“Och! Ye dinna want to go with me, lassie? Ye dinna want me to tell ye stories about the great Scots and teach you to catch a trout with yer hands?” He opened a door. “Duck down now, lassie.”
She bent down low on his shoulders while he carried her inside their room where Graham was sitting on the bed and pulling on his stockings and shoes.
“Fergus!” Graham shot off the bed and ran toward them, then tripped over his laces and fell flat on the floor.
Fergus stood over him and chuckled. “A smart mon ties his shoes before he runs in them, laddie.”
“Graham’s not smart,” Kirsty said petulantly.
“I am, too! I am smart! I know what five times five is and that spiders only live for one year and lobsters aren’t red until you cook them.”
Fergus looked at Graham. “All that, laddie? All that is inside this wee head?”
Kirsty tugged on Fergus’s ear. “Let me down.”
He squatted down and she jumped off his shoulders and landed with her arms out and her ankles pressed together for good luck.
“His head is overstuffed now, Fergus. There won’t be any room left for him to learn anything.”
Graham scowled at her. “Troll.”
“Baby.”
“Fishface.”
“Skunkbreath.” She didn’t care what he called her. She knew something he didn’t. She looked up at Fergus and said, “His head’s so full you can’t teach him anything else. You’ll have to leave him behind.”
Graham grabbed Fergus’s big hand. “Where are you going?”
She lifted her chin. “To Eagle Point. Fergus is going to teach me how to catch trout.”
“I wanna go, too.”
“Then pack yer things, laddie.”
Graham ran to pack while Fergus teased him about growing too fast like he had teased her.
Kirsty didn’t want to leave. They just got home last night. Why did they have to leave so soon?
She walked sluggishly over to the bed and dragged a valise out from underneath. She plopped the valise on the mattress and opened it.
Mama’s green dress was still curled near her pillow in an empty shapeless ball.
All of a sudden she felt as if she were going to cry again. She turned her back on Graham and Fergus and took some deep breaths. Part of her wondered if she had made her father angry when she cried last night and when she wouldn’t let the snake-lady wear the dress.
She stared at her toes and wished she could be so very different. She wished she didn’t feel so confused all the time. She wished she didn’t cry... ever. She wished she could be like the little girls at school who had two parents who visited them and brought them gifts and told them they missed them.
The only time her father came to the school was when they were bad. Being good never got Kirsty what she wanted. Being good wouldn’t bring her mama back or make her father want to be with her.
“Pack up yer things, lassie. See, like Graham here is. If ye dinna hurry up he’s going tae be done first.”
Kirsty spun around and packed her things and the green dress. She packed really fast, shoving anything handy into the valise.
She beat Graham. Which really hadn’t been hard. Whenever he had turned his back, she unpacked some of his clothes and put them back inside the drawers. He was so smart he never noticed.
A little while later, when she was perched on a hard wooden wagon seat heading off to the opposite end of the island with Fergus and Graham, she looked back at her home. She could barely see it because of all the fog. It was just a huge shadow that looked dark and empty and cold.
But she watched it anyway, watched it melt away like a daydream. She played that game where you had to keep your eyes on something or else it might disappear for real. She looked long and hard until she couldn’t even see the high pointed roof anymore.
