Chapter Four
Midge whined me awake around seven the next morning, and as I stumbled down the stairs to let her out I did notice then that the house was too quiet. Dad’s a snorer—I’m talking lawnmower levels of loud. And then there’s the daily racket in the kitchen once he wakes up. There’s no hiding his non-presence.
“Hmm,” I said to Midge as she shuffled back into the house, and she looked at me with her solemn eyes as if saying hmm right back, before shaking a dusting of snow from her dark fur. That’s the way it is in Wakpa; when it’s winter it’s winter, and the days it doesn’t out-and-out snow it threatens blizzards and mists snowflakes.
Probably he’d nabbed an elk at last, had taken his time dressing it, then headed over to Craig Morrigan’s house to rub it in his face. And since we
