She chuckles. Brigid can't help it. She remembers how loud they'd been together, when he'd been dragging her out of her corner with a book - usually by taking it after trying other methods - and tapping at her window, even though his bedroom had been down the hall. They'd been terrors.

It's part of the reason, she thinks, that her Da always approved of Derek. Someone to draw her out of self-imposed silence and make her see more of life.

His question startles her and she stops scraping the carrot for a moment, while she thinks. Her cheeks pinken, again, and she takes a moment to gather her thoughts.

"I never thought we'd live in the big house, with the entire pack. We'd have something smaller, on the edge of the reserve. It'd still be on Hale land, but separate enough that we had our own household, and we didn't bother your mother." The house had been nice in her dreams. Hardwood floors, warm colors on the walls, with pictures of the family lining up next to each other. "It wasn't huge, but it was ours. My Da would have left Markus and come out here when I came, on the premise that he can't spoil grandchildren across the country."

Brigid is a natural storyteller. Her voice takes on a lilting quality that storytellers of old had used to teach.

"Our kids would constantly run between the two places." She'd often been over to her grandmother's place as a child. Even after her mother had died. "I'd be a professor, probably of history, and while every once in a while, there'd be an issue or trouble, it wasn't anything we couldn't handle. Our daughter would have these deep, black curls with green eyes and she'd constantly try to run away whenever someone chased her with a comb. But she'd sit for you, even if you were terrible at doing hair."

The carrots drop into the crockpots, making soft thunking sounds.