Chapter 11: Two Women, One House

"Nobody told me," Cador said.

"I'm telling you." Tressa unbuttoned her white coat the rest of the way. "Daddy looked it up."

The red silk caught the firelight.

My hem. My seams. My year.

On the stairs, a door opened, and Merryn came down in a flannel nightgown and her man's cardigan, with her braid over one shoulder.

She looked at the suitcases. She looked at me on the cutting table, with my hair down.

She didn't comment on either.

"It's custom," she said. "It's older than the three of you put together, and it's stupid. But it's custom."

"Thank you, Merryn," Tressa said sweetly.

"The guest wing is at the far end of the house," Merryn said. "As far as I can make it."

Tressa picked up her suitcases and went.

Cador watched her go. Then he looked at me.

"I'll sleep at the boatyard," he said.

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't. There's a cot in the office. My father slept on it every spring."

He went out the front door without his coat.

I sat on the cutting table and heard his truck start.

By lunch the next day, the whole pack knew the Alpha was sleeping in his boatyard while the Luna-elect slept in his house.

By lunch the day after, Tressa had made herself at home in my workroom.

She sat in the armchair by the fire in my red gown with her bare feet tucked under her, filming the widows on her phone.

"Day two at the charity table," she said to the camera. "Look at them go."

Nobody looked up.

The eighty-one-year-old's foot never came off her pedal.

Tressa got up and wandered down the table. She stopped behind the youngest widow.

"Your husband was the one who went through the ice, wasn't he?" she said. "Daddy says he'd been drinking."

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