Chapter 24: Over, Under, Over

On the morning of the ceremony, Corbin sat on the edge of my bed with a comb in one hand.

A hair tie was clamped in his teeth.

Poppy stood between his knees with her back to him and her arms folded.

"You're pulling," she said.

"I'm not pulling."

"You're pulling and then you're apologizing. That's pulling."

He took the hair tie out of his mouth. "Show me again."

"Over, under, over." She reached up and moved his fingers through the curls.

"Like that. No, like that."

"Over, under, over," Corbin said grimly, and it came out as a lopsided tail.

Poppy turned and looked at it in the mirror.

"It's the worst one yet," she said.

"I know."

"I love it. Don't change it."

He looked at me over her head.

His eyes were gold at the rim, the small steady gold that was his own.

"I'm losing the war with a five-year-old," he said.

"Six," Poppy said. "In March."

"Six." He swallowed. "I'll have it by March."

I leaned in the doorway with my mother's earrings in my hand and watched them.

I did not want to move.

Hester came banging up the corridor in a green dress and cat-print shoes.

"They're all here," she said. "Ours, the forty from Ironridge who walked across the road, and Desmond's thirty."

"There's also a woman from the next valley who says you set her sister's arm."

"I did."

"Her sister brought a ham."

"Then she stays."

On the ridge, the Hunter's Moon was gone and the afternoon sun lay across the grass in long gold bars.

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