Chapter 23: The Porch

Odette's car stopped at our gate at four in the morning, with a Council warden at the wheel.

I was on the porch in Torin's coat with a mug of tea I couldn't drink.

She got out slowly, in the plain white dress, with a single bag.

She had no coat.

The coat I had left folded on the bus shelter bench hung on a hook inside our front door.

A Brask guard had found it, and Fenna had washed it, and I had never decided what to do with it.

I went in and got it.

When I came back down the steps, she was holding the iron bars of the gate.

She looked like the one who had been locked out.

"Imi," she said.

"Here."

I held the coat through the bars.

She took it, and looked at it, and her face crumpled.

"You kept it."

"It's cold."

"I was going to say I'm sorry." Her voice shook. "I don't know how it goes."

"I don't either."

She laughed, and it wasn't a good sound.

"You were supposed to be the one who couldn't do it. The family. Being the first one."

"I know."

"And I did it all right, and nobody saw."

"I saw you," I said. "I saw you at your birthday. I just didn't know what I was looking at."

She stood there with the coat held against her chest.

I had a hundred things to say.

None of them were kind, and none of them would help her.

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