The smokehouse holds the night like a breath. When I wake, the bulb is still warm from burning itself dim, and the rain has traded to mist. My mouth tastes dry. My body feels like it was pulled apart and put back together by a wrong hand.
I sit up slow. The jacket Robert gave me hangs off the chair, heavy with wet. I rub my thumb over the hospital band mark on my wrist and tell myself to get up.
Outside, La Push is gray and green and busy. A gull drags its voice over the parking lot. A woman I don't know pushes a cart of folded chairs into the hall and doesn't look up. I like her for that.
Sue finds me by the door with a paper cup and a small brown bag. "Coffee," she says. "And a muffin I don't recommend, but it's calories."
"Thank you." I wrap both hands around the cup and let the heat boss my fingers.
She takes me in with that same clear look as last night. "You sleep?"
"A little."
"That's more than nothing." She nods toward the beach. "Walk with me."
We head down the path. The sand is packed from the rain and the tide has left a lace edge of foam on the rocks. Sue's silence is the useful kind, not the punishing kind. When she talks, it's because she decided the words matter.
"You're your mother's girl," she says, not asking.
"Yes," I say.
"She was good at being kind and bad at staying." A pause. "A lot of folks don't forgive the second thing."
"I know." The words don't have heat. It's just a fact with a shape.
"She ran before the fallout hit her," Sue says.
We pass the low rocks where kids leave cairns and shell lines. Up by the trees, a young guy with a baseball cap backward is laughing at something on his phone. His laughter has the sound people use when they want a room to think they're fine. I don't look. I keep my shoulders loose and my face empty.
When we circle back to the hall, Leah is on the steps with her arms folded and a look that could make others feel bad. Her hair is pulled back in a tight tail. Her eyes find me and twitches.
"This her?" she asks Sue, not me.
"This is Ana," Sue says.
Leah looks me over. Not shy. Not cruel either, just thorough. "You stand weird," she says.
"I was dead last week," I say. My mouth moves before I can stop it. "I'm catching up."
A sound escapes her, not quite a laugh. "Okay."
Paul is with her, slouched on the rail, chewing a toothpick. He's all heat and twitch. He gives me a once-over and smirks.
"White," he says, bit rude and funny for him. "Figures. Branch, too."
"Paul," Sue warns.
"What? She is." He flicks the toothpick into the dirt. "Her mom ran. Her dad ran his mouth and got himself shot. That's the math."
Heat crawls up my neck, slow and ugly. My truth-sense hums, not that he's lying, but that he's dressing rage as law. I hold my breath until the first rush fades. Don't snap. He is just a kid.
"My father hurt people," I say. "He died in a fight he started. It doesn't make me wrong."
Paul's jaw ticks. "We'll see."
Leah cuts in, eyes still on me. "You change clean?"
"I didn't lose control," I say. "I stayed off the line."
"Good," she says. "We have enough mess to mop without you coming apart."
"Leah," Sue says, mild.
"What?" Leah tips her chin at me. "She didn't run from the hall when Paul opened his mouth. That puts her above median."
Paul barks a laugh. "You're funny today."
"I'm always funny," Leah says, but there's a heaviness in her voice, quiet and rough.
Sam's truck rolls up, quiet on wet gravel. He gets out, nods once to Sue, once to Leah, not at all to Paul. His gaze lands on me last and weighs me the way he weighed me last night.
"We've got work," he says. "Ana, you're with me and Leah on the south boundary. Paul, you're with Jared on the north road. Keep off the sucker's drive."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Paul says, but the way he says dream makes it sound more like a warning than a promise.
We move. Leah takes the lead with an easy run that says she knows this ground like her own hallway. I keep two steps back, not crowding. Sam's presence behind us is a pressure, not a noise.
The trees hold the mist. It's quiet enough to hear the small sounds, the tick of water off cedar, the scrape of a squirrel hauling itself up a trunk, the far-off hiss of the highway.
Leah breaks the silence first. "Your mother's name is going to make people stupid for a while."
