Page 90 of My Orc Has Big Tusks
Her huff told me she thought I didn’t.
“Do you know what she looks like when she takes on other people’s limitations as if they were her own and calls it loyalty?” Her voice remained low. “My daughter has always been very good at deciding that limitation is actually choice.”
I had no answer for that. I hadn’t seen that version of Laina. I’d seen her certainty, her easy competence, and the way she strode through this place like she’d been walking it for years. I’d seen her soften for wounded creatures and speak to animals in voices she didn’t use for people. She’d knelt in a cave in the rain, and I’d seen her in my arms the next morning.
What I hadn’t seen was what she’d left behind when she stepped into my life. Whether she’d locked something inside when she walked away. If the version of her I’d been given was whole or just the parts she’d decided were safe to show.
My notebook sat open between us, full of observations and certainty about creatures, plus careful notes about Laina.
Not one entry asked if I’d seen her afraid.
Carol rose and started toward the door, pausing to turn back.
“I’m not saying you’re wrong about her,” she said. “I’m saying you don’t know yet whether you’re right. A month isn’t long. It’s a start, but it’s nowhere near a finish.”
She walked out, closing the door behind her.
I tugged my notebook closer and opened to a clean page, lifting my pen.
Outside, a vehicle started. Then a second one. Laina’s pink truck and Carol’s silver rental started down the road toward the gate.
I wrote.
Carol asked if I know what Laina is running from. I know what she runs toward. I know that she stayed beside a laboring animal in a cave in the rain without question. That she handles frightened creatures with steady hands and a voice that doesn’t change pitch. These things I know with certainty.
I started a new line.
What I don’t know: whether I’ve seen her afraid. Whether the version of her I’ve been given is the whole of her or only the brave pieces.
Carol Mercer is not a soft woman, though she is, perhaps, an honest one.
I needed to know Laina differently than I did. The woman who’d spent three years in her father’s clinic not growing, calling it loyalty.
Carol had asked if I knew what Laina was running from.
I didn’t.
But I was going to find out. If I wanted to keep her, I needed to know all of her. Not just the brave pieces she’d shown me so far.
I picked up my pen again and turned to a new page.
The question isn’t whether she belongs here. The question is whether she’s chosen to stay or whether she’s still running and just ended up here by accident.
Tomorrow I’ll ask.
CHAPTER TWENTY
LAINA
Istared at my bedroom ceiling in the dark, listening to the shuffle of footsteps in the hallway. Three a.m. My mother was awake and restless, probably making tea she wouldn’t drink. She walked back into her room and shut the door.
I grabbed my phone. Two hours until my alarm. Close enough.
Three days of this and I’d learned to leave before she emerged from the guest room, armed with questions I didn’t have answers for.
Rising, I showered, dressed, and snuck out the door, driving to the rescue operation.
Brovish noticed the moment I walked through the door. He didn’t say anything, just intercepted Sofia mid-launch and handed me a mug of tea.
