Chapter 5: Drink Your Tea

The housekeeper came back that afternoon in a taxi, with one suitcase and a plastic bag.

"They fired me at noon," she said cheerfully. "Rhoda gave me an hour to clear out of my room."

"I'm so sorry," I said.

"Don't be. I've been waiting twenty years to leave that kitchen."

She set the bag on the bed beside me.

"I packed your things. Your mother's brooch, your gardening gloves and your good boots. And this."

She took out the thermos with the ribbon on the lid.

I stared at it.

"I thought you'd want it," she said. "That woman has been carrying it up to your room since July. I never liked how she stood and watched you drink."

I had never noticed that.

I noticed it now.

Priscilla had stood in my doorway every Sunday with her hands folded, smiling, until the cup was empty.

I picked up the thermos.

It was still half full, and the smell that came out was sweet and green and faintly bitter.

"It's raspberry leaf," I said. "She said it was good for the babies."

"Then it'll do you no harm to let the healer look at it."

The healer took it into the back room.

I waited with my daughter against my shoulder and my son asleep in the crib.

Torin was outside on the porch, speaking in a low voice to two of his wolves.

Through the window I heard my own name, and then the word Black Fir, and then nothing.

The healer came back in ten minutes.

She set the thermos on the table between us and took off its lid.

"Raspberry leaf," she said. "And a good quarter cup of ground moonbane root in every pint."

My mouth went dry.

"You're sure."

"I'm sure."

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