A Wolf Apart

by Maria Vale

  She suds up the sock. Then, without lifting her head, she says quietly, “Or you could stay here.” She hangs the clean sock from a clamp on the backsplash. “Just…friends.”

  She turns around, leaning against the counter so we are both facing in the same direction, next to each other.

  I rub the corners of my mouth and then hold my hands in front of me looking at the tile floor. “I know what I said, but here’s the thing: I really, really don’t want to be just friends.”

  The door to the bathroom opens, and Thea stops for a moment, then pushes herself off from the counter.

  “Could you make up the sofa? The sheets are in the footstool,” she says and heads toward her uncle. “I’ll be in as soon as I’m done here.”

  The Boathouse at Home Pond has a bed that you pull out, but it has rope handles. You just give them a yank, and it turns into a bed. This has no rope handles. It has no handles whatsoever. So I am reduced to getting down on my hands and knees and scenting.

  I finally find the smell of Thea’s hand on a metal bar under the seat cushions. I don’t know how long I’d been there on my hands and knees, my mouth slightly open in a dull-witted smile, my eyes unfocused.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Dropped a cuff link,” I say, jumping up. She nods, then leans into the refrigerator.

  Everything in the Homelands is strong and heavy and tough. Made to withstand wolves. Everything Offland is light and flimsy, and if you tug at it just a little, it flies across the room.

  Looking to make sure that the door to Vasco’s room is closed, I lift the sofa under my arm and tiptoe across the creaky floor until I get it back to the place marked by indentations in the carpet. Then, using only my pinkie finger, I pull it up and open and put on the sheets. After finger scrubbing my teeth with a dollop of Vasco’s toothpaste, I lie fully dressed on top of blankets and sheets and the thin mattress with a bar crammed an inch deep into my floating rib.

  The discord of anticipation and anxiety is making me feel sick.

  Chapter 26

  Thea turns out the light and begins to feel her way toward me. The Hamptons off-season is dark, but nothing like the Homelands. In the dim light, I watch her creep along, her fingers sweeping the back of a chair, the television, feeling the landscape.

  She bumps her toe with a sharp intake of breath.

  “Here, Thea,” I call to her, my voice breaking slightly. “Over here.”

  The mattress gives a little as her hands find and search out the shape of the bed, and she pulls back the blankets. She settles in and stares up into the dark. The sheets rustle as her legs move.

  I pray she can’t smell the nervous dog smell that is so strong in my nose.

  “My uncle’s a good man,” she finally says. “A really good man, but this is the anniversary of my parents’ death, and he takes it hard. My father was his best friend. My mother was his sister. Our family was never big, but it got very small very quickly.”

  “I know.”

  There’s no sound except the slight creak of the ceiling fan turning slowly in the draft from the heat vent.

  “How could you?”

  “He told me.” I take a deep breath before it all comes out in a rush. “You weren’t answering, and I didn’t know what to do so I came out here to find your uncle, because I knew Susannah’s address on Long Island from the divorce papers. I told him I’d messed up and you weren’t talking to me and that I needed to talk to someone who knew you, and so we went out to lunch and we talked and he told me that your parents had died in a DUI.”

  I wait for the inevitable recriminations for having invaded her privacy, but they don’t come.

  “Did you go to the Sip ’n’ Serve?”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  “Krissie there?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “I wish he would just ask her out already.”

  “Mmm-hmm?”

  She falls quiet again.

  “So I’m guessing you didn’t just happen to be at McCarran’s this evening.”

  “No.”

  “He call you or something?”

  “Text.”

  “Jesus, Tío,” she says with an exasperated chuff. “What did you tell him that made him like you this much?”

  “Nothing. Everything. The truth. I just told him the truth. I told him how much you matter to me.” There’s an itch at the base of my arch. I scratch it against the big toe of my other foot. “That thing?” I say quietly. “That stupid party. I’m going by myself.”

  “You go with whoever you want. Don’t do it for me.”

