Malvern thumbs one of his ears and looks at a painting of two tidy thoroughbred racers over the great fireplace. “You’re a poor conversationalist and I’m a poor loser, so let’s put it at this. If you win, I’ll sell him to you. If you don’t win, I never want to hear about this again.”
And the sun’s come out over the ocean.
I realize now that I didn’t think that it would.
Four times I’ve won. I can do it again. We can do it again. I see the beach before me, the horses around me, the surf under Corr’s hooves, and at the end of it, there’s freedom.
“How much?” I ask.
“Three hundred.” His face is sly. My salary is one hundred and fifty in a year, and he’s the one paying it, so he knows it to the penny. Winning years, I get eight percent of the purse. I’ve saved what I can.
“Mr. Malvern,” I say, “do you want me back or do we still play a game?”
“Want and need are two different things,” Malvern says. “Two hundred ninety.”
“Mr. Holly has offered me a job.”
Malvern looks pained, though I’m not certain if it’s at the idea of losing me or at the mention of Holly’s name. “Two hundred fifty.”
I cross my arms. Two hundred fifty is unattainable. “Who else will touch him after today?”
“They’ve all killed someone.”
“Not all of them have killed someone with your son on their back.”
His expression is cut glass. “Tell me a price.”
“Two hundred.” This is dear, but doable. Only just. Only if I can count this year’s unwon purse as part of my savings.
“This is where I walk away, Mr. Kendrick.” But he doesn’t. I stand and I wait. I realize that the hotel lobby has gone quiet. I realize that this is the reason why we aren’t meeting in the tea shop or the stables or his office. Here, it’s the best advertising Malvern can get. His name will be on everyone’s lips.
Malvern exhales. “Two hundred. Enjoy your races, gentlemen.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and walks away. Calvert opens the door for him, letting in a shaft of brilliantly red afternoon light.
I have to win.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
PUCK
“Kate, you do realize that you aren’t at fault.”
Father Mooneyham sounds a little tired, but he always seems to sound that way to me when I go to confession. I smooth my hands over my smock. I felt badly coming to church in my trousers, but I wasn’t about to ride Dove in a dress, so I put a smock on over my pants. I feel it’s a fair compromise.
“But I feel guilty. I was the last one to hold his hand. And when I let go, he was dead.”
“But surely he would have died anyway.”
“Maybe not, though. What if I’d stayed and held his hand? I won’t ever know now. I’ll always wonder.”
I stare at the brilliant stained-glass window over the altar. The peculiarity of the confession booth allows me to see the rest of the building from my vantage point. Because St. Columba’s apparently predates confession or priests or sin, the booth was added much later. The confessional is open to the rest of the church, and the curtain is only between the confessor and the priest. And the curtain is ridiculous not only because Father Mooneyham can just watch the penitent walk through the pews toward him, but also Father knows everyone’s voices on the island, so even blind, he’d know whose sin was whose. The only real benefit of the curtain is to allow you to pick your nose without a holy audience, something I’d seen Joseph Beringer take advantage of before.
Now Father sounds a little cross. “This sounds more like egotism to me, Kate. You are ascribing much power to what was, after all, only your hand.”
“You’re the one who says that God works through us. Maybe he wanted me to stay there and keep holding it.”
There’s silence for a moment on the other side of the curtain. Finally, he says, “Not everyone’s hands can always be the site of miracles. We would be afraid to touch anything. Did you feel called to stay by his side? No? Then put down your guilt.”
He makes it sound like something I can wrap in wax paper and leave by the door for Puffin. I slouch back in the chair and look at the ceiling of the church.
“I’m also very angry with my brother,” I add. “Anger’s a sin, right?” I remember, however, that God sometimes came over all righteously angry, and that was all right. I feel slightly righteous about my anger over Gabe’s decision to leave the island, so perhaps it’s not a sin after all.
“Why are you angry at him?”
I wipe a tear off my cheek. It’s a very cunning tear, because I didn’t even feel it coming. “Because he’s leaving us behind, and not even for a good reason. Nothing I can change.”
Father Mooneyham says, “Gabriel.” Because of course he knows which brother I mean now.
He doesn’t say anything for a few minutes, just lets me cry. Orange and blue light from the stained-glass windows finds its way through my hands cupped over my face. It’s very quiet in the church. Finally, I wipe the sleeve of my shirt across my cheek.
The curtain shivers slightly and I see Father Mooneyham’s hand offering a handkerchief. I use it to dry my face and his hand withdraws.
“I can’t tell you anything that he’s said in here, Kate. And I don’t know if it will make you feel any better to know that he has sat in that same chair where you sit now, and he has cried as well.”
I try, without success, to imagine Gabe crying. Even at our parents’ burial, he had looked dry-eyed into the hole in the ground, shivering in the wind, letting Finn and me lean against him and weep. Despite that, the image of him in this chair, crying, creeps into my head, and I can feel myself softening toward him. I’m resentful that this hypothetical Gabriel can work such magic on me. I say, “But he doesn’t even have to go.”
“Mm. I will tell you one thing he said, Kate. He said that you don’t need to ride in the races.”
“Of course I do! We need the money.”
“And the races are your answer to that problem. It’s how you feel you can solve it. Gabe has a problem, too, and leaving is how he feels he can solve it.”
It’s a horribly wise way of looking at it, and it annoys me. “Isn’t there something holy about taking care of widows and orphans? Isn’t he supposed to be taking care of us?” But even as I say it, I remember him saying I can’t bear it. He had been taking care of us. From that dry-eyed funeral where he let us lean on him in our grief to working late on the docks to trying to spare us from Malvern. I suddenly feel very selfish to begrudge him his escape. I sigh. “Why does it have to be leaving, though? Can’t he come up with a different answer? Can’t I change his mind?”