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“That’s my box,” Jerron informed him with enough authority Bill withered a hair, even if he sounded like a five-year-old with a case of the gimmies.
“You’re late,” I said sourly.
Jerron snorted. “I had other things to do.”
“Of course you did.” I shoved the box at him. He could carry it. I was tired.
Jerron marched into the bank and dropped the box on Bill’s desk. I winced at his rudeness. He’d come with four young SilverPaw males. They’d decided to circle Sterling and breathe on him.
Jerron tossed back the long metal lid.
Inside were papers. Piles of papers.
He grabbed a handful, glanced at them, tossed them on the floor, grabbed another handful.
I crouched down and picked up one of the pieces. It was one of Jerron’s grade school spelling tests.
Worksheets, coloring book pages, flattened origami, papercrafts, tests, quizzes, silly essays where we’d struggled to string together two sentences telling a crude story. Thanksgiving turkeys made from outlines of our hands. Reading charts with little stickers. Ancient book reports. I brushed my hand through the papers. All gradeschool, and nothing with my name on it beyond third grade. All of it was from when SilverPaw had lived in interior Alaska.
Lots of moms kept pictures, videos, trinkets, first booties, that kind of thing. My mother hadn’t kept any of it. She’d always been a right-this-moment type, always forward, never back. She’d laughed and said my father spent all his time studying the past so someone had to keep their eyes on the road.
Jerron pawed frantically through the papers. I hauled out the last few clumps from the box and fished around for anything else. In the very back, trapped under one of the metal folds, was a single glossy photo. The spring-fed pond in the woods behind the house. It hadn’t been very wide—about six feet or so—but had been very deep. It’d been beautiful when it’d frozen in the winter.
I pocketed the picture before Jerron could see it. “When’d she get the box, Bill?”
He checked his records. The date had been a week after her diagnosis. She’d come in just once and never returned.
Jerron rested his forearms on his knees and stared at the papers.
I asked him, “Do you know why she kept this stuff?”
“Hell no.” He grabbed a huge handful and let them drift to the ground. “She never kept anything. So she finds out she’s dying and her response was to leave all this crap to you and waste money.”
“She was sick. You don’t know what she was thinking. You didn’t miss a meal.” I’d made sure of that.
Jerron tossed a few handfuls into the garbage bin. “That’s right, take her side. Like always.”
“You always did act like she got sick just to piss you off,” I snapped. “Dad acted like it wasn’t happening, and you suddenly took up sports. I never figured out if you two didn’t care, or you didn’t have the spine to face it.”
Jerron tossed the whole metal box in the trash. It tipped the bin and everything clattered to the floor. “What else was I supposed to do? Sit around like you?”
“I don’t know! But coming home and demanding dinner when she was in bed with her chest rotting out wasn’t it! You two weren’t there! You weren’t even there when she died! I was! I was there with her when she died! I told both of you I thought she was dying and you went to school and he went to the workshop!” I shouted. My stupid voice cracked.
Jerron snorted and then gave me a cruel smirk. “Winter, the dutiful daughter in all things. And it served you so well, didn’t it? Gaia has truly smiled on you.”
I grabbed some of the last papers and shoved my clenched fist under his nose. “Think about what this has cost you, Alpha,” I hissed under my breath. “You threatened and menaced a Chronicler. You’ve violated the Fifth Law. And that’s after you embarrassed yourself in front of your peers. If Marcella hadn’t saved your ass, Sterling would have caved your skull in on the edge of her table.”
“I don’t have to explain anything except your husband is a half-breed!” Jerron shouted and shoved my hand away.
“There isn’t anything you can explain that doesn’t make you look like the miserable little dog you are,” I snarled. “You little propped-up coward. We all know without Sterling that house would be thirty days late because your idea of social responsibility is buying drinks for everyone!”
“Back off, Winter,” he growled.
“Or what?” I hissed back.
He snarled and raised a hand.
“Oh, real original.” I shoved my cheek at him. “Go ahead. I’ve never begged and cowered before. Think you can hit harder than Dad? Bet you can’t.”
