Chapter 9: Sunday Supper

The Hall was an old grange on the edge of town, with a tin roof and a long porch.

Sixty cars and trucks stood in the field beside it.

"Sunday supper," Gunnar said, killing the engine. "The whole pack comes. They'll know by smell what we did."

"The whole pack."

"Yes."

"Wonderful," I said, and smoothed my cardigan.

Inside, a hundred voices stopped at once.

The Hall was one long room with trestle tables and a stone fireplace at each end.

Sixty-one wolves sat at those tables, in jeans and flannel and church dresses, and every head turned.

I saw men with beards like Gunnar's and women with gray braids, teenagers, babies on laps.

I saw nose after nose lift, and I felt the air change.

Gunnar put a hand at the small of my back.

It was warm, and steady, and it said, I'm here.

"Everyone," he said. "This is Thora Asplund."

Nobody spoke.

An old woman at the nearest table rose, small and straight as a candle, in a gray wool shawl.

Her white braid hung to her waist.

"I am Maud Aske," she said, "and I have been waiting for you since nineteen fifty."

"That's very nice," I said weakly. "I'm sorry, I wasn't born."

"I know that."

Her eyes were sharp and amused.

She took my hand in both her papery ones and looked at my shoulder, where my collar had shifted.

"Hm," she said. "Almost."

"Maud," Gunnar said.

"I'm a healer, not a gossip." She patted my hand. "Eat, child. You're thin."

I am a size sixteen.

I let it go.

We sat near the fire.

There were roasts and baked potatoes and huge bowls of green beans.

The wolves ate like wolves, with their elbows out.

The noise came back slowly, and I was aware of being stared at.

Gunnar's thigh pressed against mine under the table.

He did not move it.

Halfway through the meal, Oskar Ferris stood up at the far end of the room and tapped a glass.

His camel coat was gone, and he wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled.

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