Chapter 15: The Offer

Tom was sitting at the table when I woke, with the clipboard in front of him and his ears bright red.

"Good morning," he said, to the coffee. "The storm broke at four."

Astrid stood at the stove with her back to the room and her shoulders very straight.

"I slept like a log," Tom added, too loudly. "I didn't hear a thing. The stove ticked, and a dog snored."

"Which dog?" I asked, because I could not stop myself.

"Moose, I'd say." He took a long drink. "Definitely Moose."

I put my face in my hands, and Astrid made a small strangled noise at the stove.

The wind had fallen to nothing, and the window showed a sky so clean it hurt.

Tom waited until we had both sat down, and then he turned the clipboard around.

"This isn't the violation form," he said. "That one's in my pack, and it stays there for now."

"Then what is it?"

"The district approved a winter patrol dog team in October. It's the first one since Mae."

He looked at Astrid.

"The money comes with a deadline. If there's no team and no handler by January fifteenth, the line goes back to the regional office."

"You want to run it," Astrid said.

"I'd drown in it.

I steered Mae's team into a tree." He smiled without much humor.

"I need someone who knows the east channel, the old patrol route and how a team behaves when it's thirty below."

"Astrid knows all of it," I said.

"So did Mae," Tom said quietly. "And she's gone."

The words sat on the table beside the cookie tin.

Astrid did not flinch, but she set down her mug very carefully.

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