Chapter 17: Sixty-One Thousand

We drove to the house at two in the afternoon, when Mom was still at the hospital.

Dylan parked at the curb and turned off the engine.

"I'll wait here," he said. "This one's yours."

"You can come in."

"I know. I'd rather you didn't have to introduce me to the kitchen."

I kissed him through the window, quick, and Linnea made a gagging noise in the back seat that was mostly relief.

The house looked smaller than it ever had.

Inside, it smelled of burnt coffee and the radiator.

The sewing room was off the upstairs hall, a narrow room with a machine under a quilted cover and a basket of doll heads on the floor.

I had never gone in there without being sent.

Linnea lifted the lid of the machine, her hands careful, and drew out a thin blue notebook with a cracked spine.

I did not open it.

I turned it over once and put it in my bag.

Under it, in the same hollow, was a scrap of dark red felt.

I pulled it out.

It was a stocking, old and worn at the heel, with a big white H sewn on the cuff in thick yarn.

My throat closed.

"That's Gran's," I said. "Hers, for me. It was on the mantel every year until I was twelve."

"I thought you took it," Linnea said. "Mom said you took it when Gran died."

"I never had it."

I held it against my chest.

It was a small, ugly, faded thing, and I couldn't put it down.

The front door banged below.

"Linnea?" Erik shouted. "Hanne? Whose rental is that?"

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