Chapter 5: The Cabin

It took me two days to learn how to close the bond.

The first night in my mother's cabin, I lay on a bare mattress with every nerve lit.

I could feel Duncan pacing on the far side of the creek.

He did not sleep.

Neither did I.

I felt each time he stood at the creek line and each time he turned around.

By the second morning I had a headache the size of the valley.

Orson showed up at seven with a bag of groceries and no mercy.

"Open your door," he said through the screen. "I brought eggs and bad news."

"What's the bad news?"

"I cook them."

I opened it.

He set a carton of eggs, a loaf of bread, a bag of coffee and a jar of pickles on the counter in a row.

"You didn't ask for the pickles," he said.

"I didn't ask for any of it."

"Then you won't mind if I keep the pickles."

"Orson."

"Fine. The pickles are yours. Sit."

He cracked eggs into my mother's iron skillet as though he had done it in this kitchen a hundred times.

Maybe he had.

"How's the shoulder?"

"Better. The wolf is back."

"I know. I could smell it from the road." He glanced at me. "Is that all that's wrong?"

I stared at the window.

"He can't reach me," I said. "I can reach him. I don't want to."

"So close it."

"I don't know how."

"You do." He slid the eggs onto a plate. "You've been closing it for two years. You've just never done it on purpose."

That stopped me.

I sat at the table and thought about it while the eggs went cold.

Then I tried it the way you close a door in a drafty room.

I put my shoulder against it and leaned.

The ringing in my chest dropped to a hum.

Duncan's pulse faded to something I could just barely feel, like a neighbor's radio through a wall.

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