When cloven hoofprints turn up in the garden we keep up the good fight (Cai, Nonnie)
Two days after the fire, Dom took Faye and Roe to talk to a councillor, or one each, Cai wasn’t sure. He didn’t ask because he didn’t think the answer he’d get would be enough. Something was wrong here, he could feel it starting.
Instead of waiting about the house, Nonnie went out to buy curtains, and took Cai with her. He put up no resistance; he wanted to spend the day close. He was too old to cling to his grandmother, but he needed her all the same.
But Cai was fiddling with a long swath of lace curtain with about as much melancholy as Nonnie could handle. “Caius,” she said softly, taking the piece of curtain in her own fingers, and looking suitably impressed with its softness. “Talk to me.”
Cai made a face, like he’d rather not, but was going to anyway. “She’s just going to burn these ones down too,” he said, and even he was unimpressed with how bitter he sounded. He didn’t like this tone riding his voice but didn’t know how else to say it.
“It was a silly game they were playing,” Nonnie said. “They’ve both seen the consequences of their actions, now. Faye especially. I can’t imagine it happening again, Cai. You saw them.”
Yes, Cai had seen both the girls after the fire. Both of them closed up, neither of them talking, both varying degrees of horribly upset. They had both been like that till Nonnie and Dom got home, when Faye burst into tears and started apologising, endlessly and profusely, and Roe had stood staring up at the sky, refusing to let anyone get too close to her.
“Faye didn’t do it,” Cai said, firmly. “I don’t care how much she took the blame, I’m sure it was Roe.”
“Cai,” Nonnie said, a gentle warning.
“You didn’t see them right after! Roe was looking at Faye like – like something. Faye was scared, and I’m sure she was scared of Roe. Roe threatened her to take the blame, to make up a story about playing with matches, or Roe talked her into it somehow, or –”
“Cai, what do you want me to do?” Nonnie said, again. The same gentle tone as before, but it cracked Cai a little the second time it hit. He stopped talking. He sulked, though.
“It wasn’t an idle question,” Nonnie continued.
What did Cai want Nonnie and Dom to do? His immediate thought was send Roe away but even that was too harsh to say out loud. Send her where? No one was better at looking after her than Nonnie and Dom. And Faye might blame herself. And it would break Roe, too. Even Cai could see that – it was difficult not to, after hearing Roe yelling through the walls just send me back like she was waiting for them to fail her, like all the other families before them had failed her.
But – there was still the threat, hanging over Cai’s head, of Dom’s death. But even when he tried to picture Roe being capable of that, he couldn’t. Dom hadn’t died in a fire, in his vision. Dom didn’t look like he’d died from anything at all. How could Cai pin such a huge sin on such a small girl, when all she’d done so far was a collection of little things.
He hadn’t even been able to accuse her of killing the chickens, out loud. He wasn’t even sure of that. He was only sure that Roe was mad at him, and that something had happened between Roe and Faye that neither of them were telling.
“We just need to keep a closer eye on Roe,” he said eventually, the sulk still remaining in his voice.
“My eyes are as close as they get. I know she hasn’t been happy lately. I know she’s been taking it out on you, and her chores and her homework. I know she’s been taking it out on herself.” Cai winced internally. Hearing that hurt; she was still a kid, and kids taking their unhappiness out on themselves was just wrong. But the hurt he felt came with relief, too. He had been feeling lately that he was starting to turn into a deeply suspicious person and he was relieved that he was still capable of automatic feelings of empathy. He had to work on those feelings, nurture them, or they would all burn away under the weight of his own growing negativity. Cai didn’t like being suspicious.
“You know I see more than you think I see,” Nonnie reminded him. It was a confusing sentence, and took Cai a moment.
Part of Cai’s basic understanding of his grandmother was that she could see more than other people, but she never talked about it, so it was easy to forget in day to day life. He’d inherited this crazy vision thing from somewhere, after all. It had skipped over his mother, as far as he knew, but it hadn’t skipped two generations entirely.
“What do you see when you look at her, then?” he asked.
“That she and Faye have to stay together,” Nonnie said. “That is all I can be sure of. It is my job to foster their sisterhood, to support some kind of friendship in them, because after they leave us, they are going to need each other.”
Chills ran down Cai’s arms. “After they leave us?” he echoed.
“I have to hope that’s years from now,” Nonnie said, sounding practical. “When they’re adults, when they begin their own lives.”
“But you don’t know?”
“Who can?” Nonnie said, but then looked at her grandson as if remembering suddenly that maybe he could. She’d never ask him to read the girls without their permission, though. In fact she’d forbidden it. This was another basic understanding Cai had about Nonnie, and about himself. Stealing visions of people without their consent was spying, was wrong. Cai still felt guilty over all the visions he’d seen on accident. He couldn’t imagine how guilty he’d feel if he tried to pry into his sisters on purpose. It was all unspoken; that was forbidden.
Cai echoed Nonnie’s original question back at her. “What do you want me to do?”
He felt Nonnie looking him over, and he wondered if this was how she saw people; simply by looking. Did see the way their lives were going to play out? Did it come to her in dreams, in flashes, in hunches? Did she just know it, in her bones? Some questions felt too heavy to ask in a haberdashery.
“Be their brother,” Nonnie replied. “Whatever that means to you; just be their brother.”
Guilt hammered down on him. This hadn’t been Nonnie’s intention, but it was there all the same. He was being a bad brother, a bad person. Where was his generosity, his kindness, his grace? Those girls needed him to be more than another wall in their lives.
He took a deep breath and tried to let his exhale unravel whatever was tangled inside of him, but it wasn’t that easy. His jaw felt knotted, his stomach was a rock. This was going to take more work than just breathing.
“Can we go past church on the way home?” Cai asked. He needed to sit in a pew in the quiet and think for a while, he needed to talk to God, open himself up to the bigger picture.
Nonnie wordlessly looped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed. It meant the world to him that she wasn’t angry at him. He was a little angry with himself instead, but he would work through that, and be better for it.