CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sarah opened the door in jeans and a sweater and a look of pleasant surprise and said, "Mae. Jackson. Come in, come in, do you want coffee, I just put on a pot."
Mae held up the muffin tin.
"Brought you these. From Lucy."
Sarah took the tin and her face did the thing faces do when someone has thought of you. She set it on her counter and put her hand on it for a second.
"This is so kind. Sit, sit. Let me get the coffee."
Her apartment was small and tidy and warm. A plant on the windowsill that was thriving. A quilt over the back of the couch her grandmother had made. A framed photo on the bookshelf of Sarah at sixteen with her mother, both of them laughing at something off-camera.
Jackson sat on the couch.
Mae sat in the armchair.
Sarah brought coffee in three different mugs and sat on the other end of the couch from Jackson and tucked her feet up under her like she did at the diner counter when it was slow and Mae was telling her something.
Mae said, "How are things, baby."
Sarah said, "Good. Really good. Work's good. Mom's coming up next month. And Daniel and I have been talking about maybe meeting in person finally. We've been saying spring. He wants to drive out. I'm a little nervous about it. I keep telling him I look different in person."
She laughed. It was the laugh of a woman who was happy.
Mae let her keep talking.
Sarah talked about Daniel for twelve minutes.
Jackson watched her face the entire time.
He took in everything. He noted what he hadn't noted before: Sarah used Daniel's name eleven times in twelve minutes.
Sarah did not, at any point, mention Daniel having said anything about himself that wasn't also a question about Sarah, or about Pine Ridge, or about pack life.
Sarah did not, at any point, say Daniel told me about his pack or Daniel mentioned his work.
Sarah said Daniel asked me. Daniel wanted to know. Daniel was so curious about.
The wolf in Jackson was sitting up.
Jackson was learning.
When Sarah paused for breath, Mae waited a beat. Two. Three.
Then Mae said, "Sweetheart."
The single word.
Sarah's coffee paused at her mouth.
"We need to talk to you about Daniel."
Sarah's face didn't change yet. Her face was still on the previous sentence.
"Okay," Sarah said, slowly.
Mae looked at Jackson. Jackson opened the laptop he'd brought in from the truck. He turned it so Sarah could see. He pulled up the Cascade Valley counter-filing.
"This came overnight," Jackson said. "From Cascade Valley's lawyers. About Claire's report."
Sarah set her coffee down.
"Okay."
"There are things in here," Jackson said, "that are not public. Things about my scheduling. About a leave I took last summer. About specific arguments Pine Ridge was going to make in a filing that hadn't gone in yet."
Sarah read.
Sarah read the third paragraph.
Sarah read the fifth.
Sarah read the seventh.
Jackson watched her face.
The first stage was confusion.
She said, "I don't understand."
Jackson said, "Daniel asked you questions, Sarah. Over the months. Questions you didn't realize were questions. Mae has notes. From conversations at the diner. He asked about my schedule. He asked about Dominic's protocols. He asked about pack life in ways you thought were interest."
The second stage was denial.
Sarah said, "No."
She said it again.
"No. Daniel wouldn't. Daniel. He asks because he's a wolf, he gets it, he."
The third stage was but.
"But he," Sarah said. "But he sent me. But we've been. But he wouldn't."
The fourth stage was the wave.
It came across her face in a single visible motion, the way a wave comes across a beach.
Her eyes changed first. Then her mouth. Then her hands, which had been holding the mug, let go of it and set it down very carefully on the side table without spilling, because Sarah did not spill coffee even when she was breaking.
Sarah understood.
She understood all of it.
She understood the months. The careful pacing. Why Daniel had reasons not to video-chat. Why his pack had to be private. Why he'd asked, every time, sweetly, intimately, about her work, her friends, her alpha, her town.
She understood that the man she'd loved had not existed.
The grief was animal.
It came out of her chest as a sound Jackson had heard once before, in West Virginia, from a woman whose son had been in the slope.
Mae moved to the couch. Pulled Sarah into her arms. Sarah let her.
Sarah broke.
Jackson did not move from his seat at the other end of the couch.
He didn't get up. He didn't leave. He didn't try to fix.
He sat.
He was the witness.
The wolf in him was the witness too.
The two of them sat at the edge of the couch and held the room.
Sarah cried for a long time.
Mae held her and didn't speak. Mae's hand moved on Sarah's back the way it had moved, presumably, on a thousand backs across forty years of being the heart of a pack.
Jackson, after twenty minutes, got up quietly and went into Sarah's small kitchen and put a kettle on and made fresh tea, because the coffee had gone cold and tea was what people drank after they'd cried for twenty minutes. He brought three mugs back. Set them on the side table. Sat back down.
Sarah, eventually, lifted her face from Mae's shoulder.
She looked at Jackson.
Her eyes were red. Her mouth unsteady. Her whole face the face of a person who'd been used and who had loved.
She said, "I am so sorry."
Jackson said, "You have not done anything wrong."
He said it quietly. Exactly. He did not elaborate.
The line carried the entire weight of a wound that had been recalibrating for fifteen years and had finished, somewhere in the last hour, recalibrating into something he could finally hold.
Sarah looked at him.
He looked back.
She nodded.
She didn't speak again for a long time.
She drank the tea.
Mae stayed at her side.
Jackson sat at the edge of the couch.
The three of them stayed until the apartment had gone dim with evening and Mae had asked, gently, whether Sarah would like Mae to stay over, and Sarah had said, no, but please come back at six in the morning, and Mae had said, I will be here at six, and Jackson had said, Sarah, and Sarah had said, yes, and Jackson had said, I will be at the diner at five.
If you want to talk. If you don't. Either way. I will be there, and Sarah had nodded.
Mae and Jackson left at 1943.
In the truck, Mae cried briefly. Once. Recovered.
Jackson drove her home.
Neither of them spoke.
He did not push it back.
He drove with the wolf at the surface, with him, watchful, present, awake.
He drove home and sat on his porch in the cold for an hour before he went inside.
He was thinking about Sarah's face.
He was thinking about every time, in fifteen years, he'd thought protection meant standing at the perimeter of a person's life with a gun.
He was thinking that he'd been wrong about almost all of it.
He was thinking about what Mae had said in the truck on the way over.
You stay through the wishing.
He went inside at last and slept four hours and was at the diner at 0500.
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