The Love That Split the World (17 page)

18

I tell Megan everything that’s happened since Beau showed up outside my house, leaving very little out. Every few words bring a new gasp from her mouth, and when I’m finished, the first thing she blurts out is “Grandmother is
so
God. Or a spirit. Or an angel. Or the missing link—ooh, an alien. No, wait, I think God.”

“I don’t know what she is,” I say. “But she’s not like us. I know that. She’s something different, and she’s helping me.”

“So do you think it’s Beau?” Megan asks. She’s panting as she talks, feet audibly pounding against the treadmill in her dormitory basement. “The guy you have to save, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “There’s only one Beau. If Alice is right, if the story of Brother Black and Brother Red has something to do with all this, I’d guess I’m looking for someone there’s two of.”

“Oh my God,” Megan gasps. “What do you think the other
me
’s like? That is so freaking freaky.”

“Not nearly as pretty,” I joke. “Probably a real bitch.”

“Probably,” Megan agrees. “Do you think she’s at Georgetown?”

“I guess? I don’t see why not.”

“This sort of makes me feel like I’m going to puke.”

“Could that be the torture device you’re running on?”

“It’s certainly not helping.”

“Hey, so tell me about things there,” I say.

“Intense,” she says. “The girls are nice. Some like to party. Some never do anything except work out. There’s a sophomore named Camila who’s pretty cool, kind of moderate.”

“Don’t you mean horrible and hideous and nothing like me?”

“I mean, if I were speaking comparatively, yes,” Megan
says. “But without my soul mate standing next to her, Camila seems all right.”

“I’m glad you’re making friends,” I say, despite the pang in my chest.

“You don’t have to be,” she says. “I won’t feel bad if you loathe them on principle.”

“Honestly, I kind of do.”

“And I promise to feel the same insane, possibly unhealthy jealousy when you go to Brown and all your friends are genius history buffs with gender-ambiguous names like Kai and Fern and The Letter Q.”

“Does it make you feel better to know that Kai’s legal name is Jamantha?”

“I would pay the Universe and Grandmother big money if they could put a new friend in your path named Jamantha.”

“I would pay them big bucks to be at Georgetown with you.”

Megan sighs. “Listen, I’m not saying this to put any pressure on you, but you know there’s always transferring. If you don’t like Brown or I don’t like Georgetown, no problem, we’re back together.”

“I know,” I say, and I almost hope that’s what happens. I’m honestly more worried that I
will
love Brown, that Megan
will
fit Georgetown like fuzzy lime-green socks on a pair of cold feet, that we’ll go off down our separate paths, loving our lives but getting further apart with every new turn. “Kentucky’s beautiful tonight,” I tell her, staring down past my porch to the houses across the street. The setting sun casts deep shadows along the surrounding foliage, painting everything in streaks of yellow and blue. It’s raining, but in a mist so light it’s barely palpable.

“Kentucky is always beautiful,” Megan says.

My heart aches, an internal acknowledgment that what she said is true.

You belong here more than anyone I’ve met
, Beau said.

Three months
, Grandmother said.

“Anyway, you know what I’m going to ask next,” Megan says.

“I do.”

“How was kissing him?” she says. “No Cheetos breath, I hope.”

“He tasted like cheap beer and he smelled like football practice, and somehow it was perfect.”

Mom and I are in the car, talking and laughing as we drive down a winding country road that meanders through the woods. It’s
bright outside, the sky a pale blue, completely absent of clouds, and sunlight sparkles over the creek that runs along the right side of the narrow road.

The dark orb appears overhead, an inky blemish blotting out the sun, but Mom doesn’t see it. She keeps driving, talking, laughing. She doesn’t hear me start to scream. She’s waving her hand to emphasize what she’s saying, and suddenly the darkness shoots upward like a tower made of oil. It arcs over itself and pounds the side of the car.

Mom starts screaming now too, and all of a sudden it’s night. The car spins off the road, plummeting down into a ditch like a falling star, the side of the car wrapped around a gnarled old tree trunk. Thunder crackles in the sky and rain pours down on us. The car begins to fill, not with rain but with blood.