  “I’m not doing it for you. Because of you, maybe, but not for you.” I turn my head so I can see her more clearly. “Can I tell you a secret?”

  “A secret or a confidence?”

  “Is there a difference?”

  “A confidence is yours to tell. A secret isn’t.”

  “Well, a confidence then.” My hand slides along the sheets until I feel the aura of warmth in the tips of her fingers. “That thing I said about…” My tongue stumbles over the words. “Well, you know what I said. I said it because I’ve been playing a role for so long that I couldn’t see that the theater lights were off and everyone had gone home.”

  She turns on her side, pulling the blanket over her shoulder. “But who are you when the lights are off?”

  My mind teeters under the weight of a cataract of memories. Marble, bronze, disinfectant, the tinkle of a piano no one listens to, the crackle of words no one means. Ice fog. Air tinged with pepperberry or wintergreen or wild rose. Smoked goose liver foam on a leaf-shaped malachite plate. The fading life in the eyes of a buck as the blood runs so warm and rich over my tongue. My legs tiring in the fast-moving stream, the shore receding. Collapsing in trust and exhaustion into the indescribable comfort of powerful jaws that take my little shoulders so gently. The endless marking of my Pack. Maxim’s sweaty handshake. Seduction. Cunning. Adulation. Sacrifice. Preening. Secrets.

  “I don’t know.”

  Me. Us. Terrible, beautiful, monstrous, divine.

  “But I am trying. I am trying to remember.”

  I turn over on my side, looking at her strong profile in the dim light.

  I love her deep-set eyes.

  “It’s hard,” she says.

  I love her long, slim nose.

  “When you forget who you are.”

  I love the very real but very sad smile.

  “Thea?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What happened in Austin? Or is that a secret?”

  “Did Vasco tell you?”

  “No, Google.”

  “Well, if it can be Googled, you already know the whole story. Hardly seems like either a confidence or a secret.”

  I love her defiant chin.

  “I know what happened, but that doesn’t mean I know the story.”

  John was always very clear: A handful of events with a meaning is a story. A handful of events without meaning is nothing.

  “Will you tell me?”

  “Well, ‘story’ makes it sound a whole lot more interesting than it was. It was just…was just stupid, was what it was.” She runs her fingers back and forth across her torso. “I didn’t have much experience when I got to college. None, actually. I wasn’t popular or pretty—”

  I start to protest, but she shakes it off. “Please, Elijah.”

  Because I’d recited all that never wear anything but silk crap, she has a right to be dismissive. I really wish I hadn’t, because now I am being absolutely, soul-wrenchingly honest.

  You are so beautiful.

  Please, Thea.

  “Anyway, I’d had no experience when I got to college and then this guy, Devin”—she says the name quickly, like she wants to get it over—“starts paying attention to me. I w
as so grateful and so eager to please him. So desperate to be the kind of person who wouldn’t embarrass him at parties.”

  Then I hear that disdainful voice, my voice, pinging around my head. With her? Nooo. She’s just a friend.

  “I joined a sorority, because that’s what he expected. God, I was tired. Anyway, at one of these parties, a girl died. We’d all drunk too much, and Devin dared us to cross a wooden board to get to the other roof. ‘Walking the plank,’ he called it.” She stops for a moment and turns to me. “Her name was Linda Thurman, by the way. I feel like it’s important to remember that.”

  I understand that she wants this girl not to have disappeared unmarked. We have the same impulse. It’s why every wolf’s name is incised with a stone at the Gemyndstow. From Ælfrida to little Hannah, Evie and John’s stillborn.

  “But it wasn’t your fault.”

  “That’s the point,” she says. “The police interviewed us and determined it was an accident and no one was responsible. All my ‘friends’ were so relieved, Devin most of all, because he was prelaw, and it’d look bad on his grad school applications if he was implicated in the death of ‘that girl.’ Linda Thurman was dead, and they were all high-fiving each other. Like I said, I was so tired, so maybe I wasn’t thinking straight, but at the moment, it seemed very clear that I had to get rid of everything—Devin, the school, these friends, everything—and start over again.”

