“My sister’s in Missouri. Her husband runs a small place. She’s got room for us for a while.” Her hands go to her hips. Her jaw is set. She’s prepared for this conversation, and she’s angry that she has to have it. “I’m taking the kids.”
“And Jed?”
“Jed’s staying. For now.” Her eyes don’t leave my face. “He drove that route, Garrett. He drove it for four years. I didn’t know where it was going. He didn’t know where it was going. But now we know, and I’m not raising my children on this ranch while you decide what to do about it.”
I look at the kids.
“What have you told them?” I ask.
“That we’re going to visit their aunt. They’ll figure out more when they’re old enough.” She closes the truck’s tailgate. “I’m sorry. I know you’ve got your own fight. I just can’t be here for it.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Marsha.”
“I know I don’t. I’m sorry anyway.”
Jed comes back out. He sees me standing at the truck. He doesn’t stop. Walks to the tailgate, sets the last box, hugs his wife, kisses both kids on the head. Long enough that the gesture means something. He straightens up. He and Marsha look at each other for a long second that has twenty years of marriage in it, and then she opens the driver’s door, puts the kids in the back, and drives out.
Jed stands in the yard watching the dust until the truck turns onto the county road. Then he looks at me.
“I didn’t know, Garrett.”
“I know you didn’t.”
“She’s right about the kids. She’s not right about me.” He wipes his face with the back of his hand. “I’m staying. Whatever’s coming, I’m here for it.”
“Why?”
“Because I was part of it.” He meets my eyes. “For four years. I’m not running now.”
He walks back to the bunkhouse, and I stand in the yard for a long time after that, looking at the tracks Marsha’s truck left in the dust. My wolf is quiet. He has been quiet since the summonsarrived, and I have been telling myself it was resignation. It isn’t. The animal is watching something. I don’t know what.
I tell my mother on Monday.
She’s in the kitchen, bread dough on the counter, her hands buried in it. She’s been making bread every morning for thirty-four years. The kitchen smells the same as it did when Maren was alive, and the house was full, and my father was a man who made decisions.
“The hearing is Friday.”
“I know when the hearing is.”
“I’m going in person. Holcomb drafted the statement. I’m taking Dawes.”
She works the dough. Doesn’t look up.
“What’s the statement?”
“Good faith. A program I inherited. Cooperation with the council.”
“Good,” she says.
“Is it?” I ask.
“What else would you tell them?”
“I haven’t decided.”
Her hands stop. She lifts them out of the dough, flour on her knuckles, and wipes them on her apron. When she looks at me, her face is the face I’ve known all my life. The one who decided Maren’s funeral arrangements while my father sat in his chair and couldn’t speak. The one who ran the compound’s books when the ledger payments started coming in, the one who told Connermagic-blooded children hardly matteron the porch three weeks ago.
“Your father built that corridor to keep this ranch safe,” she says. “He built it the way a man builds a wall, and he never looked over the top of it because he didn’t have to. You built the wall higher. That’s what alphas do.”