We are back to where we began, and reluctantly I slow Corr. My heart is crashing in my ears, galloping even though Corr has stopped.
I slide off and step a few feet away, turning to watch Sean dismount as well. He reaches into his pocket and gets a handful of salt or sand from it, then drops it in a circle around Corr and spits in it while I watch. Once this is done, he walks over to me, dark and silent. He’s looking at me like he looked at me at the festival, and I know I’m looking back. Something wild and old spins inside me, but I don’t have any words.
Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He presses his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic.
We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t.
Finally, he releases my wrist and says, “I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
PUCK
When I get home, the house is neat as a pin. It hasn’t looked like this since our parents died. I stand in the doorway for a moment, lost in wonder and bemusement, and then Finn bursts out of the hallway. He looks like a man who has been on fire and put himself out; he is frazzled, even more than usual. I swim out of my thoughts to try to puzzle what has happened.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Finn tries several times to say something, but only his hands are successful at it. Eventually, he manages, “I thought something — how would I know if something had happened to you?”
“Why would something have happened to me?”
“Puck, it’s night. Where have you been? I thought — !”
Slowly it dawns on me. He’d seen me before I left for confession and must’ve expected me not long after.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
Finn storms mightily around the room, and I realize that he’s done all this cleaning because he was fretting over me.
“The house looks amazing,” I offer.
He snaps, “Of course it does! I cleaned the whole bloody thing! I didn’t even know how long it would be, if you died, before I knew. Who’d tell me?”
“I’m sorry, I forgot. Time got away from me.”
This makes Finn rage even more. I’ve never seen him in such a state. He’s like my father when he found out that my mother had bought a gray gelding off a farmer. He’d raged about, a furious silent storm contained by the walls, clutching the backs of chairs and staring at the ceiling, until Mum had agreed to sell the gelding.
“Time got away,” Finn says finally.
“I can say I’m sorry some more, but I don’t see what it will do.”
“No good at all is what it will do!”
“Then what is it you want from me?” The truth is that I did feel bad before, but now my patience is at a thread. It’s not as if I can go back and undo the past.
Finn leans on the back of my father’s armchair, his knuckles white around the top of it.
“I can’t bear it,” he says, and I suddenly see Gabe in him. “I can’t bear not knowing what will happen.”
I creep around to the armchair and crouch in front of it. I fold my arms on the seat and peer up at his face. I’m not sure why he looks so young, if it’s the worry that’s taking the age from him or if it’s because I’ve been looking at Sean Kendrick’s face. I say, “It’s almost over. We’ll be okay. Nothing will happen to me. Even if I don’t win, we’ll be okay, right?”
Finn’s face is bleak and terrible, and I don’t think he believes it.
I add, “Puffin came back, didn’t she?”
“Missing half her tail. You don’t have a tail to spare.”
“Dove does. And that expensive food means hers grows back fast.”
I’m not sure if he’s comforted, but he doesn’t protest further. Later, he drags his mattress into my room and pushes it against the opposite wall. It reminds me strikingly of my childhood, when he and I used to share a room with Gabe, before my father built another room onto the side of our house for him and Mum.
After the light is off, we’re quiet for several long moments. Then Finn says, “What did Father Mooneyham give you?”
“Two Hail Marys and a Columba.”
“Jesus,” says Finn in the dark. “You were worse than that.”
“I tried to tell him.”
“I’ll tell him again, when I go tomorrow. Did you already say them?”
“Of course. It was only two Hail Marys and a Columba.”
Finn rustles in the darkness.
“Do you still talk in your sleep?” I ask.
“How would I know?”
“I’m going to hit you, if you do.”
Finn turns over again, punching his pillow. “This isn’t for always. Just until after.”
“Okay,” I say. Out the window, I can see the shape of the moon, and it reminds me of Sean’s finger pressed against my wrist. I hold the thought carefully in my head, because I want to consider it some more once Finn has stopped speaking. But instead, as I wait for sleep, I find myself thinking about what Finn said about me dying. About how he didn’t know how long it would be before he knew or who would tell him. I realize then that I can’t remember how it is that we found out that our parents were dead. I just remember them going out to the boat together, a very rare occasion indeed, and then I remember knowing they were dead. Not only can I not see the face of who told us, I can’t even remember the telling. I lie there with my eyes tightly closed, trying to bring the moment back to focus, but all I can call up is Sean’s face and the sensation of the ground rushing by beneath Corr.
I think that’s the mercy of this island, actually, that it won’t give us our terrible memories for long, but lets us keep the good ones for as long as we want them.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
SEAN
The morning of the Malvern youngstock auction dawns exceptionally fair, too kind for October. I lost too much sleep after I left Puck behind last night, so I snatch an extra half hour to steel me for what’s to come, and then I dress and head down to the yard. There’ll be no riding Corr this morning, none of my usual stable work. The warm weather that would make the beach bearable is lost to the auction.
The yard is buzzing, full of mainland men holding champagne at nine in the morning and ignoring wives wearing absurd furs too warm for the weather. Every so often, the sound of a horse whinny peals out above their voices. These tourists are a tidier sort than those who arrived in time for the Scorpio Races, more kin to the gentlemen I’d seen staying at the hotel than to any local. Every man Malvern employs is out in force today; this auction funds the yard for the rest of the year.