  She stretches her hand up into the air, her wrist extended, just like I do when I trigger my change.

  “Even got rid of my clothes. Campus security didn’t quite understand what I was doing in my underwear and took me to the psychiatrist. She said it was shock and not to make any big decisions. Six months later, I had a new state, a new school, a new life, but the old me. And for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t tired anymore.” She rubs her face and then yawns a little. “Well, I’m tired now.”

  I love the fullness of her face beneath her high cheekbones.

  “Can I lie with you? Just hold you?”

  A rough hum from the back of her throat is the only answer.

  It isn’t yes, but it isn’t no either.

  I curl around her, smoothing her hair down her back, so I can share her pillow.

  She relaxes into me, breathing contentedly at the weight of my arm.

  “To me,” I whisper, “you are the most beautiful. And I don’t want to change anything except the way you think about me.”

  Then she slips her hand over mine.

  Please let me not fuck this up.

  Her body slowly relaxes, then jerks, then goes slack in my arms.

  Please let me not fuck this up.

  I kiss her hair and bury my nose in the spot behind her ear and breathe in that scent of black earth.

  Please let me not fuck this up.

  I whisper as softly as I can.

  “I love you, Thea.”

  Please let me not fuck this up.

  Chapter 27

  Hāmweard, ðu londadl hǽðstapa, in 2 days

  Homeward, you landsick heath-wanderer, in 2 days

  HST is dark when I get in. The carpets are marked with the long curves plowed by maintenance after eleven when the last of the bullpen has finally gone home. Early in the morning, the smell of cleanser is at its strongest, the smell of coffee at its weakest.

  I head toward my office, flicking on the lights as I go. Over my shoulder is my black-tie kit safely stowed in the travel bag.

  My closet opens smoothly on the extra suit, two shirts, tie, and handheld clothes steamer I keep at the office. Undoing the snap, I give the travel bag a little shake and push it in. My shoes go on the floor.

  I will get to L-Cubed early, meet and greet, and then at the first plausible moment, I will bow out and race for Thea’s cabin.

  Twirling around in my Titan until my head goes giddy, I jam my feet into the carpet, then fall to my knees in front of the safe. Inside the big letter box containing the trust is a small pocket with a thumb drive holding certain basic forms, such as the necessary signature addendum and power of attorney we use for our children. Because of the complicated structure of the trust, I need seventeen pages to accommodate the four additional signatures at all their necessary places.

  I put Tiberius Malasson first because despite what I said to the Shifter, I know there is only a slim chance that Quicksilver will survive her lying-in, and if there is going to be just one signature in each place, maybe it’s easier if he doesn’t have to remind himself each time to leave that first space empty.

  I barely know Silver, but I saw the terror in Tiberius’s face as he told me she was pregnant. I try to imagine Thea in her place, imagine some part of me taking root inside her and killing her, imagine the sickening ache that Tiberius must feel. The pointless guilt.

  Because partners’ offices should not be cluttered with the noise and mess of printers and faxes and shredders, the mechanics are all in the assistants’ offices, which is why I’m standing at Janine’s desk, waiting while the printer spits out these extra pages, when she arrives, her coat over one arm.

  “You’re here early,” she says.

  “Got a little backed up yesterday,” I say. Eleven pages.

  She reaches for the printer. “Why don’t I just bring these in to you as soon as they’re ready?”

  “It’s okay. I’ve got it. You should just get settled in.” Thirteen pages. “Get your coffee.”

  “Have one,” she says, pointing to a plastic glass filled with iced eddies of pink and blue and topped with an equally garish swirl of sparkly whipped cream. If that’s a coffee, then these are the final days of the Roman Empire.

