Chapter 10: The Alpha House

I didn't show anyone the silk.

I folded it into a square of tissue and put it in the inside pocket of my mother's sewing tin, under the bobbins.

Then I went to work.

The Alpha house sits on the lake road three miles out of town.

It's a big old timber house with a porch that runs around three sides.

The great room had a stone fireplace, windows full of gray water, and a table you could have laid a canoe on.

By noon that day it was a workshop.

The widows came by the side door in a line, carrying their machines like casseroles.

My mother's Consew went at the head of the table, still smelling of smoke.

The new wool order went to the mill in Duluth by phone, with a big piece of my eighteen thousand dollars behind it.

Kitto sat at the end of the table with both hands bandaged like a boxer, running the books with a pencil in his teeth.

"You can't hold a pencil," I said.

"I'm holding it with my face. It's an ancient technique."

Merryn ran the kitchen.

It turned out the woman who couldn't thread a needle could make pasties for fifteen people without looking at a recipe.

"Cador says you banned him from the kitchen at twelve."

"He put a fork in the toaster. Twice. On purpose, the second time, to see if it would happen again."

"Did it?"

"Science says yes."

By the fourth night, there were forty-one new robes on borrowed racks along the windows.

The widows went home at nine. Merryn went up to bed at ten.

I stayed.

I had one robe left to cut that I'd been putting off for two weeks.

The Alpha's.

Every robe was cut from my mother's cards. His card had his father's numbers on it, and his father had been a smaller man.

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