Chapter 19: The Foam Pad

Roz stood up with the loud one in her arms, and put her in Devon's.

"Hold her."

Devon took the pup in both hands.

"Roz, I..."

"Don't drop her. Don't talk."

She crossed the hall to Vera.

Nobody stopped her.

Vera backed up against the bench, with both hands over the cardigan.

"Please," she said. "I'm not well."

"You were well enough to wear Teagan's baby shawl on the porch," Roz said.

"Roz."

"Take it off."

"I won't."

Roz took hold of the cream cardigan at the neck and the hem, and pulled it over Vera's head.

Under it, a round pad of foam was strapped to her ribs with a belt.

It fell to the floor with a soft, stupid sound, and rolled.

The hall went completely silent.

I watched two hundred people look at a piece of foam.

Vera stood there in her slip, with her thin bare arms and her flat stomach showing.

Somebody at the back said, in a hushed voice, "Seven months."

Somebody else said, "She cried at my mother's funeral."

"She sat with my sister," said a woman by the door.

Vera turned in a circle, looking for one kind face.

"I lost my mate," she said. "You all know what I lost."

"My mate died and left me nothing. You all said you'd look after me, and nobody did."

"I had a room in the back of the pack house and a plate at the end of the table."

"So you took ours," I said.

I had not planned to speak.

I walked across the floor with my daughter's weight on my chest.

I stopped an arm's length from her.

Vera looked at me.

For the first time, there was nothing soft in her face at all.

"Orson promised me the Alpha's grandson," she said. "Mother of the heir."

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