"I assumed," I say.
"She left in the middle of a mess," Leah says. "I was a kid, but I remember the talk. Folks said she picked out." Leah's mouth hardens. "They say that a lot about women who won't stay to be blamed."
"I can stay," I say. "Being blamed is cheaper than running."
Leah glances back at me, a quick check. "We'll see," she echoes Paul, but hers isn't mean. It's just true.
We stop where the brush thins and the land dips toward the river. Sam lifts his chin. "Mark here."
I swallow the heat that comes with the mark command and change. Bones grind; skin moves. It hurts clean, like a wound that knows its job. The white coat drops over me like a sheet pulled straight. Leah's wolf is lean and fast-gray beside me. Sam is larger, dark, the kind of solid that doesn't need to say anything to be heard.
We make the passes. I keep my paws where Leah's fall and learn the shape of our line, the rotten stump that smells like mushrooms, the downed fir with the twisted root, the strip of damp sand where a deer crossed last night. By the fourth loop my breath finds the right rhythm. The hum in my head finds a low note. It's almost easy.
Back in skin, I pull the sweatpants on and tie the string tight. Leah is already dressed, squeezing water out of her ponytail with both hands.
Sam watches the tree line. "They are quiet," he says, like he's telling the mist rather than us. "They can stay that way."
Leah clicks her tongue. "Somebody's always watching them."
"Us too," Sam says. His eyes cut to me. "Especially now."
"I know," I say. I make my voice regular. "I'll be where you put me."
He accepts that. It's not approval. It's a filed note. He turns as a pair of headlights roll down the road beyond the trees. A white sedan. A woman's laugh floats thin and far, then is gone.
Leah huffs. "Wedding nonsense."
Sam's mouth does a brief, tired quirk. "Stay out of it."
We head back toward the hall. At the trailhead, Embry and Jared are leaning on the fence and arguing about which gas station has the better breakfast burritos. Their fight is light and old, the kind worn smooth by use.
"New girl survived Paul," Embry says when he sees us, friendly grin quick to his face. "Grade A."
"Don't celebrate yet," Jared says. He flicks a look at my hair, at my damp shirt clinging to my collarbone, then looks away like he got caught. "She hasn't had the rest of us on a bad day."
"I grew up around bad days," I say before I can stop myself.
Embry's grin widens. "There it is."
Paul comes up the road with his hands jammed in his hoodie pocket and his head low. His eyes find me like they were looking for a target on the way. He doesn't even try to make it look accidental.
"So," he says. "Your mom ran off with a white boy and your dad terrorized half the rez. And now you show up in a white coat like some kind of..." He swallows a better word and picks another. "....omen. You get why that's not… cute, right?"
"Paul," Leah says, a warning.
"No," he says without looking at her. "She should hear it. She should know why people look at her like she's a fuse."
The anger flares up and dies just as fast. It's oddly comforting, something I know. That old, dull ache. I taste dry again and press my tongue to the back of my teeth.
"I don't think it's cute," I say. "I think it's a problem I didn't pick. I won't make it worse."
He steps in, close enough that I feel the heat that comes off him like he's one degree away from catching. "You being here makes it worse."
"Back off," Leah says, voice sharpening.
I don't move. If I step back, he wins. If I step forward, we're in a different conversation. I pick the third path. I let my shoulders drop and my hands dangle and make my voice as flat and rough.
"I'm not your father," I say quietly. "I'm not my father either." I tip my head toward the hall. "Give me a job. I'll do it. You can hate me while I do it. I don't care."
For a second there is a flicker in his face confusion? He wasn't ready for I don't care. He was geared up for fight or cry. He sucks his teeth and looks away like he forgot what he came here to say.
Embry whistles under his breath. "Okay."
Jared pops his jaw. "Breakfast burritos are at the Spur," he tells no one, just to put a different sound in the air.
Sam steps between us then, without theatre. He doesn't look at Paul when he says, "Enough." He doesn't have to. Paul's shoulders twitch like a dog called off a fence.
