Chapter 7 #2
I had barely finished eating when the elder pushed his stool back. “I need to get going.” He dusted his hands off before pushing his glasses up his nose. His whole demeanor seemed so uptight, his smile at me forced. “Young lady, I leave you in good hands.”
Whose hands?
The older man peered over at Henri. “Before I leave, Henri, what’s going on? You’ve been surlier than normal this morning.”
Henri, who had been sitting quietly while we ate at the island, grunted without looking away from his plate. “I’m fine.”
From his narrowed gaze, I’d say Franklin didn’t believe him, and neither did I. “Is it…?” He trailed off, whatever he was implying hung in the air, a mystery I didn’t understand.
But I wanted to.
“No,” Henri answered tersely, clearly not wanting to talk about whatever was on his mind.
Deciding to be nice, I threw him a bone. I wanted us to be friends, and friends were always allies. “He’s probably mad at me because I bit him,” I offered as an explanation.
Two sets of eyeballs swung over in my direction.
Henri’s forehead furrowed. “I’m not mad because you….”
I smiled.
The grooves between his eyebrows got even deeper. “You’re fucking with me?”
It was like he couldn’t believe it.
I held my thumb and index finger apart about an inch. “Little bit.” But that confirmed it, he was in a mood over something.
He tipped his head to the side.
I was pretty sure that might have been his amused face, at least one of them. Or it might be wishful thinking.
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about.” Franklin frowned before shaking his head. “I will take that as my cue to leave. Nina, if you think of any more questions, I can answer them later if Henri is unable to. I will see you both this evening,” he finished quickly before exiting the kitchen like he was in a rush, his hands in his pockets while he left. Franklin had even left his plate on the counter.
Maybe he was running late somewhere, but… something still seemed fishy about him.
Real fishy.
“Is he okay?” I asked, even though I really wanted to know if he was always like that, but that sounded aggressive in my head.
He pushed his chair back. “He was fine to me.”
If he said so.
Standing up, I shoved my stool back and picked up my plate, along with Franklin’s, and went around to where the pups had eaten their food and collected their lick mats too.
“We have two dishwashers. You can load those plates instead of doing them by hand. It saves water consumption,” Henri explained as he pushed his stool in. He’d been awfully quiet while we’d eaten; all three of us had been.
Both Agnes and Duncan had wandered over to sit by us after they’d finished their meal and drank more water. Duncan was curled up into a little ball, watching the white puppy.
Just as I set the dishes into the sink, Henri came up beside me. I tipped my head back to meet his eyes. “You can put the mats into the dishwasher too. I’ll put the leftovers in the fridge, and you can load the pot into the dishwasher.”
I could do that.
Halfway through loading the dishwasher, he asked from behind, “Where are Matti and his mate?”
I’d been waiting for someone to ask. “They’re upstairs.” There was no reason I couldn’t give him specifics. “They’ve got the brown plague.”
“The brown….” He went quiet, figuring it out.
I couldn’t help but snicker, thinking about them. “They both looked about ten pounds lighter than they did last night, so I think that gives you an idea of how?—”
Henri cleared his throat. “I understand.”
I bet he didn’t, but it made me want to shake my head picturing how sick they’d looked. They had been so confident about those hot dogs. And with their noses? I didn’t understand how they hadn’t been able to tell there was something wrong with them.
“When we’re done, I’ll give you a tour so you can get familiar with the grounds.”
“All right.” I stuck the skillet I’d handwashed, because it was too large for the dishwasher, under the faucet. “Just us?”
There was a pause. “Is that a problem?”
I made a face as I flipped the pan and rinsed the other side. “No, why would it be?” I turned off the water and peeked over my shoulder. He must have sensed me staring at his back because he slowly did the same and blinked at me. I lifted my chin. “You all right? It was only a question.”
He turned back toward the range. “Fine,” he answered, back to using clipped answers.
All right then.
When I was done with the dishes, I picked up Duncan, and Henri bent to pet Agnes, and I followed him down the hallway we had taken to get to the kitchen. His voice was loud enough for me to hear clearly, the white wolf beside him, looking so small in comparison. “Did someone explain our early school situation?”
“Franklin mentioned a nursery during our tour yesterday….”
Agnes’s yellow eyes peered at us, not slowing down one bit while she did. I wiggled my fingers at her with the hand not supporting the majority of Duncan’s weight. She flashed me both her canines.
