“What are they?”
“It’s a bit of paper you write on with charcoal from the bonfire. You write something on it and toss it over the cliffs.”
“That doesn’t sound bad.”
“A curse, Kate. They’re curses. You write them backward and throw them to the sea.”
I’m thrilled and horrified. Immediately I try to imagine if there is any curse that I can see myself throwing over the cliff. I pose a striking figure in my mind, silhouetted by the bonfire, hurling something foul into the ocean.
“You’re wild, Kate Connolly,” Brian says. “I can see it in your face.”
I’m not sure about that, but when I look up at him, he’s studying me intently. Suddenly and terrifyingly, I get the idea that he’s going to kiss me, and I shy backward several feet before I realize that he hasn’t moved an inch. He laughs at me, a kind, safe laugh. Maybe I am wild after all.
“Come on,” Brian says. “Let’s see if he’s here.”
We continue down the quay. Here there are food vendors beneath canvas, and this is clearly where Brian thought that Gabe might be. The vendors are doing brisk trade, and we have to thread through the lines. Brian is craning his neck again to look for my brother, and again, I feel strange, performing this personal quest with someone outside my family. What business of it is his, spending his festival finding Gabe instead of having a good time?
“You shouldn’t be spending your evening doing this,” I say. “You should be having fun. I’ll keep looking.”
Brian looks down at me. I think he’s been getting taller throughout the evening. By the time we find Gabe, he’ll be as tall as St. Columba’s on the hill and I’ll have to have a step-ladder to hold a conversation with him. “I am having fun. Do you want me to go?”
I don’t believe him. I’ve seen fun, and it involves hooting and tearing in circles and possibly getting a skinned knee. This is interesting, not fun. “I just feel guilty for keeping you.”
Brian swallows and looks off over the crowd as if he’s still searching for Gabriel. “The last of my sisters went to the mainland last year. Normally I would have been here with her.”
“Gabe says he’s going.”
It’s out before I even think of it, and immediately, I can’t imagine why I said it. Why did I mention this to Brian Carroll when I haven’t even really discussed it with Finn? The most detailed conversation I’ve had with Brian Carroll in my life involved spitting on his yet-to-be-dug grave and now I’m turning my pockets inside out on family secrets.
“So he says,” Brian replies.
I want to shout, He didn’t tell us until he had to, but that really would be a family secret, so I just seal my mouth shut. I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I were at home. I wish Brian Carroll weren’t looking at me from his ever-increasing height. I cross my arms and stuff them into my armpits. When I find Gabe, I’m going to punch him right in his eye.
Brian Carroll seems oblivious to my distress. He adds, “I think he said he was going over with Tommy Falk and Beech Gratton.”
I let a small noise of rage escape from me. “Of course! Everyone knows! Everyone’s going. Are you going to the mainland, too?”
“No,” Brian says seriously. “My great-great-grandfather helped build this pier, and I’m not leaving it.”
He sounds like he’s married to it, and that suddenly makes me feel tired and cross.
“Hey now,” Brian says, as if he has now finally discovered my annoyance. “Let’s go look in the pub. That’s where I was headed. He might be there — that’s where the locals hide, sometimes. If nothing else, we can get out of the cold for a moment.”
We make our way back through the people to the Black-Eyed Girl, a green-fronted building with the doors propped open. It always struck me as too distinguished to be a pub, all polished wood and dimpled leather and brass fittings. It’s impeccably clean and, for most of the day, incredibly empty. Then, at night, when the sailors get tired of being sober, the pub fills up and becomes the sort of noisy that spills out into the street and vomits into the quay.
I’ve never been inside that second version of the pub until tonight. It’s a completely different kind of full from the street. A dense, smoky, too-hot claustrophobia, full of shouting and laughter and, disconcertingly, my name in conversations.
“Hey now, is that our Kate Connolly?” says a man standing by the door. The mention of my name turns a few other heads our way. It feels like they all have more than one set of eyes each.
“Kate Connolly!” shouts another man, gladly, by the bar. He pushes off a barstool to come closer. Barrel-chested and ginger-haired, he smells like garlic and beer. “The hen among the cocks!”
Brian takes my arm, not gently, and gestures with his other hand to the back of the pub. Then he turns to the man and says, “It sure is. So, now, John. What do you think of this tide coming in? Due for a storm?”
I know a rescue effort when I see one, so I push farther into the pub away from them. I search the back of the pub and there, in the corner booth, is Gabe. He’s leaned forward, a pint in front of him, long fingers spread like a spider on the table as he makes some point. When he laughs, even without hearing him, his expression looks looser and coarser than I remember. Anger snakes through me.
Brian’s still covering for me, so I surge through the smoke and stand beside Gabe’s chair at his shoulder. I wait for him to notice me; Tommy Falk — damnable co-conspirator — across the table has already seen me and smiled prettily. But Gabe keeps gesturing.
“Gabe,” I say. I feel, annoyingly, like a child standing at the arm of Dad’s chair, interrupting him from reading the paper.
He turns. I can’t tell if his expression is guilty. Now that I look, I don’t think it is at all. He says, just this, “Oh, Puck.”
“Yes, oh, Puck.”
“I can’t believe you’re riding in the races,” Tommy breaks in. He has two empty glasses in front of him and so all of the words become one effortless word, no real pauses, just s sounds between them. “Saw you there that first day. First girl ever. Here’s to us.”
“Don’t encourage her,” Gabe says, but he’s jovial. His breath smells like alcohol.
“You’re drunk,” I say.
Gabe glances at Tommy, then back to me. “Don’t be stupid, Kate. It’s one drink.”