“Mom? Mom, are you okay?” I plead.

She’s staring, dazed, at the steering wheel. I grab her hand and search her for cuts, her arms, her head, her neck. I find none, and none on me either, yet the car is still flooding with blood.

The world had gotten so dark and violent that no one could survive without fighting back,
I hear Grandmother say in my mind.
And the Yamasee’s hearts were broken, because they didn’t want to kill to live. They couldn’t justify it. So when the water started to rise, rather than wasting their time fighting, they walked deep into the flood, singing as they went. And that was how they were lost.

I start to sing, but my voice trembles with tears of terror. The blood rises higher, up my neck, toward my chin, and my singing breaks into a shriek.

“Natalie,” someone is saying, and it occurs to me now that I’m dreaming. That the voice is coming from beyond.
“Natalie.”

I close then open my eyes as hard as I can. My vision swims then adjusts as I sit upright in bed.

“Honey, you were having a dream,” Dad says, kneeling beside me. “It was just a dream.”

I’m still gasping for breath, tears streaming down my face, and I throw my arms around Dad’s neck, waiting for the pounding in my chest to subside.

“Shh,” he says, stroking my hair. “It’s okay, honey.”

“Did I wake you up?” I ask tearfully.

He sits back on his heels. “Actually, no. I got a call from Raymond Kincaid. Their mare’s in labor. I thought I’d see if you wanted to go over to the farm with me.”

I glance around the dark room, eyes darting to the rocking chair, then turn on the lamp. “What time is it?”

“ ’Bout two,” Dad says.

I barely slept last night, and I know I need the rest, but there’s no chance I’m going to fall back to sleep now, not without Grandmother here.

“Matthew’s not home,” he volunteers, anticipating my concern.

“You asked?” I whisper.

“Wanted to make sure Raymond wasn’t on his own tonight, in case it took me a while to get over there,” Dad lies. “Matthew’s out and Joyce is home, but you know how she gets around blood.”

“Well, blood’s not very
Country Home & Garden
,” I say, and Dad’s head tilts. “Never mind. I’ll get dressed.”

I grab socks, boots, and a sweatshirt from my closet and meet Dad on the porch. He’s smoking a cigarette, which I
haven’t seen him do since I was tiny, and he stubs it against the railing before tossing it in the bushes. “Helps me wake up,” he says. “Don’t tell Mom.”

I pantomime zipping my mouth and follow him out to his car. The air is peculiarly cool tonight, and Dad drives with the windows down. No one’s out on the road, and we pull up to Matt’s barn within a handful of minutes.

Dad gets his bag out of the trunk and leads the way up to the foaling stable, a special double stall a hundred yards past the main barn where the Kincaids keep the pregnant mare. The lights are on, and the door’s slid back. Dad knocks lightly against the frame. “Hey, Raymond.”

“Patrick,” Mr. Kincaid says, standing up beside the mare, who’s lying on her side. “Natalie, good to see you.”

“You too,” I say. It’s half true. Raymond’s way less awkward than Joyce, but as kind as he’s always been to me, the way he used to flip out on Matt at games and practices has always made me cautious around him.

Dad moves into the warmth of the stall and crouches in the hay near the mare’s back legs. Normally it’s best to keep observers away when a horse is in labor—they’re nervous and restless enough as it is—but horses don’t respond to Dad the same way they respond to other people. “How long ago did the hooves pass through?” he asks as he puts on gloves.

“’Bout twenty minutes,” Raymond says. “I called you soon as she lay down and the alarm went off. She’s been struggling on her own this time.”

Dad gives a gentle tug on the foal’s hooves, but he doesn’t have to do much. The mare is groaning and snorting against the
hay, and her foal’s legs are passing quickly through her. “Good girl,” Dad says gently. “Good mama, good job, keep pushing.”

