Chapter 11: Counting Months

I worked through the timeline twice in the cabin and a third time in the truck.

Ten and a half months back, Greta's husband came home.

Nine months of waiting. Then five weeks of a baby.

The sum was right, and it wasn't the sum Bram had been told.

Greta had begged me to get her out before the blessing, and I had told her no: after, not before.

She had taken that, and pressed a leather-bound book into my hands at the door anyway.

She shut the door behind her without another word, and the lamp went out inside before I reached the road.

Cade was waiting where he'd said, the engine running and the dome light off.

He took one look at me and said nothing.

"Drive," I said. "Slowly. Don't go home yet."

He pulled out onto the border road with the headlights low.

I opened the book on my knee and turned on the little map light.

It was a patrol log, the kind every guard carries, small and swollen with weather.

The handwriting was upright and plain.

The last entries ran over three weeks in the dead of winter.

Day one, the log said: Haldane wants the north pass crossed at dusk.

Snow is loaded on the east face. I told him I'd rather wait for the freeze.

Day two: Told him again, in front of two of the guard.

He says the Council reviews the border Friday and he wants the patrol on record.

Day three: He's put it in my name.

He says if I won't sign the order it's insubordination, and he'll find someone who will.

I signed.

I read it again.

I could hear the truck's tires on the gravel and my own breath.

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