4. Jacinthe
Jacinthe
I lift my shirt up and hiss when I see the green and purple bruises dotted along my lower back. I tug the waist of my jeans down and see the top of my ass is all mottled too. It’s been three days since the incident with Joaquin, and so far, the bruises are only getting worse.
“ Esti ,” I swear, my muscles crying out while I dab on a glob of the herbal-smelling arnica gel Maman left out for me on the counter.
I feel like a T-rex flailing my arms around, trying to reach far enough behind me to get the spots that hurt. My t-shirt keeps sliding back down to get in my way, so I tug it over my head and then shimmy my jeans down even farther.
By the time I hear the front door swing open, I’m all bent up like a contortionist. I waddle out of the bathroom in just my sports bra, my jeans caught on the tops of my thighs and the tube of arnica clutched in my fist.
“ Maman ! Can you help me?” I call out in French.
Before she can answer, I round the corner and find her standing in the entryway.
With the farrier.
I freeze, almost tripping over my feet as I grind to a halt. My hand squeezes so tight around the arnica that the plastic crunches. Everyone is silent.
The farrier’s eyes are bulging. Her gaze flicks over my body, which makes her eyebrows shoot even farther up her forehead.
Her throat bobs, and she starts staring a hole into the ceiling above her head, like she’s hoping God himself will come down and zap her out of this situation with a magical light beam.
I could use my own getaway light beam. I glance down at myself and realize I look even worse than I thought. I literally have my freaking fly undone and the world’s least sexy pair of grey-that-used-to-be-white briefs poking up from under my jeans.
“Jacinthe!”
Maman squawks my name and rushes forward to flap her hands at me like I’m the one intruding.
“ Que fais-tu ?” she demands.
I should be asking what she thinks she’s doing, but instead, I find myself holding up the arnica bottle like evidence I’m not a criminal.
“I’m trying to put this on my back like you told me to! I’m too sore to reach. I thought you could help.”
She drops her voice to a whisper, even though Tess is just five feet away and can apparently speak at least some French.
“Why don’t you have any clothes on?”
“Um, excuse me, I am in a bra .” I use my free hand to snap one of the straps against my shoulder for emphasis. “In my house . I’m not walking around naked, and even if I was, I think I’m allowed to have my own tits flopping around in my own?—”
“ ?a suffit !” She holds a hand up to silence me and then jerks her chin towards the hallway. “Go get dressed. We have a guest.”
“I see that. That would have been nice to know before I?—”
She cuts me off with one of her rare Maman Is Getting Serious glares. I grind my jaw as I swallow down the rest of my sentence. Even I know not to push her once she gets The Glare out.
“Please excuse me,” I say in English, peering over my mom’s shoulder at where Tess is still pretending to be fascinated by our ceiling. “I’ll be right back.”
I wait until I’ve turned the corner back to the bathroom before I hike my jeans up. Tess doesn’t need to see me trying to squeeze my hips into the stiff denim like I’m stuffing a couch cushion.
That’s the thing about being five foot two when you’re not also the width of a forest elf; pants are either way too long or way too tight. These ones are definitely in the way too tight category.
After I’ve zipped myself up, I fish my t-shirt off the bathroom floor and pull it over my head. I stare myself down in the bathroom mirror before wetting my hands and attacking the rooster hair I didn’t bother dealing with this morning.
The horses don’t care if I look like I’ve been electrocuted, but if Tess is out here looking like she just stepped out of a Levi’s ad, I guess I better step up my game.
I only caught a few quick glimpses of her by the door, but she seems as ridiculously put together for a farrier as she did the other day: tight tank top clinging to her stomach under an open plaid button-down with the sleeves neatly rolled up to show off her bulging forearm veins.
I mean, not that I could see them from across the room, but I’m sure they must be bulging. Everything about her is bulging with that cool, calm, and collected swagger that probably has girls flocking to her like magnets any time she sets foot in a bar.
