Chapter 17 The Wolf Man
I packed slowly, that evening, with the particular numb efficiency of someone who'd done this before and knew exactly how to do it without feeling anything.
It didn't take long. We hadn't brought much — a single duffel bag, the same one I'd packed three years ago when I'd left this same packhouse the first time, and the symmetry of that wasn't lost on me as I folded Birdie's small shirts and tucked them in alongside my own, careful and methodical, the way you might handle something you didn't want to look at too closely.
The council's ruling should be made on its own merits. Without this complicating it further.
I understood what he meant, even through the haze of hurt — understood that, in his exhausted, defensive logic, stepping back felt like the responsible thing, the thing that protected the Reclamation's outcome from being tangled up with whatever had grown between us over the last week.
I even understood, with a clarity that made it worse rather than better, exactly why he'd arrived at that logic — Desmond's words, designed with surgical precision to make Roman doubt the one thing that had felt solid in three years of grief and gaps and quiet manipulation.
None of that understanding made it hurt less.
If anything, it made it worse — because this time, unlike three years ago, I couldn't even be angry at him cleanly.
Three years ago, I'd had a villain. A man who'd looked at me and chosen, deliberately, to walk away.
This time, I had a man who'd been lied to so precisely, so expertly, that even knowing it was a lie hadn't been enough to stop it from working — and somehow, watching someone get hurt by a wound I recognized, a wound shaped like my own, was its own particular kind of unbearable.
"Mama, why are you packing?"
Birdie's voice, from the doorway of the second bedroom, pulled me out of my thoughts.
She was holding her favorite stuffed animal — a slightly battered rabbit she'd had since she was a baby — and watching me with the particular searching expression she got when she sensed something important was happening that hadn't been explained to her.
"We might be going home soon, baby." I kept my voice as steady as I could, folding another shirt with hands that didn't feel quite like my own. "I just wanted to start getting things ready."
"But we have twenty-three more days." Birdie said this with the kind of confident precision that told me she'd been keeping track, somehow, the way kids sometimes latched onto numbers that mattered to the adults around them even when they didn't fully understand why.
"You said thirty days, and we've been here for — " she counted on her fingers, slow and careful, " — seven. So that's twenty-three more."
"I know, baby. But sometimes plans change."
"Why?" Birdie climbed onto the bed, settling the rabbit in her lap, and looked up at me with an expression that was, for a three-year-old, remarkably steady. "Did something happen with the wolf man?"
I stopped folding. "What makes you ask that?"
"You've been sad since yesterday. And you said it was about the wolf man.
" Birdie's voice was matter-of-fact, the particular bluntness small children sometimes had, observations stated plainly because they hadn't yet learned that some things were supposed to be softened or avoided.
"Did he stop being shy and start being mean? "
"No, baby. He's not mean." I sat down on the edge of the bed beside her, and found, despite everything, that some part of me wanted to laugh — the particular helpless laugh that came from hearing an enormous, complicated adult situation distilled into the simple terms a three-year-old used to understand the world.
"He's just — going through something hard.
And he made a decision that — that I don't think is the right decision, but it's his decision to make, and I have to respect it, even though it hurts. "
Birdie considered this with the same gravity she brought to most things, turning the rabbit over in her hands. "Is it like when I don't want to share, even though I know I should?"
"...Sort of, yeah." I felt something in my chest loosen, slightly, at the absurd, perfect clarity of a toddler's comparison. "Sort of exactly like that, actually."
"You always tell me that even when I don't want to share, I should anyway, because it's the right thing, and feeling better comes after.
" Birdie said this with the confident authority of someone repeating a rule she'd heard many times, possibly more times than she'd wanted to.
"Maybe the wolf man needs someone to tell him that too. "
I didn't say anything for a long moment.
Outside, the evening light was fading toward dusk, the same gold light that had filled this room the first time Roman and I had really talked, in the small garden sitting room, and something in Birdie's simple, unselfconscious wisdom landed in my chest with unexpected weight.
Maybe the wolf man needs someone to tell him that too.
"Mama?" Birdie's voice was smaller now, and when I looked at her, something in her expression had shifted — the matter-of-fact confidence giving way to something more uncertain, more searching. "If we go home, will I ever see him again?"
"I don't know, baby." My voice came out rougher than I intended.
"I liked him." Birdie's small fingers worked at the rabbit's ear, the particular fidgeting kids did when they were working up to saying something difficult.
"He looked at my drawing for a really long time.
Longer than people usually look at my drawings.
And when I asked if he was the wolf man, he didn't say no.
He just said he was a wolf, and that he didn't know very many kids, and that maybe he was a little shy.
" She looked up at me, and something in her small face was so open, so trusting, so entirely unguarded, that it took my breath away.
"I don't think shy people are mean, Mama.
I think shy people are just scared, and scared isn't the same as mean. "
I sat there, on the edge of the bed, half-packed bags around us, and felt something inside me — something that had been carefully, deliberately closing for the last day, retreating into the familiar shape of three years of practiced self-protection — crack open instead.
Because Birdie was right. Of course she was right — she was three, and she saw the world with the kind of clarity adults spent years learning to complicate, and what she'd just said, in her small, matter-of-fact voice, was exactly true.
Roman wasn't mean. He was scared — scared of a lie that had been engineered specifically to exploit every fear he'd never let himself examine, scared of trusting a feeling he couldn't fully account for, scared, underneath everything, of becoming — again — the man who'd hurt me three years ago, even as the act of retreating was , itself, becoming exactly that man.
And I was about to do the same thing Roman had just done. Retreat. Pack up. Leave before anything could be resolved, because leaving felt safer than staying and risking more pain.
Even when I don't want to share, I should anyway, because it's the right thing, and feeling better comes after.
I'd taught Birdie that. I'd taught her that doing the hard thing, even when it was scary, even when every instinct told you to protect yourself by avoiding it — that doing the hard thing was still, usually, the right thing.
And here I was, about to teach her, by example, the exact opposite lesson: that when something hurts, the answer is to run.
To leave. To choose the safety of distance over the risk of staying and fighting for something that mattered.
"Birdie." My voice came out steadier than I expected, something settling into place inside me with a clarity that felt, after the chaos of the last day, almost like relief. "Can I tell you something? I think you might be right. About the wolf man. About — about all of it."
"I'm right?" Birdie's face brightened, the particular delighted surprise of a small child being told their opinion mattered.
"Yeah, baby. I think — I think instead of going home tonight, I think I need to go talk to him.
Tell him some things he needs to hear. Even if it's hard.
Even if I'm scared he won't listen." I reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, and felt, for the first time since Roman had walked away that afternoon, something that wasn't quite hope but was close to it — something steadier, something that felt like choice rather than fear.
"Can you stay here with Petra for a little while? I won't be gone long."
"Are you going to tell him the sharing thing?"
"Something like that, yeah." I managed a smile, real this time, and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Something exactly like that."
I found Petra in the kitchens, and she took one look at my face and didn't ask any questions — just gathered Birdie up with the easy warmth she'd shown from the very first night, settling her at the long kitchen table with a plate of something sweet and a stack of picture books someone had apparently produced from a shelf I hadn't known existed, and gave me a look that was equal parts concern and quiet encouragement.
"Go," she said simply. "I've got her."
I made my way through the packhouse, toward the wing where Roman's rooms were — I'd never actually been there, but Petra had given me rough directions, the particular confident directions of someone who knew this building like the back of her hand — and somewhere along the way, the fear that had been sitting in my chest since this afternoon began, slowly, to transform into something else.
Not certainty, exactly. But resolve. The particular steadiness that came from finally deciding to stop protecting yourself and start fighting for something instead.