Page 35
“Saint told me about Dav Bosanko.”
Irritation obliterates my concern so fast I almost choke on it. “Already?”
“There’s a lot of history there.”
My eyes ache with the urge to roll around the world and back. But I resist, just, and slam myself with a reminder I’m the one on Folk’s turf, not the other way round. He didn’t ask me to come here and give him something else to worry about. “What kind of history?”
“The long kind, most of it way before my time. Dav’s not a bad bloke, but he’s had problems that have made other people’s lives difficult. Problems that might be solved by regular work keeping him busy, but…”
“But what?”
“At what cost and to who? He’s a thief, Po. What are you going to do if you wake up one day and he’s sold your combine when you weren’t looking?”
“You don’t think even deaf old me would notice him rolling it off my land in the middle of the night?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Folk doesn’t rise to me. Never has. “I’m just saying it might be hassle you don’t need.”
Like the eye roll, telling him I’ll decide that for myself is on the tip of my tongue. Then I remember why I’m here in the first place. Because Saint sent me—presumably after he told Folk all about it. “What’s his boy going to say to me?”
“Sol?”
“That’s the one.”
A wild gust of wind blows in from the sea. Folk shifts a little, as if an age-old instinct drives him to shield me from it. But I’m taller than him now. Broader. And I’ve been ready to step in front of him longer than he’ll ever know.
I block the wind.
Folk lets it pass without comment and answers my question instead. “Sol’s a nice guy. It’s unlikely he’ll ask you do anything but take care of his dad. Read between the lines, though. He might tell you something we haven’t thought of.”
This time, I do roll my eyes. “Why is life so complicated for you?”
“Keeps me young.”
“Does it?”
“Younger than I was before I came home.”
“That’s because you were practically dead.”
“Nice.”
It isn’t. Neither are the memories that swamp me, and I’m not like Oscar. There’s no hugging it out when something rattles me—
You could hug it out with him.
Oscar.
But he’s not here. So I heed his influence. I hug it out with Folk instead, and again, I surprise him.
Enough to have him pulling back and studying me as though I’ve grown horns. “Are you drunk?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re giving me whiplash.”
Valid. I’m giving myself whiplash too. Maybe that’s what fuels the nonsense that falls out of me next. “Did you know, when you first saw Seth, that he was meant to be in your life?”
The wind dies as I speak. My brother’s hair is longer than it’s ever been. If I was Jekka, and we were young again, I’d be scraping it into the kind of man-bun that only looks good on Oscar and Rubi Matherson.
