Page 17 of A Wolfe in the Woods

I made it to the kitchen sink, bracing both hands on the edge. The metal was cool against my skin. The silence in the space was clear as glass, absolute. I let my head hang, breath coming slow and tight, like I was still holding something down.

Water ran. I drank without thinking, lapping it up like a stray used to going without.

But my thoughts weren’t on the water. They were back outside with her.

Blanchette.

She shouldn’t have been there. And yet…I’d seen her eyes. Not the color. Not the way they caught the light. The weight in them.

She wore it like armor. Battered, heavy. The kind you couldn’t penetrate, no matter how frail it might’ve appeared.

I knew it because I’d carried the same damn thing.

Still did.

That little incident back there would have killed a normal human. But I wasn’t normal…or human. I was a glutton for punishment. A hardheaded son of a bitch that took a lickin’ and kept on tickin’. Lucky me.

My thoughts spun in a slow loop: the girl, the mess, the blood, the fact that I was still standing when I probably shouldn’t have been. It awakened something in me I didn’t want to examine too closely.

I didn’t realize how much time had passed until the voice broke through the quiet.

“Jon-boy?”

May.

Her tone was soft but pointed, like she knew not to startle me but also instinctively knew I needed to be interrupted.

I straightened, wiping a hand across my face. “Yeah.”

Her footsteps were measured, careful. The steady tapping of her cane—a sound that spoke for her more often than she did, especially when words felt unnecessary.

“You all right?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Good…” She paused carefully before continuing. “’Cause I got a young lady that’s a little shook up.”

Funny how blame and sympathy don’t always land on the same person,I thought.

“She’ll live,” I replied, no care in my tone.

“Aha…well, I just wanna remind ya that if ya want this thing to work, we need to be a bit more gracious and forgivin’ to our guests.”

“Got it,” I acknowledged.

“Do ya?”

I kept tending to my wounds, then finally murmured, “Yeah.”

“I know ya were good at scaring folks in a courtroom, but that don’t mean ya can’t learn a new trick, pup. Different deal here…if ya want folks to come and stay.”

I acknowledged her words silently. I mean, she had a point.

“Ya need me to sew ya up?” It was uncanny how she did that.

“Nah, I’m good. A few gashes. Nothing I can’t fix. I’ve still got some of that magic rub you made left over,” I replied.

“All right, then I’d best get to it. Stew ain’t gonna stir itself for long. Catch ya at supper.”