She didn’t know how long she writhed on the floor. Long enough that she became aware, eventually, of her owngasping, desperate breathing, of her heart struggling to beat. Of the quiet that was going to be her life now.
She made herself stand and was surprised when her legs held.
“Take whatever time you need,” Cora said.
“I can manage the walk to the car,” Tuesday said. “Thank you for your help.”
“June will need to drive you down the mountain.”
“I can certainly do that,” her grandmother said. “At last, I’ll get to see what’s so special about this SUV over the ones that cost less than a quarter of what it does.”
So her grandmother had looked it up. The thought made Tuesday want to smile, but she couldn’t quite manage it. Everything still hurt like fuck, but she somehow managed to put one foot in front of the other and stay upright.
Cora walked them to the door, and her last words were, “You should know that one doesn’t drive onto the MC’s compound without an invitation. If you want to talk to someone in the clubhouse without calling or texting first, you go to the restaurant across the street and let someone in a vest know who you want to see.”
“Thanks for that,” Tuesday told her. “For all of it. For not making it harder than it had to be.”
“You’d made your mind up before you wrote the letter. I’m sorry it came to this, but I truly hope it works out for you.” She drew in a breath. “If it does not, and if Kenny won’t take you back, I’ll welcome you into our little pack. There’s something to be said for someone strong enough to makethis decision and go through with it. Now, go get your man, so it doesn’t come to that.”
Her grandmother was quiet on the way down the mountain, at first, but then thankfully filled in the silence.
“Wow, it really does drive better, doesn’t it? I mean, not enough to spendthatmuch more, but I get the difference. It isn’t just a name-brand thing. It has more power, and the steering is easier. The balance when it goes around curves is quite different.”
When they made it down the mountain, she talked about the river, the difference between what it’d been before the dams were put in, and the calm river they were looking at. This was the most dangerous part of the entire river back then, called The Suck.
And all the while, Tuesday sat in the passenger seat and watched the trees and then city move past the window — and tried to locate herself inside the silence where the pack used to be.
She wasn’t the same person she’d been an hour before. Wasn’t the same werewolf. She was weaker, and she was alone. Her aura was hers, without the pack pulsing through it. She hadn’t even known how easily the energy had come to her. Had been part of her very being. A gift.
Her grandmother’s kitchen smelled like French onion soup before they were through the door, which meant she’d started it before they left.
She’d known her granddaughter would need comfort food even before Tuesday had known.
She sat at the island and watched her grandmother move through the kitchen with the efficiency of a woman who expressed love by feeding her family.
The steaks were perfect. The soup was exactly right. The mac-and-cheese was from scratch, with three cheeses. The kind that took an hour and was worth every minute.
She ate all of it, but still felt like someone wearing her own skin wrong.
She wasn’t Tuesday anymore.
Tuesday was a pack wolf who knew where she belonged, who had the rhythm and energy of her people running through her blood. This person sitting at her grandmother’s kitchen table… this person didn’t have a name yet. The woman who’d chosen, deliberately and with full knowledge, to cut herself loose from the only community she’d ever truly known. She was no longer Tuesday. She was a stranger.
“Have I made a terrible mistake?” she asked.
Her grandmother was putting away clean dishes, and she answered without turning around. “Do you love him?”
“Yes.”
“Does he love you?”
“He told me he did, and I knew he did before he ever said the words.”
Her grandmother turned to look at her. “Then the only mistake would be not finding out if love is enough.” She turned back to drying and putting away. “The rest is just the cost of finding out.”
Tuesday sat with that, wanting to get up and help, but her grandmother had already fussed at her — twice — when she’d stood to help.
“I think I’m okay to drive now,” she told her grandmother after two games of Scrabble.
