The Scorpio Races - Maggie Stiefvater [74]
“No, I can’t,” George Holly says immediately, glad to be invited to speak. “Because it’s more of not my business. And seeing as I’ve poked a stick in my eye once already, I don’t want to do it again.”
I raise my eyebrow.
Holly scuffs off his hands as if he’s been handling something dirtier than water from the tide pool. “All right, then. So what’s going on between you and that girl? Kate Connolly, right?”
I let out a breath, stack my buckets, and head back down the road toward the yard.
Holly says, “If you think by not answering that you’ll convince me there’s nothing, it won’t work.”
“That’s not why I’m not answering,” I say, as he catches up to me again. “I won’t say there’s nothing. I just don’t know what it is.”
I can see her clearly, standing on the rock beside Peg Gratton, unflinching before Eaton and the rest of the race committee. I can’t remember when I’ve been that brave, and it shames me. The truth is, I feel myself being fascinated and repelled by her: She’s both a mirror of myself and a door to part of this island that I’m not. It is like when the mare goddess looked into my eye; I felt that there was a part of myself that I didn’t know.
“I’ll tell you what it is in American,” George Holly says, “but you might not want to hear it.”
I cast him a withering glance and he laughs with good humor.
“This is worth every day away from home,” he says. “Should I gamble on her, then?”
“You should save your money for hay,” I mutter. “It’ll be a long winter.”
“Not,” says Holly, “in California.” And he laughs, and from the distance of his laugh I realize he’s stopped walking. I turn.
“I think you’re right, Mr. Kendrick,” George Holly says, eyes closed. His face is to the wind, leaning forward slightly so that it doesn’t tip him. His slacks are no longer pristine; he’s tracked bits of mud and manure up the front of them. His ridiculous red hat has blown off behind him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. The wind has its fingers in his fair hair and the ocean sings to him. This island will take you, if you let it.
I ask, “What am I right about?”
“I can feel God out here.”
I brush my hands off on my pants. “Tell me that again,” I say, “two weeks from now when you’ve seen the dead bodies on the beach.”
Holly doesn’t open his eyes. “Let no one say that Sean Kendrick isn’t an optimist.” After a pause, he adds, “I feel you smiling, so don’t deny it.”
He’s right, so I don’t.
“You going to try Benjamin Malvern for that horse, or what?” he asks.
I think of Kate Connolly standing before Eaton, her face brave, looking like a sacrifice on that old killing rock. I feel the mare goddess’s breath on my face, and it carries the scent of thunder in it.
“Yes,” I say.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
PUCK
I don’t bother tacking up Dove on Sunday after church. Everyone and their grandpa will be tacking up their capaill uisce after they get out of Mass, and I think it might be a good opportunity to learn something about my competition. I’ll bring Dove up to the cliffs this evening, maybe, after she’s had the day to eat expensive hay and get used to the idea of being fast.
I leave Finn and Gabe alone back at the house — Gabe came to service with us, though he looked at his watch and left halfway through, which made Father Mooneyham stare first at him and then at us. Father Mooneyham’s homilies are not generally painful, but you’re meant to suffer through them nonetheless. If your leg falls asleep, you don’t move. If the tea you drank before Mass has you dreaming of toilets on the way to Damascus instead of epiphanies, you pinch and burn and bear it. If you are Brian Carroll and you have been night fishing, you tip your head back so that holding your eyes open is not such an impossible task.
You don’t get up and leave. But Gabe did. And then Beech Gratton did as well. If Tommy Falk hadn’t been too pretty to come to church in the first place, I’m sure he would’ve left, too.
And now I definitely need to