"Work list," Sam says. "Embry, Jared north line. Leah, with me west creek. Ana, you're on hall watch and runs to the community lot. If someone calls, you go. If someone tells you to stop, you stop. Clear?"
"Clear," I say.
Leah flicks me a look as she moves to fall in with Sam. It isn't pity. It isn't approval. It's acknowledgment. You held. Then she's gone.
Hours pass in small jobs that make a town run. I carry folding tables to a covered pad behind the hall. I help Mrs. Clearwater Sue, I correct myself sort donated blankets into a plastic bin. I pick up the phone three times and say "community hall" in a voice that sounds like I've always worked there. Once it's a teenager asking if the gym is open. Once it's a man wanting to know when the pier lights will be fixed. Once it's a woman who doesn't say anything and then hangs up.
At lunch, I sit on the back steps with a ham sandwich that tastes like okay. Rina drops beside me without asking and steals a corner.
"You didn't swing at Paul," she says, not looking.
"I wanted to."
"Good," she says. "Wanting doesn't make you stupid. Doing does."
I chew. "Do people ever stop being mad about other people's parents?"
"No," she says. "They get tired of being loud about it, though. That's almost the same."
By late afternoon, my feet are heavy, and there's a low hum in my head that isn't pack noise, just the sound of being alive. It's not unbearable. Just there.
I carry a bag of trash out to the bins and catch a voice from the lot. Not loud this time. Not fake happy. It's the kind of quiet that happens after someone spent all their loud. It trails off into a laugh that isn't a laugh. I don't turn my head.
"Stay small," I remind myself. "Don't steer people."
When the sun makes a half-hearted appearance before quitting again, I sweep the hall with a broom held together by duct tape. The floor takes the lines I draw and gives back dust, like we've made some quiet deal. At the far table, Sue's sorting through a stack of forms beside a jar full of pens.
"You did what I asked," she says, not looking up.
"Seemed smart," I say.
She sets her pen down, finally looks at me. "You're not going to win anyone with wits."
"I don't have any," I say. "Just hands and time."
"That's what we need," she says. "Most days."
The door bangs open. Paul again. His hair is damp like he walked straight through the fog without respecting it. He spots me, stops, and something mean lights in his face like he remembered the line he forgot earlier.
"Hey, Branch," he says. "You think staying buys you a clean slate? It doesn't. Folks died because your dad was a coward with a gun."
The words land like a rock you had time to brace for, but they still leave a mark. The old anger stirs, reaching for the same old door. I don't open it. I just lean on the broom like it's something solid.
"I know," I say. "I'm sorry for them."
"That doesn't fix anything."
"No," I say. "It doesn't."
He stares like he's waiting for me to break, to make his day make sense. I don't. He makes a noise that's almost a growl and turns away. On his way out he says, to the room, not me, "White wolves crack things. They always have."
Sue's voice is soft and flat at once. "Go cool off, Paul."
He goes. The door bangs again. The room breathes out.
I finish the sweep. The dustpan fills with grit and a gum wrapper and one bent paperclip. I dump it into the trash and wash my hands in the tiny sink until the water runs hot and I can feel my fingers again.
When I step outside, the light has turned blue. The smokehouse is still there, small and quiet, like it's waiting. I don't pay attention to the houses as I walk. I go in, close the door, sit on the cot, and let my shoulders sink.
I came back to the place my mother left. I shifted into a color that makes elders say white like a curse. I did the chores. I kept my mouth. I didn't win anyone. I didn't lose anyone either.
The night takes the edges off the day. Through the thin wall I hear the distant ocean and the closer sound of a bike turning over in a garage that isn't mine to look at. I rub the heel of my hand over my sternum where the heat sits low.
Breathe. Be kind. Stay small.
It's not warm. It's not nothing. It's what I have.
I pull the blanket up and stare at the ceiling until the boards blur. The last thought lands and sticks.
Outsider at home.