Page 76 of Shatter

Tindra, Bodul's wife, bouncing a round, red-cheeked baby on her hip, his fat fist knotted in the end of her braid.

"Katie!" Tindra waves me over with her free hand. "Come here. Sigurd wants to see you."

Sigurd doesn’t want to see me.

Sigurd wants to eat the zipper on my hoodie.

He grabs for it with both hands the second I get close, gurgling, a string of drool swinging from his lip, and I laugh before I can help it.

"He's cutting a tooth." Tindra kisses the top of his head. "Everything goes in the mouth. Yesterday it was Bodul's keys."

"He's getting big." I let him close his damp fist around my finger.

"Too big." She hefts him higher on her hip. "My back is killing me."

Somebody's vest is hanging over the back of the chair beside her.

Black leather, worn soft and shiny at the seams, with the Raiders patch stitched across the back.

Above the patch, in curving white letters, two words I can read from where I'm standing.

PROPERTY OF.

The name underneath is folded into the chair, and I can't see it.

I don't try to.

"Did he ask yet?" One of the other women leans across the table toward Tindra with a grin. "Bodul. About the patch."

Tindra's face goes pink.

"He's talking about it." She smooths a hand over Sigurd's fuzzy head. "Says he wants to do it right. At a party, in front of everybody."

"Oh, he's so gone for you." The woman laughs. "He'll have it on your back before the baby walks."

"Property of Bodul." Tindra says it softly, almost to herself, and she smiles down at her son like somebody handed her the moon.

My fingertips go numb first, then my lips, like somebody opened a valve and let the heat drain out of me.

My finger's still wrapped in Sigurd's fist.

I can't feel it.

Property of.

Like a truck.

Like a daughter, handed across a dinner table with the wine and the cheese plate.

"Katie?" Tindra's looking at me, head cocked. "You okay? You went white."

"Low blood sugar." My voice comes out perfectly normal. "I skipped breakfast."

"Take a muffin." Meghan points one at me from the counter. "Take six."

I take one.

Sigurd gets to keep my finger for another second before I ease it free and say goodbye.