I doubt she’d ever be caught with her tighty whities out. I doubt she even owns tighty whities.
I’m still busy trying to guess what underwear she does wear when I wander into the kitchen and find my mother serving Tess orange juice at the table. Only they’re not alone. For the second time today, I find myself face to face with a completely unexpected visitor.
This one is a very tiny visitor.
“Uh, hi,” I say to the kid perched on one of our wooden chairs.
She’s staring at me from behind a curtain of shaggy brown hair dyed pink at the ends.
Her knees are pulled up to her chest and she’s got her arms wrapped around them, her feet tapping against the edge of the chair’s seat in a chaotic rhythm, like the last thing she wants to be doing is sitting still.
“This is my daughter, Shel,” Tess says. “Shel, this is Jacinthe, Gabrielle’s daughter. She lives here.”
I feel like someone just yanked the floor tiles out from under my feet. I grip the edge of the counter beside me, my gaze ping-ponging back and forth between Tess and the kid.
“You…” My voice sounds squeaky. I clear my throat. “You have a kid?”
Tess tilts her head and raises an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“Oh.”
My head is spinning, and I have no idea why. Lots of people have kids. There’s no reason Tess wouldn’t.
Maybe it’s just that I never would have guessed she’s a mom. There’s a lot I’ve been guessing about her, and the mere sight of this child in my kitchen proves a lot of it has been wrong.
“Right,” I say. I clear my throat again and lift my hand in a wave. “Hi, Shel. I am Jacinthe. You can call me Jass if it’s easier. Some of my friends call me that.”
She bobs her head in a shy nod, her feet still tip-tapping against the wooden seat. Her attention darts over to the window every few seconds. She hasn’t touched her glass of orange juice.
Maman starts pouring a glass of juice for me as well. As I walk over to grab it, I hear Shel murmuring to her mother.
“Mom, please?”
“You can go back out in a few minutes,” Tess replies in a hushed tone. “Just sit tight and I promise the cat will still be there.”
Shel huffs. “Yeah, right. Please can I go play with him now?”
I carry my juice over to the table, and Shel clamps her jaw shut like I’ve caught her doing something rude.
“Is it the orange cat?” I ask.
She stares up at me with wide eyes and blinks a couple times before she nods.
I clap a hand to my chest and mime out being relieved. “Oh, good. That’s Citrouille. He’s the nice one. I was worried you met the scary one.”
Shel’s eyes get even wider.
“You have a scary cat?”
I nod and glance over both my shoulders like I’m making sure no one is lurking behind me.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, lowering my voice and leaning in closer. “The black one. His name is Monsieur Fromage.”
Shel scrunches her face up as she translates. “Does that mean…Mister…Cheese?”
I nod and make my voice even more sinister. “Yes, Mister Cheese.”
Shel giggles, and it’s hard not to break character and grin back at her. She’s got an adorable laugh. Her feet tapping has stopped, and she’s not gripping her legs so tight anymore.
“We call him that because the only way we can get him to do anything is by giving him cheese,” I explain. “He’s always climbing up trees and buildings and stuff, and he won’t come down without cheese. Sometimes he climbs up in the roof of the barn and jumps down on the horses and scares the sh?—”
I catch myself just in time and shoot Tess a guilty look, but she’s grinning too.
“Uh, scares the poop out of them,” I finish.
Shel lets her knees flop out to the side, the soles of her socked feet pressed together in a butterfly pose. She looks a thousand more times relaxed than when I first walked in the room, and my chest swells with a mix of pride and relief.
I can’t seem to stop making a fool out of myself in front of Tess, but at least I’m not totally hopeless at talking to her kid.
“He sounds funny,” Shel says.
I tap my chin. “You know, he is pretty funny. Maybe scary is a strong word. Maybe he’s just mischievous.”
I take a sip of my orange juice. It’s just plain old Tropicana, but after spending the whole morning and afternoon doing barn chores and leading a trail riding group all on my own, it tastes like heaven.
