Chapter 4: The Back Bed

At dawn on Sunday I took the spade from the shed and drove it into the dead ground.

The first shovelful came up hard and grey.

The second came up with a worm in it, and I nearly laughed.

Rhett slept upstairs with his phone under his pillow.

I dug until the sun cleared the pines and my palms were split.

I did not stop, because every turn of the spade made my wolf lift her head.

"Clara?"

Pia Lund stood at the gap in the fence with her scrub top on under her coat and a paper bag in her hand.

She was twenty-four and the pack's youngest healer. She was also the only person in Cedar Hollow who still came to my back door for cough syrup.

"You're digging," she said.

"I'm digging."

"Rhett will have a fit."

"No," I said. "He won't."

She looked at my face, and she put the bag down on the fence post.

"What happened?"

I told her in four sentences. I told her about the roses, the shop, the stew and the cough.

Pia's mouth fell open further with each one. By the end she had gone red to the ears.

"That snake," she said. "That absolute snake."

"Don't say it loud."

"I'll say it as loud as I want. Six years I've snuck in here for your salves and you told me you couldn't have a sprig of thyme in the house."

"I know."

"You cried when I brought you mint tea at the clinic."

"I know, Pia."

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and started to laugh and cry together.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Swore Flowers Would Kill Him, Then Came Home Smelling of Roses from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.