The mare snorts again fiercely as Dad pulls on the upper portion of the foal’s back legs, leaning back against the stall wall. Her sounds become more worried, sharp.

“Is she okay?” I ask from the doorway.

“Mama’s fine,” Dad coos. “She just wants this damn thing out, don’t you?”

I come a few steps closer, torn between repulsion and amazement as the slimy, knobby bundle of fluff strains through the mare’s body onto the hay. Within ten minutes, all four legs are through and the foal’s head slides clear, plopping softly against the hay, bleating. “You got a nice little colt, Raymond,” Dad says.

The mare is curling around herself, licking the filmy amniotic sac first from her baby’s back haunch then up toward its mane, and I inch closer, steadying myself against an old support column. The foal’s four legs stick out in four different directions, and it turns its head in toward its mother, nuzzling against her neck as she licks him beneath the soft glow of the lamplight. She’s a horse and she knows how to love her child.

She can’t help it. It wasn’t a decision. No one explained her pregnancy to her, but when she sees the foal, she knows:
You are mine, and I am yours
.

“Just gonna make sure she passes the rest of the placenta,” Dad says.

But the mare’s licking and nuzzling has slowed. She looks exhausted, and suddenly her head drops to the ground, a low whine wheezing through her nostrils.

That’s when I see the blood pooling in the hay. “Dad,” I say.

“Damn,” he says under his breath. “Nat, honey, go wait outside.”

“Is she okay?”

His eyes flick up to mine. “Outside, baby,” he says.

“Dad.”

Raymond hurries back to Dad’s side, kneeling in the hay.

“Now,” Dad says.

I turn and leave the foaling stable, but I can still hear their voices from out here. The sound travels with the lamplight out along the grass, and I know it’s just a horse, but it’s also a mother, and I’m breathing fast, trembling.

I take off through the field. When I get to the edge I turn and keep walking. In the distance I can see the rental property, a trashed mobile home on a long gravel driveway. The Kincaids—my version of them—have had renters before, but none had stayed long. There’d always been something strange about the house. Everyone could feel it.

I break into a run toward it now, begging the world to change for me. “Grandmother, help me,” I say as I run. I’m nearly there when my stomach drops and I hear the crackle of tires on gravel behind me. I turn to see headlights cutting toward me and run off into the grass as the truck goes chugging past, stopping in front of the house.

Only it’s not quite the same house it was a minute ago. Solid glass replaces cracked windowpanes. The overgrown yard is still filled with weeds and clover, but it’s cut short, the vines hacked off where they were trying to grow up the vinyl siding. Beau gets out of the truck and squints through the darkness at
me. “Natalie Cleary?”

“Beau,” I say.

Just then, someone practically pours out the passenger side of the truck and falls straight to the ground. In a momentary flash of panic I worry it’s Beau’s version of Rachel, but I quickly realize it’s a man, mid-twenties though prematurely gray and beer-gutted. “Dammit, hold on a second,” Beau says, walking casually to the other side of the truck and hauling the man to his feet.

He sort of mumble-slurs something as Beau pulls his arm around his shoulder and starts dragging him toward the front door. “I can walk,” he protests.

“Fine,” Beau says, dropping him. “Walk.”

The man takes one swaggering step before collapsing on the front step. Beau lifts him back up and ushers him through the doorway. A minute later, Beau comes back out, and I cross the lawn to him, throwing myself against his chest. He wraps his arms around me tightly. “You okay?”

“I think I just saw a horse die.”

He pulls back and ducks his head to look into my eyes, a smile tweaking the corner of his mouth. “Are you serious?”

“Why are you laughing?” I say, angry.

“I’m relieved.”

“Relieved?”

“Hell, Natalie. You showed up at my house in the middle of the night in a panic. What was I supposed to think?”

“Sorry.”

“Come inside.”

I glance back to the barn on the hill beyond the cornfield.
“My dad’s back there with Mr. Kincaid,” I say. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”

“No, not too long,” he says, scooping me up in his arms. I’m still tingling with shock, but I’m laughing as he kicks the screen door open.