Chapter 25: The Eve

"Read it again," Vidar said.

His eyes were still shut.

His heart had sped up under my hand.

I read it again, quieter.

"He's read that line," he said. "He was twelve. He read every line."

"Then why tell me to stand at the edge?"

"Because he wanted you to believe you had to." He sat up. "And you just read it out loud in a wolf house."

"So he knows I know," I said.

"So he won't try to keep you out of the circle," Vidar said. "He'll try to keep you away from the point."

On the morning of the twenty-ninth, Arne drove up the private road with a garment bag hanging in his back window.

He carried it across the courtyard.

The pack's children followed him to the steps in a line, because he was handing out licorice without looking.

I met him in the hall.

"What's that?"

"Your mother's," he said.

I stopped.

He unzipped the bag an inch, and I saw white cotton lace gone the color of cream.

"She gave it to me the spring she got sick," Arne said. "She said you'd want to throw it out, because of your dad."

"She said don't let you."

"He left."

"The dress didn't." He cleared his throat. "That's what she said. Word for word."

I put my hand on the bag.

It smelled like her cedar closet in the blue house, and under that, faintly, like her.

"She said to give it to you when you found somebody worth it," Arne said. "Not before."

"So I've been sitting on it seven years, and I'm not sitting on it anymore."

"Arne."

"And I want to walk you," he said gruffly. "Down whatever aisle a bunch of wolves have. Your mother can't."

"I'm next in line, and I'm fat, but I'm sturdy."

I couldn't say anything.

I put my arms around him instead, and his big belly got in the way, and he patted my back.

"That's a yes," he said into my hair. "I'm taking that as a yes."

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