Chapter 22: Sunday

Conall burned the first loaf.

He stood in the lodge kitchen at noon on Sunday with flour to his elbows.

He held a pan of black cinnamon bread.

"It was the oven," he said.

"You set it for broil."

"It said broil first."

"For the crust. For two minutes." I took the pan from him and tipped the loaf into the trash. "You walked away to answer the door."

"Your friend was at the door."

"My friend has been at the door every day for ten years."

Penny put her head in from the hall. "I heard that. I'm very proud of the door."

I was laughing too hard to scold either of them.

My own loaves were rising under towels on every counter, twelve of them, fat and golden, with sugar crusts.

My hands remembered the dough before I did.

I had been eight the last time I stood at a counter, and the flour on my arms felt like coming home.

By five o'clock the long table in the hall was set for twenty.

I had asked for the oak one from the council room. I wanted a table where everybody could see everybody.

Penny sat on my right in a sweater with a reindeer on it. Conall sat on my left.

The old healer had come down off the ridge in his good coat.

For the first time in three years he sat in the lodge, with his cane hooked on his chair.

The elder sat at the foot, small and stooped, with his napkin tucked into his collar.

Bronwyn came in last, snow on her shoulders and a suitcase waiting in her car.

"I leave at dawn," she said. "I wanted one Sunday."

I pulled out the chair beside Conall's.

"You get the good chair," I said. "The one by the fire."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Never Noticed I Stopped Talking, Until My Wolf Woke from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.