June inspected the gray wool tied through the bow. She compared it with a square kept in a paper sleeve, then nodded. Evelyn inserted the key.

It would not turn.

My pulse struck hard once.

June crouched beside the lock. “Lift the handle. Old cabinet settles to the left.”

Evelyn lifted, pushed, and turned.

The lock clicked.

Inside lay four ledger books, a canvas tool roll, several sealed envelopes, and a child's blue mitten. Maeve had owned a pair like it. I remembered her crying because she lost one on the first snow ride of the year. Our father told her their mother had probably thrown it away before she died.

I reached toward it and stopped.

“May I?”

June answered after a moment. “Yes.”

The mitten fit in my palm. A clumsy M had been stitched inside the cuff.

“She made that,” I said.

I remembered Maeve wearing both mittens at breakfast because she refused to wait for snow. She had dipped one thumb in syrup. Our father laughed, carried her to the sink, and told me our mother had never been patient either.

At the time, I thought the story was affection.

Now I wondered whether it had been a warning dressed as a memory.

The wool still held a faint dark mark near the thumb. Syrup would not survive three decades, but my mind supplied its shine anyway. Maeve had been four. I had tied the mitten strings through her sleeves because our mother was not there to do it.

“She kept one object from your sister,” Evelyn said softly.

“She kept proof Maeve existed outside whatever they told her.”

June leaned against the next locker. “Celene arrived with nothing that belonged to her. No wallet. No wedding ring. The clothes on her body had someone else's name sewn into them.”

“Prison clothes?”

“Hospital laundry.”

My claws pushed against my fingertips before I forced them back.

Evelyn noticed. She always noticed.

“What did Miriam do?” she asked June.

“Burned the clothes. Gave her coveralls. Fed her half a bowl of soup because a full one would have made her sick.” June looked at the mitten. “Then Miriam listened. That was the part your mother said saved her.”

Not a rescue convoy. Not an Alpha's command. A woman listening to another woman and believing the first answer.

I laid the mitten beside the unopened letters with more care than I had ever shown my father's medals.

Evelyn opened the first ledger on a steel table. Dates ran down the margin beside initials, vehicle descriptions, fuel amounts, medicine, and destinations disguised as repair jobs.

“These aren't customers,” she said.

“No,” June replied. “They're women.”

Evelyn followed a column with one finger. “The labor totals are ages. Parts are dependents. Return work means someone was recaptured.”

June looked at her with new respect. “Miriam taught Celene the code.”

My mother's name appeared throughout the book as C.B., first beside food purchases, later beside routes. Her handwriting changed over the pages. It began shaky. By the third ledger it was firm enough to cut.

“How long?” I asked.

June did not answer.

Evelyn removed the sealed envelopes. Each bore a year instead of an address. On the back of every one, in my mother's hand, were two names.

Silas and Maeve.

There were eleven envelopes.

I sat because my knees ceased being trustworthy.

“She wrote to us.”

“Every year she could,” June said.

“Why didn't they arrive?”

“That is not a question I can answer with proof.”

Evelyn checked the forwarding marks. “They went through the Blackwood household office.”

My father's office.

I broke the seal on the first envelope, then stopped before unfolding the page.

“Maeve should be here.”

The decision cost me. My wolf hated the unopened paper. The boy I had been wanted his mother now, wanted eleven years returned in eleven minutes.

But Maeve had already been left behind once.

I set the letter down.

June watched me differently after that.

Evelyn examined the cabinet's upper shelf. “There's something behind the ledgers.”

She drew out a photograph wrapped in waxed cloth.

Four women stood outside Vale Repairs beneath a summer sky. Miriam Vale was younger. Nora stood beside her without the scar that now crossed her neck. Between them was my mother.

Celene Blackwood was alive, sun-browned, and smiling with a wrench held over one shoulder.

The date stamped on the back was eight years after I had placed flowers on her grave.

Behind us, the security buzzer sounded once.

June looked toward the ceiling.

Then it sounded twice more—the signal for fire.