Chapter 4: My Father Built This

"The fork isn't his to give," I said.

Beckett finally stood up.

"It was going to be yours. Dad was saving it for the Choosing." He shrugged. "Now it's hers."

Delaney leaned on the doorframe where my height marks were.

Little pencil lines, my father's handwriting next to each one.

Lainey, 4. Lainey, 5. Lainey, 6 and a half.

Her shoulder was covering the last one.

"Get away from that door," I said.

She looked at the marks, then at me, and smiled.

"These are cute. We'll paint over them."

"Get away from that door."

"Or what?" Beckett said. "You'll hold her under the creek?"

I walked up the steps.

He stepped in front of me.

He'd been taller than me since he was twelve, and he'd always used it.

"You don't live here," he said. "You don't live anywhere. You're a severed wolf in borrowed boots."

"Move."

"Make me."

Delaney had gone back inside.

I heard her footsteps cross the main room, past the woodstove, toward the back.

She opened the bedroom door without even looking for it.

"Beck, come look," she called. "The blue door's still blue. I love it."

I went still.

That door was at the back of the cabin, behind the woodstove, and you couldn't see its color from the porch.

My father had painted it blue for my mother because she said the cabin was too brown.

I'd never told anyone that.

Not even Lorne.

"How do you know about the blue door?" I said.

Delaney came back to the main room.

For half a second her face was blank.

Then she laughed.

"I looked, silly. I've been here all morning."

"You walked straight to it."

"Lainey." Beckett put his hand flat on my chest and pushed.

He didn't push hard.

He didn't have to.

I went backward down the three porch steps and landed on my back in the dirt.

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