Luna Lola: The Moon Wolf novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: The Stone Again

We crossed the Black Fir bridge at noon, the three of us, and nobody stopped us.

I walked in front.

Caelen came a pace behind me, and Harlan came behind him with a canvas bag for my mother's things.

On the Ashfall side of the river the pines were bare of their needles.

The meadow looked smaller than it ever had.

Wolves were standing in the doors of their houses.

They watched me go by in silence, and I couldn't tell if what I saw on their faces was shame or fear.

The baker lifted a hand and then dropped it.

The little girl I used to babysit ran out of a doorway, and her mother snatched her back.

"They're afraid of you," Harlan said, low.

"They're afraid of what they saw."

"What did they see?"

"A girl they said was nothing, coming back with a prince."

I went to the pack house first.

My room was exactly as I'd left it, with the bed unmade and my mother's cedar box on the shelf.

Nobody had touched it.

I opened the lid and looked at what was inside.

There was a hairbrush, a pressed flower and a photograph of two women laughing in a kitchen.

There was also a letter I couldn't bring myself to open.

I put the box in Harlan's bag.

"That's all?" he asked.

"That's all."

"You lived here twenty-four years."

"It was never mine," I said.

I walked out past the kitchen, where the chore lists were still pinned to the wall.

The capital D in the corner of each one swung low, in the same hand as the green notebook.

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