CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mae's notebook was leather, brown, soft from use, the kind she carried in her apron pocket between the order pad and the small flashlight she kept for the walk-in.
She set it on the kitchen table next to Jackson's laptop.
She poured herself a coffee. Sat down. Opened the notebook to a page she'd clearly been keeping in her head as much as on paper, because she didn't have to flip far.
"I write things down," she said. "When something doesn't sit right. Conversations, mostly. Not gossip. Things people say that I notice."
She turned the notebook so Marcus and Jackson could see.
The handwriting was small, neat, dated.
The entries went back nineteen months.
"I never thought I'd need it for anything," Mae said. "I just like to know what I noticed when."
Marcus pulled the notebook toward him. Read.
Lucy set bread on the table. Cheese. A jar of something Mae had pickled in August. Nobody ate. The food was for later. Lucy was setting up the long version of this morning before any of them had asked her to.
Dominic read the email a second time, on his own phone, while Marcus read the notebook.
Jackson sat with his coffee and watched Mae.
Mae was waiting.
Mae had something specific in her notebook and wasn't going to say what until Marcus had read enough of the prior pages to understand that she wasn't jumping to a conclusion.
Marcus read for a long time.
He turned a page.
Turned another.
Stopped on a page about six months back.
Read it twice.
Looked up at Mae.
Mae looked back.
"Yeah," Mae said.
Marcus read the entry aloud.
"April 14. Sarah at the counter, slow morning.
Talked about her online person. He'd asked about Dominic's scheduling.
Said he found alpha-side pack management interesting because his own alpha had a different system.
Sarah said it like it was sweet. I noted it.
He had a lot of questions for someone whose own pack obligations he kept saying he had to keep private. "
Marcus closed the notebook.
He looked at Jackson.
Jackson looked at Mae.
Mae looked at her hands.
Then Mae said the name.
"Sarah."
Marcus said, "Sarah."
Dominic closed his eyes briefly. Opened them. Looked at the ceiling. Looked back at the table.
"We will do this gently," he said. "She has been used. We are not going to make it worse."
Jackson said, "I'll go to her."
Marcus turned his head and looked at Jackson. The look was long and exact and bear-coded and free of judgment.
"You sure?" Marcus said.
Jackson said, "Yes."
He realized, mid-word, that the yes was not the yes he'd have given a month ago.
A month ago the yes would have meant: I will go to her because I am head of security and this is my job and I will be controlled and decent.
The yes now meant: I will go to her because she is going to be hurt in the next hour and I want to be in the room when she is, because I have learned, this last month, what it costs a person when no one is in the room.
The wound was recalibrating in real time.
Marcus heard the difference. Marcus nodded once.
Mae said, "I'll come with you."
"Yes."
"I should."
"Yes, Mae."
Mae stood up. Took her apron off. Folded it. Set it on the chair. Went to the counter and started putting muffins in a tin from the basket Lucy had brought over the previous afternoon.
Lucy watched her pack the tin. Didn't say anything. Set out plastic wrap. Mae wrapped the tin.
It was the most quiet act of preparation Jackson had ever watched a person perform.
He understood, watching it, that Mae had been preparing for mornings like this for forty years.
This was the work.
The work was not the dramatic reveal. The work was the muffins.
* * *
The drive to Sarah's apartment was thirteen minutes.
Mae rode with Jackson.
They didn't speak for the first ten.
Then Mae said, "She's going to be all right. Eventually."
Jackson said, "I know."
Mae said, "She's going to wish, for a while, that she wasn't."
Jackson said, "I know."
Mae said, "You stay through the wishing."
Jackson said, "Yes, Mae."
Mae nodded.
They drove the last three minutes in silence.
The wolf in Jackson was at the surface and was the calmest he had been in fifteen years.
The wolf understood the work.
The work was witness.
* * *