Chapter 8: Larch Road

"No, thank you, Lorna," I said.

Her hands did not move.

She stood on the step below me with the green thermos held out, and her smile stayed where it was.

"Honey, you're not thinking clearly. You've had two terrible days."

"I'm thinking more clearly than I have in years."

"Then come to the house tomorrow," Lorna said. "I'll make it fresh."

"We'll sit down at the kitchen table like family. No Alpha, no council. Just you and me."

I should have said no.

But I wanted to see her face when I asked her why.

"Ten o'clock," I said.

Conall wanted to drive me.

I told him no, and he nodded.

At a quarter to ten he was parked at the end of Larch Road with the engine off and the windows down.

"I can hear everything from here," he said through the truck window. "If you say my name, I'm there."

"I won't need you."

"I know. Say it anyway."

I walked up the Haskells' drive alone.

It was a white house with green shutters and a porch swing.

For five years I had slept in the room over its garage.

Today I could smell it.

Floor wax and lilac soap and a pot roast from last night.

Underneath it all was something else, thin and sharp and green.

Lorna met me at the screen door in her apron with flour on her wrists.

"There she is," she said. "Come in, sweetheart. Sit."

The kitchen was the same as always.

Yellow curtains, a table with six chairs, a blue enamel kettle on the stove.

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