Chapter 7: The Pearls

Wylie read the note over my shoulder.

"No," he said.

"I wasn't going to ask you."

"I know. I wanted to say it out loud. I've got five years of no saved up."

Arlene took the note out of my hand, read it, and spat on the step.

"That girl needs a dentist and a priest."

I closed the box and carried the pearls inside.

They were mine.

They'd been mine for seventeen years.

Nobody was trading me for them.

In the morning I walked down to the packhouse with the box in my coat pocket.

The kitchen at Stonemere is the real heart of the pack.

By nine the long counters were full of women, rolling dough and peeling apples and talking.

Mom stood at the big stove stirring a pot, the way she had every morning of my childhood.

The talk stopped when I came in.

I took the pearls out of the box and laid them on the flour-dusted counter in front of her.

The gold crescent clasp caught the light from the window.

Mom's spoon stopped.

"Where did you get those?"

"Tilly left them on my step last night. With an offer."

Two of the women by the sink looked at each other.

"You told me she gave them to a stranger," I said. "Within a week. I was eight, and I cried until I threw up, and you told me to stop being selfish."

Mom put the spoon down very carefully.

"You were a child. You'd have forgotten in a month."

"I didn't, though."

"Tilly loved them. She cried every time I tried to take them back."

"So there was never any stranger."

Mom didn't answer.

The old pack mother with the white braid was rolling pie crust at the end of the counter.

She spoke without looking up.

"Your mother-in-law gave those pearls to Freja in my kitchen, at her eighth birthday supper. I was there."

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