“It is and it isn’t a nursery. All the pups who are old enough to be away from their mothers attend it. Some of the parents refer to it more as preschool for the small ones until they’re old enough to attend school,” he explained.
“Some of the kids go to school? In town?”
“Most. A few are homeschooled or take online courses. We don’t have enough children or qualified educators to offer classes on site,” Henri went on. “We provide after-school supervision until six in the evening for the kids whose parents can’t pick them up, but it’s never a problem to find someone to keep an eye on a child if they don’t make it by then. Most of the kids go home with someone after school.”
Even I knew that daycare was something highly sought after.
“The kids are usually split into two age groups—the young ones, and the ones who are only around after school—but the member who used to care for the older children is on a leave of absence to care for his mother. For now, through the summer, they’re mixed together until we can find someone else to take over the position.”
We passed by the door that Franklin had been standing in front of when Duncan and I had come downstairs. It was closed now. Every door had a small doggy door. I hadn’t noticed that until now. It wasn’t only his.
I focused on the bundle in my arms. He was relaxed, curious, and very awake. I pulled him in a little tighter to me. “That’s a great option?—”
“It’s not an option.”
I focused on the back of Henri’s head, his hair was shorter around the sides and longer at the top, like he cared but didn’t really want to put in too much effort either. It was a good haircut for him. “All right. But do you think we should wait a couple of days until he settles in since we just got here?”
Henri had the nerve to glance over his shoulder, his dark eyebrows arching slightly as he took in the puppy in my arms. “He looks settled to me.”
I waited to bite the inside of my cheek again until he was facing forward. “I think he’s doing great so far, but it hasn’t even been a day?—”
He cut me off. “He’ll be fine.”
I could not growl at a werewolf, especially one that looked almost nothing like every other one I’d ever met—size-wise. I had questions about that, but none of them I could ask in this building or without soundproof walls. I reminded myself that I didn’t need to argue with Henri. We had to get along. I wanted to be his friend. “I don’t want to stress him out or make him think he’s being abandoned….”
We passed by the front door and headed toward the faint sounds of what had to be little kids.
I started to get a little nervous. “How about tomorrow?”
Henri stopped right in front of a door halfway down the hall. Like every other one we’d gone by, this one also had a puppy-sized mini door at the bottom. The only difference was that it was twice the size of the rest of them.
The serious man gave me an even more grave expression. “He’ll be fine,” he insisted.
I pressed my lips together, trying to stop myself from arguing with him again. I was trying to stay on his good side, dang it.
“He isn’t nervous or scared, and you said he understands what we say, so there’s no reason why he’d think you aren’t coming back for him.” His eyes moved to my chest area. “You understand what’s happening, don’t you, Duncan?”
Only I heard the “Yes” he projected.
There went my last hope. He’d been sitting here overhearing our conversation and hadn’t made a peep to disagree about his nursery attendance. I guess he didn’t mind…?
I barely managed to hold back a frown. “He agreed,” I admitted, knowing dang well how glum that statement came out. I looked at my sweetheart and only lowered my voice a little bit. “I guess you’re staying, Donut.”
“Yes,” Duncan agreed, making me sigh. How could he be this mature already?
I hugged him two more times, and he gave my chin and cheek the same number of licks.
A throat cleared. “When you’re done, let’s take him inside.”
Just like that, it felt like I’d swallowed a bag full of Warheads, and I would’ve been surprised if my face didn’t reflect it.
If he felt any compassion for me leaving Duncan for the first time, it sure didn’t reflect on Henri’s face.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t believed him when he said the nursery was mandatory or that Duncan would more than likely be fine being away from me, but….
I had hoped that he would change his mind. I swallowed and clung to my donut tighter. How could he expect me to just drop him off?
There was a sigh, and I wasn’t sure I imagined that Henri’s voice might have gone slightly softer. “This’ll be good for him. This environment promotes socialization, the strengthening of pack bonds, emotional maturity?—”
The beginning of the end of him being my baby.
I suddenly understood why parents cried when they dropped their kids off at school.
Duncan had needed me for almost everything the last two years. He relied on me, and the truth was, I relied on him too. He was my shadow. My ride or die. The cilantro and lime to my carne asada tacos.
A knot formed in my throat, and it took everything in me to exhale. It came out strained. This is what we were signing up for, for him to be safe.
Even knowing all that, it really didn’t help.
“Yeah, I get it.” My voice was small. I didn’t want to get it, but….
“Love.”
