He wanted to believe her. Wasn’t sure he did.
“The girls tell me you have creeks running through the Courtyard. Any of you catch fish in those creeks?” Miss Twyla asked.
“Henry does.”
“Fish is another kind of meat.”
Did Meg like fish?
When Simon didn’t say anything, Vlad smiled at Miss Twyla. “Thank you for the suggestion.” When she didn’t go away, he added, “Is there something else?”
Miss Twyla looked at Simon in a way that made him want to back up a step—or show her his better set of teeth as a warning.
“My James was a good man, and I loved him for all the years we were married. Still do, even though he’s been gone some years now. But he enjoyed eating a cheese that smelled up a house worse than a bad case of farts.”
Simon blinked. Scratched behind one ear. He didn’t know how to respond to Miss Twyla saying “farts.” “Did you like the cheese?”
“I did not. But once or twice a year he would get a craving for it and buy enough of that cheese to make a sandwich, and it was the best treat he could think to buy. He ate those cheese sandwiches before we were married and every year we spent together.”
“But it was stinky.”
“It was. But it was part of who he was. He didn’t ask me to eat it, and I didn’t ask him to give up eating it. That’s how it works when two people are partners.”
She took a step forward. Simon held his ground as long as he could before taking a step back.
“You have more courage than you’re showing right now, and avoiding that girl doesn’t do either of you any favors. You talk it out, set it right, decide what each of you can live with.”
“I ate a human,” he snapped, feeling cornered.
“All by yourself? You must have been hungry.”
“No, not by myself! We—” Simon glanced at Vlad, who shrugged.
“You think there’s anyone here except the children who hasn’t figured out what happened to the thieves? Miss Merri says you used to put a sign on the butcher shop door when you’d caught some of what you call special meat, although the only thing I can see about it being special is you didn’t catch it all that often and certainly didn’t go looking for it off your own land.” She looked pointedly at Vlad. “Not the meat anyway.” She turned back to Simon. “Am I right in thinking you don’t mix that meat with other kinds?”
“We never sold it at the butcher shop,” Simon growled. Before Meg, they might have stored a bit in the big refrigerator because meat was meat, but they learned the difference between clean and human clean, and as they got to know the human female pack, it began to matter that they not do things that could make the girls sick. “And we haven’t kept any of that meat in the shop for a long time now.” Not since the day Meg called Boone and asked for some special meat for Sam, not knowing that there was a special kind of meat.
“You had one package in the shop,” Miss Twyla said.
“In a separate cooler. And the cooler wasn’t in the shop for very long.”
“Just long enough for Cyrus to take the bait?” She nodded again, as if something had been confirmed. “If he deserved being given that package, then he did, and while I can’t say it surprises me, it makes my heart heavy to know he was involved with those thieves. But I’m grateful Officer Kowalski stepped in and didn’t let Cyrus bring that package home for the children to see.”
“We weren’t going to let him leave the Courtyard with the package,” Vlad said quietly. “We wouldn’t have let his mate and young see the meat. Selling it to him was punishment and warning for that Cyrus. Kowalski had no authority here to arrest that Cyrus and take him, and the package, to the police station. But we let him do it.”
“Just shows you’re all learning to pull as a team.” Miss Twyla gave Simon a hard look—the same kind of look a nanny would give an erring pup. But a nanny might add a paw-whack or a nip to the look. “You talk it out with Miss Meg and set things right.”
She walked to the back of the store. A moment later they heard the door open and close.
Still feeling cornered, Simon glared at Vlad. “You didn’t help.”
“You weren’t being scolded for eating a human; you were being scolded for upsetting Meg, which I haven’t done.”
“It’s not the same for you,” Simon muttered.
Vlad stared at him. “You weren’t bothered by this when we killed those intruders and the Wolves were tearing into the flesh. You weren’t bothered by it when you bit through the hand and elbow and gave the inked meat to Boone to wrap up for that Cyrus. You were fine with all of it until you went home and saw Meg sleeping—and weren’t sure you would be welcome.” Vlad looked away. “Miss Twyla is right. You need to find out if this changes things between you and Meg.”
Seeing the truth in Vlad’s words, Simon nodded and went back to working on the display in order to avoid finding out for just a little while longer.
? ? ?
Meg stood at one end of the Green Complex’s kitchen garden and stared at the woven baskets filled with zucchini. “Is this normal?”
“Even for zucchini, this is a bumper crop.” Ruth wiped sweat off her forehead with one hand and pressed the other hand to her lower back as she straightened up.
“Nadine said she’ll take some to make zucchini bread for A Little Bite,” Merri Lee said. She held out two modest-size zucchini. “You should take these, Meg.”
Meg sighed but she took them. Eating foods that were in season was all well and good, but she now understood about having too much of a good thing.
“You don’t have to eat them tonight,” Merri Lee said. “They’ll keep for a day or two.”
Goody. A no-zucchini meal. Of course, she wasn’t sure what they would eat—or if she’d be eating alone.
Then she saw the Wolf moving toward her. Simon, with his dark coat shot with lighter gray hairs. It had been a while since she’d had that odd sense of not being able to see him clearly when he moved, as if she were seeing an overlapping image of something even larger poking through a Wolf suit, making the outline indistinct. Maybe a little of his true form, whatever it was, showed through when he was stressed, like when he was in human form and things shifted involuntarily because he was angry or upset.
Did anyone else experience this when they looked at the Others? Or did seeing the visions of prophecy skew the way she saw the mundane world? If you could call any of the terra indigene mundane.
Ruth and Merri Lee looked around and spotted Simon.
“We should go,” Ruth said.
“You don’t have to,” Meg said quickly.
Merri Lee picked up one of the baskets. “Yes, we do. You’re not always going to agree or get along, but you’re going to be unhappy until you talk it out.”
“I could just conk him on the head with a big zucchini.”