Chapter 13: The Study

The kitchen smelled of cold coffee and woodsmoke.

Someone had moved the chairs.

I noticed because I had sat in the third chair from the stove for twenty years, and now it stood against the wall.

Cassia had been rearranging my house.

I crossed the dark hall on the sides of my feet and did not touch the stairs.

The study door stood open a hand's width, with lamplight lying across the floorboards.

I stopped and listened.

There was one heartbeat inside, slow and wet in the chest.

Only one.

I pushed the door and went in.

My father sat behind the desk in a blanket, with an oxygen line under his nose.

He looked up, and his face did not change.

"You came," he said.

"You asked."

"I did not think you would."

"Where is Colt?"

"At the south pasture with the patrol." His mouth moved. "Cassia sent him. She sends him places now."

I stayed by the door.

"The drawer," he said. "I can't bend that far anymore."

I knelt at the desk and pulled out the bottom drawer.

The old rifle lay wrapped in a cloth.

Under it was the family book, a flat leather ledger with a cracked spine, and a folded half sheet tucked in the cover.

I took them to the lamp.

The ledger held every Radley birth back to the first Alpha, in a dozen different hands.

Our page was in Orrin's square writing.

Colt Radley, son, born four-oh-seven in the morning.

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