The Luna's Work

Caroline picked her up at nine on a Saturday in the middle of October, with a covered dish on the back seat and the heat turned up higher than the morning needed.

"Chicken and rice," she said when she caught Celia looking. "Ruth won't eat it in front of us, but she'll eat it."

When Caroline had called during the week, Celia had expected it to be about the wedding. Instead the question was whether she would like to come and meet someone, and something in the way it was asked had made her agree before she knew what she was agreeing to.

They drove out past the edge of the city, where the houses spread farther apart and the trees crowded in. For a while they talked about dates and whether next fall was too long to wait, until Celia ran out of things she knew to say about the wedding and asked the question she had been carrying around for three weeks.

"What am I actually agreeing to? Not with Colin. With the rest of it."

Caroline took her time answering, the way her son did. "Mostly, people. That's the biggest part." Her hands stayed easy on the wheel. "There are things nobody takes to the Alpha. A marriage going bad, or a son who's drinking, or a bill they're ashamed they can't pay. They'll bring those to you instead, and it's your job to know what to do about them, or at least who to call."

"And the rest?"

"The pack keeps a fund for anyone going through a hard stretch, and you'll be the one who runs it. You'll stand next to Colin when another pack comes to visit, and you'll know their families' names before they arrive. There are naming ceremonies when a pup is born, and memorials when someone dies." A small smile crossed her face. "And the buildings. The hall, the old schoolhouse, the mill up on the creek, though I hear you've already claimed that one." She let that sit for a moment. "Anything the pack owns, the Luna looks after."

Celia laughed, turned toward the window, and did not try to deny it.

"I've been doing it since Frederick stepped down," Caroline went on. "It needed doing, and Colin was in no hurry to change that. Believe me, I'll be glad to hand it over."

There was one more thing Celia had to ask, and she had been dreading it. "I'm not giving up my work."

"I'd think less of you if you did." Caroline glanced at her. "I ran the main library downtown for twenty-six years. Half of this happens in a car on a Saturday morning, and the other half happens on the phone at night." She pulled onto a gravel road. "Do you remember the basket somebody left on your doorstep in your first week here? Bread and jam, and a card from your neighbors in the pack."

Celia stared at her. She remembered it exactly. She still had the card.

"That was me. I do it for everyone new. You'll do it too."

Ruth lived at the end of the drive in a small white house that had not been painted in some time. She opened the door before they knocked, a narrow, white-haired woman with her cardigan buttoned wrong, older than anyone else in the pack from the look of her. Then she looked Celia over from head to foot without any attempt to hide it.

"So you're the one."

"I'm the one," Celia agreed.

Ruth thought about that, then moved aside to let them in. "Well. He took his time."

They sat in her kitchen for an hour. Caroline put the chicken and rice in the refrigerator and made tea without asking, and Ruth complained about her neighbor's dog, and the price of heating oil, and a grandson twenty minutes away who called on her birthday and not otherwise. Caroline listened to every word as though she had not heard it all a dozen times, and somewhere in the second cup of tea Celia understood that the listening was the reason they had come.

On the way out, Celia noticed the back steps. The bottom one had come loose and sagged to one side, and the whole set leaned as though it were tired of standing.

"Those aren't safe."

"Caroline's been promising to get someone out here for a week."

"I've been promising to find the right person for it," Caroline corrected her mildly.

Celia was already crouched beside the steps, checking underneath. "I can have someone here tomorrow."

Ruth studied her for a long moment, then glanced at Caroline. "Nobody calls the Alpha because their back steps are falling down," she said, and went inside.

Celia's phone rang as they reached the main road. It was her mother, so she put the call on speaker, and Elaine and Caroline spent a minute telling each other what a good night the dinner had been.

"I can't stay on long, sweetheart," Elaine told her after a while. "I'm seeing the healer Monday for a check-up I've already put off twice, and I need to find my old records before I lose my nerve."

"A check-up for what?"

"For nothing, probably. I've been tired for a month, and the stairs wind me now." Her mother laughed. "I've just been working too hard, that's all."

Celia laughed with her and made her promise to call afterward, and her mother promised.