Chapter 21: Permission to Be Useful

They knocked on Monday, at nine in the morning, on the clinic's glass front door.

The waiting room was full.

A woman held a beagle, an old man held a cat in a towel, and a teenager sat with a rabbit in a shoebox.

My boss stood at the desk with her arms folded and her reading glasses pushed up in her hair.

Through the glass I saw three tall men in jeans and plain work jackets, with no gold on their hands.

There were no black SUVs on the street.

They had come in a rented truck.

"Is that them?" my boss said.

"That's them."

"The casserole man?"

"Gareth. Yes."

"Hm," she said, and she unlocked the door.

They came in and stopped.

The room went quiet.

Then Thane got down on one knee in the middle of the waiting-room floor, between the rabbit and the beagle, and bowed his head.

Lorcan went down beside him, and Gareth beside Lorcan.

I stood behind the desk with my hands flat on the counter.

"Sorrel Linwood," said Thane, in front of a roomful of strangers and a cat, "we are here to ask permission to be useful."

"We have no seat and no pack," said Lorcan. "We gave the seats to the council."

"We are told you have a Great Dane," said Gareth.

Someone in the room began to clap, and the old man with the cat was the first to stop.

My boss lowered her glasses to her nose and studied them for a long moment.

"All three of you are the father of those kids?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said Thane.

"Sorrel, is that your explanation?"

"That's the explanation," I said. "Someday was today."

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