“Hey, girl,” I said and reached out a hand to touch her. “Look at you.”
She nosed close to me, searching me for some kind of treat. She’d grown since Koa and I had released her a little over two weeks ago. Her spindly legs seemed so much stronger, her coat smooth and glossy. I ran my hand down her neck. “You’ve gotten so big.”
“Seems like she knows you.”
I turned to see Doro and Koa at the top of the bluff. She wore a green bikini top and jean shorts, the skin of her chest and belly and legs freckled and creased from the sun. Still, I couldn’t help noticing she looked decades younger than her fifty years. It was uncanny. Beside her, Koa held a shotgun. It was double barreled, but shorter than it should’ve been. Sawn off, I guessed, like in the movies. It wasn’t exactly how I’d imagined our next encounter.
I started toward them, across the sand, as they made their way down to me. I charged up to Koa and shoved him, hard. He staggered back with the gun.
“Meg,” Doro said.
“Are you insane?” I yelled at Koa. “You could’ve killed me.”
“I wasn’t—” Koa said.
Doro leapt forward, put her hand on my arm. But I jerked away from her, slipping in the sand. The foal nosed up to me, but I brushed her off and started marching away.
“Megs, c’mon,” Doro called out. “Wait a second.”
I glared back at her. “He was shooting at me. I’m going to call the police,” I said.
“We were shooting in the air to get the horses moving,” Doro said. She nodded at the foal, who was nosing the crotch of my jeans. “She thinks you have something for her.”
Koa averted his eyes, embarrassed.
“I don’t have anything,” I said and stepped away.
“We didn’t see you, I swear,” Doro said. “But it was just birdshot, anyway. It wouldn’t hurt you, falling from the air like that. We were trying to get the horses to move away from the middens. Sometimes they get confused and stuck there.”
“Okay.” I looked uncertainly from her to Koa. “Whatever.”
“Koa,” Doro said, and I saw them exchange a look. “I’ll get Meg back to the house. Will you finish up here?”
“Sure,” he said. Glanced at the foal. The shotgun hung by his leg.
“Hold on,” I said.
Doro put a hand on my arm.
“Wait a second,” I said. “What’s he finishing up? What are you going to do?” I didn’t know who exactly I was addressing, her or Koa, but I had a feeling it didn’t matter. Something had passed between the two of them. They were in this together.
“What are you going to do?” I yelled at Koa and started toward him again.
Doro snagged my shirt. “Megan. Stop.” Her blue eyes were locked on mine. “Come back to the house with me.”
I looked at Koa. “Don’t do it. Don’t hurt her.” I went to the filly and ran my hands over her withers. Draped my arm over her neck, like I’d done in the mission ruins that night when we caught her. I faced Doro. “We saved her, Koa and I did, from a snakebite. She almost died. I didn’t know that you let them . . . that you let them die that way. I just couldn’t let it happen. You can’t . . . you can’t kill her.”
Doro smiled at me. She spoke in a low voice, the kind of voice people typically use for a cranky toddler or psychotic person.
“No one’s going to kill the horse,” she said. “We don’t do that on Bonny. We protect the animals here. Yes? Okay?”
I shook my head. “That’s what you guys were talking about in the library, right? You were telling Koa you knew about the foal, about what we had done. And that he had to shoot her?”
They exchanged glances.
“Meg,” Doro said. “No. You misunderstood. We were just talking through all the options.”
“And one of them is to kill her. Right? That’s one of the options?”
Doro sucked in a breath. “We did discuss it, yes. But that’s not what’s going to happen.”
I felt myself trembling now. “I’m not leaving until I know she’s safe.”
“She’s safe. You have my word.”
I wiped my nose.
“Meg?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Koa’s just going to make sure the foal catches up with the rest of the herd, so she doesn’t get separated from them. She’s still young. She still needs her mother.” Her eyes were gentle. “Do you hear me, Meg? Do you believe me?”
I looked at Koa. He was gazing past the wall, past the far end, where the horses had slowed and were cropping at the grass along the tree line. The foal butted me with her bony head. I scratched between her ears.
“You have to know, Meg,” Doro said. “It would never be my first choice to hurt a living creature, least of all the horses.”
“You said you manage the herd,” I said.
“I meant we don’t take heroic measures.” She glanced at Koa. “Typically. On very rare occasions, we have to make hard decisions. But that’s not what’s happening here. Okay?”
I stepped away from the foal and raked my fingers through my hair. It felt like the sun was scouring out my skull. A bead of sweat traveled down my back, between my shoulder blades. “It’s not my business anyway. I just . . . I’m tired, I guess. Sorry,” I said dully.
Koa finally looked at me, his eyes dark, the wind whipping his hair around his shoulders. There was a crease between his brows. He glanced off into the distance again, and it made my heart ache in a way I hadn’t felt in a long time.
Doro broke the silence. “I’ll run you up to the house, Megs.”
“It’s not his fault,” I said. “It’s mine.”
She smiled at me. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to fire him. Let me take you back and get you something to eat. Koa, we’ll talk later?”
He turned, the gun shouldered. “Yes, ma’am.”
She looked past him, at the foal, who had moved down the wall a piece and was nipping at the sparse clumps of sea oats. “She’s a sight, isn’t she? Quite the survivor. Reminds me of you, Megs.”
KITTEN
—FROM CHAPTER 19
Fay’s nose and mouth and throat burned with a metallic tang. The smoke had risen and thickened in the foyer such that she could barely make out Carl Cormley’s gruesome visage now. Somebody—Kitten, undoubtedly—must’ve done something with the gas in the kitchen, switched on the oven and then lit a match.
“You’re hiding her, aren’t you?” Cormley said, baring his teeth and clawing one hand in her direction. “The little demon.”
“No.”
“I’ll throttle you, too, I swear it, if you’re hiding her. Come closer. Tell me where you’ve put her.”
Ashley, Frances. Kitten. New York: Drake, Richards and Weems, 1976. Print.
Chapter Forty
Doro got us iced tea, and we sat in the salon. I eyed my glass, sweating on the table between us, but didn’t drink. I’d had enough of tea to last me a lifetime.
She sat beside me. “You want to talk about anything?”
“Do you?”
She sighed. “You still don’t believe me about the foal. Because I lied to you about Billy.”
I looked down.
“Seems a bit hypocritical, since you lied to me too.”