been charming the boy," he said.

"He's twelve and he said thank you."

"He's a child, and he's soft." He leaned against the steel counter, with his white moustache and his sheepskin vest and his genial smile.

"I'm going to speak to you plainly, because you're the only person here with the sense to hear it."

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