Chapter 12: The Moon Run

I was still kneeling on the hearth with the hairpin in my hand when Wylie came down the ladder.

He saw the empty shelf.

He didn't say anything for a long moment.

"Your mother," he said finally.

"My mother."

"Does she know what's in it?"

"She knows it's Gran's. She'll read every page looking for something to use."

Arlene came in from the truck with her hair flat on one side.

She looked at the shelf and swore.

"Then we go get it back."

"She'll say she's never seen it. She'll say I lost it. She'll say it in front of witnesses."

"So we do nothing?"

"No," Wylie said. "We do what we were going to do. I run tonight."

I went down to the packhouse anyway.

Mom was in the sunroom arranging dahlias for the feast.

One side of her hair had a tortoiseshell pin in it.

The other side didn't.

"Where's Gran's book?"

She looked at me with her soft, puzzled face.

"What book, sweetheart?"

I set her hairpin down on the table beside the vase.

"You dropped this."

She picked it up and slid it into her hair without even looking at it.

"Thank you. I'll see you at the run."

The moon run starts at moonrise on the long beach below the packhouse.

By dark, bonfires burned all along the shore.

Stonemere was there, all of it, and the early Gathering packs stood back by the trees to watch.

Ridgeback.

Two packs from the north I didn't know.

Dillon stood with his mother near the biggest fire.

Tilly stood with my parents in a white wool coat, laughing too loud.

Arlene and I walked down with Wylie between us.

People moved out of our way.

I could hear the whispers.

The lunatic.

The Hollow Pine wolf who doesn't have a wolf.

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