I peeked at Duncan’s face. He was sitting up in my arms, watching me, but his nose was busy twitching as he smelled what, or more likely who, was in the room.
Being here period was the end of a lot of things, but it could be the start of something new too.
The start of my heart breaking…. Stop, Nina.
Lifting my gaze to meet Henri’s, it took more effort than I ever would have imagined to keep the grief from my tone. “If he doesn’t want to go in or he starts crying….” I threatened as the tank of a man watched me for a moment, then turned toward the door and pushed it open, slipping inside.
I could have used a hug or another word of reassurance. Even a nudge, but all right. Fine.
I could do this.
I barely got a chance to see Henri crouch through the window before the puppy in my arms started trying to lunge out of them.
Here I was, on the verge of crying, feeling so guilty for leaving him, and he was ditching me ?
I dropped to a squat just as he wiggled out of my grasp, darting through the mini door to get into the room, leaving me standing there with my mouth open. I could not believe him.
A little bit of jealousy and disappointment that he’d left me that fast—at the first opportunity!—made my heart hurt for maybe two seconds total. But the sound of his familiar, playful bark reversed it almost as quickly. This was what I wanted for him. To be happy. To have people other than just me and our occasional visits to Sienna and Matti’s.
I gulped.
My time of living apart, of being so solitary, was over—as long as we made it through the next three months.
Someone told me once that life was 10 percent of the things that happened in it, and 90 percent how you handled those things.
Now, I had to figure out how to handle this next chapter. If that had to be with my head held high, my heart open, and maybe a little teary-eyed, so be it. For Duncan, I’d manage.
Moving toward the door, I pushed it and went straight to stand beside Henri. He hadn’t gone very far into the brightly lit classroom with lots of windows. Scattered around it were small beings of various heights. Most of the kids were human, looking between the ages of big toddler and elementary-school sized. Agnes was greeting the teacher, and Duncan was sniffing a small boy who was already scratching his ears, grinning wide.
Very, very slowly, I released a long breath as the woman who Agnes had been by made her way over.
She was very nice; she shook my hand and assured me that Duncan was going to be just fine, or something like that. Everything went in one ear and out the other. She might have said I smelled like a stinky dumpster, and I would have had no idea because I was trying so hard not to cry that I gritted my teeth and nodded a lot.
I didn’t think I was fooling anybody because Henri patted my shoulder once halfway through whatever the teacher said.
I was leaving Duncan.
Everything was moving so fast.
In a daze, just as quickly as we’d come in, Henri shooed us out, and I tried to catch Duncan’s attention, but he was busy getting pet by a boy with large ears and pale green skin. My donut had his butt in the air, his tail was swishing back and forth, and the boy, who I assumed was an ogre, was smiling at him.
That meant he was fine, right? That he felt safe and confident and knew that I would never, ever leave him until he was an adult? I could not cry.
This might be the worst moment of my life.
Top five at least, and I’d lived through losing Matti’s mom and dad, who I had considered my second parents, and moving away from my own parents.
The door had barely closed behind us when Henri stopped, and I couldn’t find the strength in me to do anything else but do the same.
I scratched my upper lip.
Henri lowered his voice. “You can cry outside but not in front of him.”
I wasn’t technically in front of him, I wanted to argue, but I nodded, all jerky and just once. “He used to wail when I locked him out of the bathroom because he’d bite my underwear and try to take off running with them, and he just dropped me like a bad habit,” I told him, torn between laughing and tearing up.
There was a clear winner not even a second later. Shrugging my shoulder, I wiped my eye with it and sniffled. Then I did it again.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” I tried to assure him. Then I waved my hand in front of the upper half of my face, but that didn’t do anything. “You don’t need to say anything. I’m not crying.”
Henri’s rugged face was neutral as he lifted his hand, set it on my shoulder, waited a second, and gave it a light squeeze. “He looks happy.”
“He does, huh?” I whispered.
He nodded.
Then I nodded.
And he said, very seriously, “If you’re done not crying, we can start the tour.”
If I was done….
That did it. The grief left my body just like that . There was no way I didn’t look like a goldfish as I stood there, trying to figure out how I could respectfully respond to that, while also trying to process whether he was teasing me again or not.
Henri didn’t give me enough time to decide. He squeezed my shoulder gently one more time, a very werewolfy touch—and so unlike the man-boy I’d known who had never been very affectionate to anyone in my memories—and said, “Follow me.”