“We do have an evil donkey, though,” I say after I’ve swallowed another sip. “Now, he is true evil. I think he’s possessed by a demon.”
Shel’s jaw drops. “What?”
“Possibly by many demons.”
Maman walks over from the fridge and smacks me with a tea towel. “Jacinthe!”
I scowl at her and then give Shel another wink. “Okay, maybe just one demon.”
“Can I meet him?”
I gawk at her. “You want to meet the demon donkey?”
She’s bouncing her knees now, but she looks more excited than nervous.
“Yeah, he sounds cool.”
I cluck my tongue. “I tell you he’s possessed by evil spirits and you think he sounds cool? You sure you’re not possessed too, Shel?”
I lean in close and squint like I’m inspecting her for signs of demonic activity, which gets everybody laughing.
“I can take you to meet him if you want,” I offer. “He’s out in his field. We can throw him a carrot from a safe distance.”
Shel leaps to her feet and rushes to Tess’s side so she can tug at her sleeve.
“Can I go?”
Tess’s eyes find mine.
“Um…”
She trails off, and as we stare at each other, it hits me for the first time: how young she is to have a kid as old as Shel. She can’t be much older than thirty, and Shel has got to be at least eight.
Some more of the image of her I’d painted in my head flakes away, leaving a stretch of blank canvas underneath.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Maman says, breaking the silence. “Jacinthe is just being dramatic. Joaquin loves to meet new people.”
I scoff. “Yeah, new victims.”
I can feel the heat on the back of my neck that means I’m about to earn another blast of The Glare from Maman .
“But really, we will be totally fine if we show up with carrots,” I add.
Shel is bouncing on the balls of her feet now.
“Pleaaase can I go see him?” she begs.
Tess presses her lips together for a moment before she sighs. “Well, I guess Gabrielle and I do have a lot to talk about…”
I freeze with my orange juice glass halfway to my mouth.
“You do?”
I forgot all about asking what the two of them are doing here.
“They’re here to look at the back,” Maman says, a huge smile on her face that makes the corners of her eyes crinkle.
‘The back’ is what we call the rear section of the house, the one my Oncle George fixed up so my dirtbag cousin Yvon would come live with us instead of at his parents’ place.
George even paid for all the renovations himself; he was that sick of his son’s trash piles and bongs all over his house, and he knew no normal landlord was going to let a twenty-eight year-old with no credit history sign a lease.
Thankfully, everyone in the family has always had a soft spot for my mom, so Yvon was only kind of a shithead while he lived here, and he did do a lot of work around the farm for free, so it was a pretty good arrangement while it lasted.
Finding someone to take over the back now that Yvon’s out working construction in Alberta has been way harder than we thought, which hasn’t helped with our strained financial situation. We’ve only had a few half-interested phone calls that haven’t even led to a tour.
The back is the absolute last reason I would have guessed Tess is here today.
“They…are?” I ask.
“Yes!” Maman chirps. “Isn’t that great? Their lease in Saint-Jovite fell through, so they’re looking for a new place.”
I scan the kitchen like there might just be a pile of moving boxes already stacked in the corner.
“They’re looking…here?”
Maman chuckles. “ Oui, ma fille . Did you forget to have your coffee this morning? Keep up!”
She ignores my baffled face as she pulls the last remaining chair out from the table and plops herself down.
“ Alors , how about this?” she says. “Tess and I will have a little chat in here while you two go visit Joaquin, and then we’ll all go look at the back together. Does that sound okay?”
It sounds like I’m still ten steps behind everybody else, so I just bob my head and hope for the best.
“That’s good with me,” Tess says, “as long as you don’t mind?”
She looks at me again, and when our eyes lock, it’s like a raging river of questions bursts through a dam in my head, all of them churning and swirling as they surge together to form a single voice that asks:
Who is this woman?
“Uh, no,” I tell her. “No, I don’t mind.”