Chapter 12: Everything

"What about my father?" I said. "Did he talk too much too?"

Ottoline smiled for the first time.

It didn't reach anything.

"Enjoy your kennel, Mrs. Tarrant," she said, and walked to her car.

I stood on the painted line until Brand came and took my hand.

"What did she say?"

"Later," I said. "Get me home."

Sable drove. Nobody talked. Brand held my hand the whole thirty miles.

That night I sat on the cot and pushed my sleeve up.

The bite had scarred. A neat ring of small pale marks.

"I promised you," I said. "Before it scars."

Brand pulled the chair round and sat facing me with his elbows on his knees.

"Go on."

So I told him.

I told it in order, and I kept my voice flat.

He flinched once, at the twins, and once more at the tag.

I didn't cry until I got to the boy.

"He had your scales," I said. "Down his left arm. A tall collar kicked him into the water for it. He was two."

Brand had gone very still.

"His sister was on my other hip. I went in after him. And then I woke up in my dorm on graduation day."

The stove ticked.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

"That's insane," he said quietly.

"I know."

"I want to believe you. I just don't know how."

I'd thought about this for seven days.

"When you were sixteen," I said, "your father took a Registry salvage contract. His tag came back without him."

He looked up.

"Sable was twelve. You told her he died of hollows on the road."

"That night you buried his tag under the third pallet of this porch."

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