My Alpha Mate Secretly Got My Sister Pregnant novel · Chapter 36 of 48

Chapter 36: Three Weeks

On the twenty-eighth of May my father crossed the bridge onto Ironpine land for the first time in his life.

He came on foot, at ten in the morning, in a clean shirt.

The patrol at the west end walked him up the gravel road to the pack house.

I met him in the long room.

I had Jed on my shoulder, damp from his bath, smelling like the healer's oatmeal soap.

My father stopped inside the door.

He looked at the fireplace, the scarred pine table, the boots lined up along the wall.

He didn't look at Jed.

"I've come to see your sister," he said.

"She's in the infirmary."

"I know where she is. Everybody in the valley knows where she is." He turned his hat in his hands. "I'm asking you."

The eldest's word let family visit.

I could have made him stand there a while.

I didn't want him in the room that long.

"Ten minutes," I said. "My mother's with her."

"Your mother."

"She lives here now."

He took that.

Jed made a small sound against my neck and stretched both fists out.

"His name's Jed," I said.

My father's jaw moved.

He didn't say it back.

He walked past me toward the hall that led to the infirmary, and halfway across the long room he stopped dead.

Above the fireplace, where there had been a deer skull and a calendar from the feed store, there was a photograph now.

Wyatt had taken it out of a drawer the day after the naming.

He'd hung it himself and hadn't said a word about it.

A big fair man stood on a riverbank, laughing at whoever held the camera.

He had a fishing rod over his shoulder and a fish too small to be proud of.

My father stood in front of it.

He was very still.

"Who's that?" he said, though he knew.

"Jed Strand."

My father put his right hand in his pocket.

Then he walked on down the hall without another word and went in to Lacey.

I followed as far as the door.

Through it I watched my mother stand up and go to the window, so she wouldn't have to be near him.

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