  She reaches over to hang her coat on the hook at the back of her door, but as she does, the hem drags across the printer and all the pages go flying.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Sorensson,” she says primly and instantly drops to the floor.

  I crouch down too, holding my hand out to keep her away. “I’ve got it, Janine.”

  Standing up quickly, she tucks her shirt into her waistband. The printer is done now, and I straighten the pages before heading back to the letter box I stupidly left on my desk. As I count the signature addenda, a bubble begins to form behind my heart.

  One of the pages is missing. The little printer icon promises that seventeen pages were printed, but there are only sixteen here. As soon as Janine heads to the bathroom for her early-morning makeup check, I go back into her office. There’s plenty of paper and ink. I look everywhere for the missing page containing the four new spaces for the four new lives. Tiberius’s offspring. August Leveraux’s grandchildren.

  I’ve just set the file cabinet back in place when she returns in a cloud of paraben and titanium and that artificial vanilla scent that instills a desire for chewy liver. When I ask her if she has seen one of my pages, she shrugs. “These printers mess up all the time,” she says, sliding on her high heels. “Just print another.”

  With my door open, I keep a close eye on Janine. I’ve never paid much attention to what she does. Candy Crush mostly. Occasionally expenses or answering email. She sits straight-backed and cool when she answers the phone. “HST? Elijah Sorensson’s office?” she says with a clipped and melodious voice.

  But then a call comes through and she slumps forward, her left hand holding the phone and her right hand, the one facing me, twisting her hair around her mouth. Even my acute hearing can’t make out what she’s saying, but it lasts a minute and she doesn’t take a message.

  Half an hour later, she leaves. Nothing but a text—a text—saying something about an emergency. I stare at the home screen of my computer, in case she suddenly realizes she’s forgotten her umbrella or her gym shoes. When she doesn’t come back, I head over to her office and pick up her phone, looking for the one-minute call at 11:39 a.m. from Out of Area: Private Caller.

  Movi
ng quietly through the halls, I check the conference room and the associates’ offices for stragglers. Most of the staff on this side of HST will be out for lunch, but there are usually a few who eat at their desks.

  There’s nothing unusual in any of Janine’s drawers: files, paper clips, staplers, shoes, walking shoes, jewelry, evening bag. One drawer is empty though.

  “Do you need any help, Mr. Sorensson?” Lori, Max’s assistant, stands in the door, her coat in one hand, a bag that smells like salade Niçoise in the other.

  “Janine was supposed to make some copies for me, but I don’t see them.”

  “Do you want me to look?”

  “It’s nothing that can’t hold until she gets back. Wait, Lori? You have one of these, don’t you?” I point to Janine’s printer.

  “We all do.”

  “And do you have problems with it printing fewer copies than it’s supposed to?”

  “Not unless it’s run out of paper.”

  Leaning against the wall in my office, I close my eyes and listen, waiting until the soft snick of her shoes against the carpeting has turned the corner.

  I check the halls again before going back to Janine’s desk. This time, I kneel in front of the empty drawer, pushing my truncated human excuse for a muzzle deep into it, and suck in a long breath scented with the slight hint of lavender breeze and the off-gassing of polypropylene carpets.

  Over the next hour, I wait with my rage building because I was so certain that I’d been careful and that I couldn’t be the one who’d been played. That Tiberius was wrong and that the Great North had not been sold out by this self-indulgent, infantile excuse for a woman at whose dragon-bitten nipple I have suckled.

  “Where were you?”

  “I had an emergency,” she says nervously, pulling her coat tighter around her neck. “I texted you. Didn’t you get it?”

  “Where is the other page, Janine?” I stand close, my forearm pushing her shoulder into the wall.

  “I told you,” she whines. “It doesn’t always print everything.”

  “I don’t believe that’s what happened. I think you took it. I think you gave it to someone.” My body looms over her, shoving her against the wall. The stink of salt and old leather pierces her scented camouflage. Lavender breeze and the off-gassing of polypropylene carpets.