I suck on my index finger to get the last of the orange flavor, but all I taste is salt from the ocean, which makes me even more irritable. My first day on the beach with Dove and all I have to show for it is sand in every crevice of my skin and a kick in the head.
I couldn’t even make it one day without being rescued.
I keep trying to put Sean Kendrick out of my head, but my mind keeps conjuring up images of his sharp face and the sound of his voice made hoarse by swallowing the sea. And every time I relive the moment, my face flushes hot with embarrassment again.
I run a hand over my forehead, which is gritty with salt, and sigh a long, shuddering breath.
Keep your pony off this beach.
I want to give up. I’m doing all this to win just a few bare weeks with Gabriel on the island. And for what purpose? I haven’t seen a hair on his head since I announced I was racing. My plan seems suddenly foolish. So I’m going to make an idiot of myself in front of the entire island and possibly get myself and Dove killed for a brother who can’t be bothered to come home anyway.
The idea of throwing in the towel is simultaneously relieving and discomfiting. I can’t bear the idea of going back to the beach. But I can’t even imagine telling Gabe that I changed my mind. It’s hard to think that I have enough pride left to damage, but there it is.
There’s a knock on the door. I don’t have any time to make my hair look better – actually, I don’t think there is a way to make it better; it has that greasy, thick feeling of hair bathed in salt water. My heart feels leaden inside me. I can’t think of anyone positive who knocks on the door.
The door opens and it’s Benjamin Malvern. I know it’s Benjamin Malvern because there’s a signed photo of him on the wall behind the bar at the Black-Eyed Girl. I once asked Dad why it was there, and he said that was because Benjamin Malvern had given a lot of money to the pub so it could open. But I still didn’t see why that was a good reason to have someone’s signature on your wall.
“Gabriel Connolly here?” Malvern asks as he comes into the kitchen. I’m left holding the door open. The richest man on Thisby stands in our house with his arms crossed, his gaze shifting from the cluttered kitchen counter to the collapsed pile of wood and peat by the sitting room fireplace to the saddle I’ve perched on the back of Dad’s armchair. He wears a V-necked wool sweater and a tie. He’s got gray hair and is not good-looking. He smells nice, which I resent.
I don’t close the door. It seems like closing the door would be like saying that I invited him in, and I didn’t.
“Not at present,” I say.
“Ah,” says Malvern. He’s still looking around. “And you’re the sister.”
“Kate Connolly,” I clarify, with as many bristles as I can manage.
“Yes. I think we should have some tea.”
He sits at our table.
“Mr. Malvern,” I start, sternly.
“Good, you know who I am. That saves us some trouble.
Now, I wouldn’t presume to tell you your business, but it’s cold out there and an open door makes a very poor windbreak.”
I shut it. I shut my mouth as well. I start to make some tea. I’m equal parts offended and curious.
“What brings you this way?” I ask. I’m unhappy about how polite I sound.
His eyes were on my saddle but he shifts them to me when I speak. I’m intimidated by them, a little. The rest of him looks like a moneyed old man, but his eyes are clever.
“Unpleasant business.” But he says it pleasantly.
“I would have thought that you have people to do your unpleasant business for you,” I say, and feel cheeky. “Sugar or milk?”
“Butter, milk, and salt, please.”
I turn to Malvern, sure I’ll see humor on his face. But there isn’t any. I’m not sure, now that I think of it, that it’s a face I could imagine humor on. It’s more like a face I can imagine on a pound note. I hand him his cup of tea, a saltshaker, and our little butter bowl. Sitting down with the milk jug opposite, I watch him slice a small piece of butter into his tea, add a healthy dose of salt, and top it all up with milk before stirring it thoroughly. The liquid has a froth on it. It looks like something I saw come out from under a cow once. I don’t think that he’ll drink it, but he does.
Malvern braces his fingers on the edge of his teacup. “Is that your pony outside?”
“Horse,” I say. “She’s fifteen hands.”
“You’d get better performance out of her with better food,” Malvern tells me. “Switch her from that poor hay and she’d have more energy. Less of a hay belly.”
Of course she’d have more energy on better hay and grain.
I’d have more energy if I were eating something besides beans and apple cake, too, but we’re both going without better for the same reason.
We drink our tea. I think about Finn coming home right now and finding Malvern at our kitchen table. I sweep some crumbs into a pyramid behind the butter bowl.
“So your parents are dead,” Benjamin Malvern says.
I set my teacup down.
“Mr. Malvern.”
“I know the story already,” he interrupts me. “I don’t want to talk about that. I want to know what comes after the story. What are you three – it is three, isn’t it? – doing with yourselves?”
I try to imagine how my parents would handle this situation. They were unfailingly polite and private. I am good at one of those things. Uncomfortably, I say, “We’re getting along. Gabe works at the hotel. Finn and I do odd jobs. Paint things for tourists.”
“Making enough for tea,” Malvern says, but his eyes are on the pantry door. I know he saw its lack of contents when I took out the butter bowl.
“We’re getting along,” I repeat.
Malvern swallows the last of his tea – how he’s managed to drink that concoction so fast and without holding his nose is beyond me – and rests his crossed arms on the table. He leans toward me so I smell his cologne.
“I am here to evict you.”
For a moment, it doesn’t mean anything, and then I scramble to my feet. My head pounds like the surf where the water horse struck it. I keep replaying that sentence.
He continues, “No one has made payments on this house for a year, and I wanted to see who lived here. I wanted to see your faces when I told you.”
I think, just then, that in an island populated by monsters, he’s more monstrous than any. My tongue takes a long time to unstick. “I thought the house was paid for. I didn’t know.”
“Gabriel Connolly knew better, and has for quite a while,” Malvern says. His voice is calm. He’s watching my reaction carefully. I cannot believe that I’ve served him tea.
I look at him and smash my lips together. I want to be sure I don’t say something I will regret. I am struck, more than anything, by the sense of betrayaclass="underline" that Gabe knew that we were living in a ticking time bomb and didn’t tell us. Finally, I manage, “And what is it that you see in my face right now? Is it what you came to see?”
It comes out like a challenge, but Malvern seems unflustered. He just nods a little. “Yes. Yes, I think so. Now tell me this: What are you and your brothers willing to do to save this house?”
There was a problem with dogfighting on the island a few years back. Bored, drunk fishermen raised island dogs to tear each other’s faces off. I feel like one of those dogs now. Malvern has thrown me into the pit and is now peering over the side to see what I will do. He wants to see if I will retreat or if there’s fight in me.
I won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me give up. My future crystallizes suddenly.
“Give me three weeks,” I say.
Malvern doesn’t dance around the point. “After the races.”
I wonder if he’s thinking that it’s crazy that a girl like me is riding in the races and that there’s no point waiting until the end of the month because there will be no money because I will be dead last or just plain dead.