Chapter 9: Say So

Wynn's POV

My mother dropped the clothes pegs in the grass.

She had one hand pressed flat against her mouth, and her eyes went from my face to Torin's and back to mine.

"No," she said. "No, no, no. You should not be here."

I ran.

I did not decide to.

My legs took me down the lane, and then I had my arms around her.

She was smaller than I remembered, and she smelled of lye soap and woodsmoke.

She held on so hard it hurt.

"Eleven years," I said into her kerchief. "Eleven years."

"I know."

"I kept the light on."

"I know you did." Her voice shook. "I kept this one on for you every night. In case you ever saw it."

I looked past her at the porch lamp, burning yellow in the daylight.

I could not speak.

"Where is Eli?" she said.

"Safe. At the Keep. He's eleven, Mom, and he reads everything, and he's better than he's been in years."

She made a sound that was not a word.

She sank down on the porch step with her hands over her face.

I knelt in front of her and held her wrists.

When she could talk, she looked over my shoulder.

"You brought her," she said to Torin. It was not a question.

"The Council sits in three nights," he said. "I had no choice."

"You always say that."

"It's usually true."

She wiped her face with her sleeve.

"Why didn't you come home?" I said. "Why didn't you send a letter?"

"Because the day I walked out of this valley, Theron Stroud would have had the road," she said.

"Every woman in these houses would have been a name on a list again."

She gripped my hands.

"I thought of you every day, Wynn. I thought about you every hour."

"That isn't an answer."

"No," she said. "It's the only one I have."

I wanted to be angry, and I was.

I was also holding her wrists, and I could feel her pulse, and I did not let go.

They gave us the empty cottage at the end of the lane.

My mother wanted me to sleep in her house.

I said I would in the morning, and she looked at Torin and did not argue.

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