The Giver of Stars(76)
The mule’s big ears flicked back and forth so that she swore he understood half her conversation. Sven laughed at the way she talked to her animals, and every time she would retort that they made more sense to her than half the humans around there. And then, of course, she would catch him murmuring to the damn dog like a baby when he thought she wasn’t looking – Who’s a good boy then, huh? Who’s the best dog? Soft-hearted, for all his bluntness. Kind with it. Not many men would have been so welcoming of another woman in the house. Margery thought about the apple pie Alice had rustled up the night before, half of which was still sitting on the side. Seemed like the cabin was always chock full of people, these days, bustling around, making food, helping with chores. A year ago she would have bridled at it. Now returning to an empty house seemed like a strange thing, not the relief she might have imagined.
A little delirious with tiredness, Margery’s thoughts meandered and splintered as the mule plodded up the dark track. She thought of Kathleen Bligh, returning to a home echoing with loss. Thanks to her, these last two weeks, despite the weather, they had managed to cover nearly all their rounds, and the loss of those families who had fallen out of the project due to Van Cleve’s rumours meant they were pretty much up to date. If she had the budget she’d take Kathleen on for good. But Mrs Brady wasn’t much for talking about the future of the library just now. ‘I have held off writing to Mrs Nofcier about our current troubles,’ she had told her the previous week, confirming that Mr Brady was as yet unbending on the issue of Izzy’s return. ‘I am hoping that we can win round enough townspeople that Mrs Nofcier might never have to hear about this … misfortune.’
Alice had started riding again, her bruises luminous yellow echoes of the injuries she had endured. She had taken the long route up to Patchett’s Creek that day, supposedly to stretch Spirit out a little, but Margery knew it was so she, Margery, could have some time with Sven alone at the house. The families on the creek route liked Alice, made her speak English place names to them – Beaulieu and Piccadilly and Leicester Square – and fell about laughing at her accent. She never minded. She was slow to offend, that girl. It was one of the things Margery liked about her, she thought. While enough people round here would find a slight in the mildest of words, every compliment a secret barb aimed just at them, Alice still seemed primed to see the best in everyone she came across. Probably why she’d married that human beefsteak Bennett.
She yawned, wondering how long it was going to take Sven to come home. ‘What do you think, Charley boy? Have I got time to boil up some hot water and get this grime off me? Do you think he’ll care a whit one way or the other?’
She pulled the mule to a halt at the large gate, dismounting to open it up. ‘The way I feel, I’ll be lucky if I manage to stay awake long enough for him to get here.’
It took her a minute after replacing the catch to realize what was missing.
‘Bluey?’
She walked up the path, calling him, her boots crunching in the snow. She hooked the mule’s reins over the pole by the porch, and lifted her hand to her brow. Where had the darn dog shot off to now? Two weeks ago he had made his way three miles across the creek to Henscher’s place, just to play with the young dog there. Came home sheepish with his ears down, like he knew he’d done wrong, his face so full of guilt that she didn’t have the heart to tell him off. Her voice echoed back across the holler. ‘Bluey?’
She took the porch steps two at a time. And then she saw him, at the far end by the rocker. A pale limp body, his ice-coloured eyes staring blankly at the roof, his tongue lolling and his legs splayed, as if he had been stopped directly in the act of running. A clean dark red bullet hole ran straight through his skull.
‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’
Margery ran to him and dropped to her knees and a wail emerged from somewhere she hadn’t known she possessed. ‘Oh, not my boy. No. No.’
She cradled the dog’s head, feeling the velvet-soft fur of his cheeks, stroking his muzzle, knowing even as she did that there was nothing to be done. ‘Oh, Bluey. My sweet baby.’ She pressed her face to his – I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry – her hands clutching him to her, her whole body mourning a stupid young hound that would never bounce onto her bed again.
It was like this that Alice found her, as she rode up on Spirit half an hour later, her legs aching and her feet numb with cold.
Margery O’Hare, a woman who had remained dry-eyed throughout her own father’s funeral, who had bitten her lip until it bled as she buried her sister, a woman who had taken the best part of four years to confess her feelings to the man she loved most in the world, and still swore she had not a sentimental bone in her body, sat keening like a child on the porch, her back doubled over with grief and her dead dog’s head cradled tenderly in her lap.
Alice saw Van Cleve’s Ford before she saw him. For weeks she had backed into the shadows when he passed, had turned her face, her heart in her mouth, braced for another puce-faced demand that she come home right now and stop all this nonsense or she might just find herself regretting it. Even in company the sight of him made her tremble a little, as if some residual memory was lodged in her cells that still felt the impact of that blunt fist.
But now, propelled by a long night of grief that had been somehow so much more painful to witness than her own, she dug in her heels as she saw the burgundy car heading down the hill, sending Spirit wheeling hard across the road so that she was directly in front of him and he had to stamp on the brakes, screeching to a halt in front of the store, causing all passers-by – a fair number, given that the store had a special deal on flour – to stop and observe the commotion. Van Cleve blinked at the girl on the horse through his windshield, unsure at first who it was. He wound down his window. ‘You properly lost your mind now, Alice?’