Chapter 7: My Mother's Room

I didn't tell Judd I was going.

He'd have tried to come, and every wolf on the mountain could smell Judd.

Nobody could smell me.

I left my truck at a pullout a mile below the packhouse and walked up through the pines.

It was eleven on a Wednesday night.

The patrol passed thirty feet from me on the ridge path, two wolves trotting nose-down.

One of them stopped and lifted its head.

It looked right through me and went on.

I'd spent five years being the girl nobody noticed.

Tonight I was going to use every minute of it.

The cellar door behind the kitchen had a broken latch.

I knew because I'd been meaning to fix it since June.

I went in, up the back stair and along the second-floor hall in my socks.

Every board that creaked, I'd stepped on a hundred times.

I went around them.

My mother's dressing room was at the end of the hall, beside the master suite.

The light was on under the door.

I opened it and stepped inside.

She was sitting at the vanity in a cream silk robe, taking off her pearls.

She saw me in the mirror and her hand flew to her throat.

"Liesel."

"Don't scream," I said. "If you scream, they'll kill me on your carpet, and you'll have to get it cleaned."

She didn't scream.

She turned around on the stool and looked at me.

My work jacket. My boots in my hand. The braid I hadn't redone since Monday.

"You're not allowed on this mountain," she whispered.

"I know. I heard."

I closed the door behind me and leaned on it.

"At five to midnight on Friday," I said, "somebody called the co-op from your phone and said the packhouse power was out."

Her face didn't change.

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