A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean Read Free Book Online Page B

find her, they don’t usually stick around very long.” Her eyebrows were up as if she’d said enough. I saw her point. But then Rita said, “She doesn’t usually let them.”
    And that was the moment when something inside me changed. Everything stopped in my head, all the wondering about what Angel might have done. A stronger feeling swept over me, one that made my insides ache. I realized I knew what it meant when you don’t let people stick around. You’re scared that they don’t really want to know you, that when they do, they’ll leave you anyway. So you make yourself not care about them first. Maybe Angel and I were more alike than I had imagined. It was as if Angel had walked right inside me and I knew something about her, and myself, something more fragile than broken eggshells. It was as if those fragments were in my hands and I could crush them.
    I realized then that Angel had come into the house and was listening, half hiding behind the door.
    I poured some tea for her.
    “Three sugars,” said Rita. “Same as Mr. Hemsworth used to have.”
    I stirred the sugar and carried the rattling cup and saucer over to Angel, as if it were the eggshells. And I could tell by her face that she was just as surprised as I was at what Rita had said. It was like going off the edge of the map. Who knew where we were now?
    Angel took the cup without saying thanks and left me standing there with the saucer. She didn’t have my suitcase.
    “Now sit down, Angel,” Rita said. “And tell me what’s going on.”
    Angel didn’t sit, and she started to say, “Old Chambers said—” but Rita was having none of it.
    “I don’t want to hear that Old Chambers is letting you look after Belle. According to Mrs. Barker, Old Chambers says the horse has gone missing and she’s helping him look for her.”
    Rita took a breath, and her voice softened.
    “You didn’t ask him, did you?”
    Angel curled up on the window seat and raked her hands through her hair, messing it up even more than it already was. And that seemed to be a message to Rita.
    “All right, all right,” she said gently.
    Rita took a step toward Angel but then seemed to change her mind. And I knew too that Angel wouldn’t be able to let her near.
    “Angel, love,” Rita said. “You know I have no choice but to sell Belle at the auction. Where is she? Did you take Mrs. Barker’s goat?”
    Angel buried her eyes in her hands, under her wild hair.
    “I can’t find Belle,” she said. “Don’t tell Mrs. Barker I’m here. You know she doesn’t like me.”
    Rita tapped her lip. Her puzzled eyes tightened. She stared and stared at Angel. Angel wouldn’t budge. Whatever secrets she was hiding, she wasn’t going to tell.
    “Drink your tea,” Rita said. “I expect you’re hungry too.”
    She went out to the kitchen and left us there, giving Angel a knowing nod, as if she was giving her the opportunity to say something to me. It was silent except for Angel sucking her tea up with her breath. So I slurped too. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally do, but somehow it seemed just right. I saw her dazzling eyes turn up.
    I heard plates being put out in the kitchen, the rumble of the microwave.
    And what I was thinking just then was that I did care about the eggshells in my hands and I could choose what happened next.
    Angel uncurled in the window seat, her fingers smoothing the corner of the green velvet curtains, shaking her hair away from her face as if she had been pretending how much she was bothered by what Rita had said. I knew I was in the corner of her eye. I guessed maybe it hadn’t been an act. But I couldn’t really be sure about anything to do with her.
    Then she muttered, “Why are you still here?”
    I ignored how that made me feel. The door between us had opened, and I didn’t want it to slam shut again.
    “Because you’ve got something of mine,” I said. “And because you want me here.”
    She only looked at me for half a second,