23. Jacinthe
Jacinthe
T ess is wearing glittery red devil horns, and it takes all my brain power just to keep from staring at her all night.
I’m wearing a dorky plastic headband with a little Styrofoam jack-o-lantern on top, so I doubt Tess is having the same problem with me.
We just stopped at Balsam Inn for some trick-or-treating. I was supposed to stay at the inn all evening handing out candy with Maddie and Natalie, but when Shel begged me to come along with her and her mom, I couldn’t say no, especially when Maddie and Natalie insisted I go too.
We must have covered almost the entire town by now. My feet are aching, but it’s been worth it to see Shel bouncing around with her bag of candy.
Tess pulls her over at the end of the inn’s driveway, and I watch her face fall when Tess tells her it’s time to go home now.
At least, I think that’s what her face does. She’s all done up in bright pink face paint dotted with intricate patterns of swirling yellow accents. She’s wearing huge round black sunglasses on top, so it’s hard to read any of her expressions.
“But we still have, like, five streets left!” she protests, the yellow pipe cleaners sticking out the top of her head bobbing.
I’ve never met a kid who wanted to be a moth for Halloween, never mind a specific kind of moth, but Shel spent two whole weeks working on her rosy maple moth costume.
I didn’t even know what a rosy maple moth was, but she showed me some pictures of the fluffy pink and yellow bugs after putting on her costume tonight, and it turns out she’s done an excellent job with nothing but some fabric paint, a spare bed sheet cut into wings, and a fuck ton of pipe cleaners.
Tess must have wiped out every dollar store in Saint-Jovite.
“We need to get back for Gabrielle,” Tess explains, bending down to get closer to Shel’s height. “She’s all alone at the house, and we promised her we’d be back by eight-thirty so we can watch Charlie Brown together.”
All around us, kids in costumes are traipsing up the sidewalk in packs. There are some classic options like witches and superheroes, along with some more unique takes like the Michelin Tire guy, a human disco ball, and even a giant toothbrush, but I haven’t seen any other moths tonight.
My chest swells with pride at being out with one of the most original kids in La Cloche.
“We could squeeze in one more street,” I offer.
Maman ’s MS was acting up extra bad tonight. The only way I convinced her to stay home and get some rest was by promising we’d all watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special—specifically, the badly dubbed French version she has on a bootleg VHS—when we got home.
She watches that movie at least five times every fall and made me do the same thing my entire childhood, so it was a very generous offer on my part.
Before Tess has a chance to answer, Shel’s friend Ali and his parents come over to find us from where they’d been admiring the pumpkin display on the inn’s lawn.
Thankfully, I set the display up myself a couple weeks ago. Natalie and Brooke’s shitty pumpkins from that night we ran into them at Le Verger Tremblay would have made us the laughing stock of the town.
“Everything okay?” Jamilla, Ali’s mother, asks.
She, her husband, and Ali have been walking through town with us all night. Most kids who live on the rural outskirts come into the center of La Cloche for trick-or-treating. My cousins and I used to pile into the back of a truck to get driven into town by one of my uncles every Halloween.
“Yeah, we just have to call it a night, unfortunately,” Tess answers.
Shel’s shoulders droop, but she doesn’t argue.
“But we didn’t do those streets!” Ali protests, pointing at a distant block.
He’s wearing a big cardboard tube with holes cut out for his arms. The tube is covered in real strips of tree bark with mushrooms super glued all over its sides.
When I asked him what his costume is, he told me he’s a ‘decaying log being reclaimed by the forest to illustrate the circle of life.’
It’s no wonder he and Shel became friends.
“We can finish up on our own if Shel has to go home now,” his dad says, giving him a pat on the shoulder.
Shel looks even mopier but still doesn’t try to argue.
“We just have to get back to the farm,” Tess explains. “Jacinthe’s mom had to hang back, so we want to make sure she gets some company.”
“Shel could finish up the last few streets with us,” Jamilla offers. “We’re happy to drop her off, if that helps.”
Shel starts bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, making the candy in the bulging pillowcase she’s clutching jostle around.
“Please, please, please can I stay?” she chants. “We’ll go fast!”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say we can all stay to finish the night, but I really do need to check on Maman , and we came over in Tess’s truck.
“What about the movie?” Tess asks Shel. “We can’t start too late. It’s a school night.”
“Yeah, but it’s also Halloweeeeen,” Shel drawls. “Do you know how many times a year Halloween happens, Mom?”
Tess crosses her arms and tries to look stern, but I can see her fighting not to laugh. “Are you getting sassy with me, Miss Rosy Maple Moth?”
“Nooooo!” Shel rushes at her mom, flapping her bed sheet moth wings and then throwing her arms around Tess’s waist to look up at her with a simpering pout. “Can I pleaseeee stay?”
Tess laughs and pushes Shel’s sunglasses up onto her forehead so she can look her in the eyes.
“Where did you learn these manipulation tactics?” she demands.
Shel just keeps making puppy dog eyes. Tess sighs.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” she says. “You can stay for another hour to finish the other streets while Jacinthe and I get the movie set up, but the second the credits roll, you are in bed, missy.”
Shel release Tess’s waist with an excited squeal. Ali whoops, and the two of them take off scampering up the sidewalk.
We say goodbye to Maddie and Natalie just before getting into the truck.
They’re sitting on the inn’s porch with a bulk size bag of candy bars, Natalie with a purple felt witch’s hat stuffed down over her curly hair, and Maddie wearing wire cat ears with whiskers drawn on her nose in what looks like eyeliner.
They pout almost as much as Shel when we tell them we’re leaving and can’t stick around for a beer, but they perk up when Tess suggests they join us for movie night back at the house.
“They like you, you know,” I say to Tess as she drives us out of La Cloche.
She glances over at me. “Huh?”
“My friends. They like you a lot.”
“Oh,” she says, a grin spreading over her face. She sits up a little straighter in her seat. “I’m glad to hear that. I like them too.”
“My mom likes you a lot too,” I blurt. “Everyone likes you a lot. You’re really, uh, settling in here well.”
I couldn’t have picked her apart from the La Cloche locals tonight. Almost as many people said hello to her on the street as they did to me, and she took it all in stride, asking after people’s pets and kids and home improvement projects.
That’s a true sign of belonging in La Cloche: knowing who’s adding a deck or getting new shingles.
“I hope so,” she says.
I can hear the note of nervousness in her voice, like she doesn’t quite believe what I’m saying.
“It’s weird,” she says, before I can reassure her. Her gaze is fixed on the road as we cruise up the dark highway, with nothing but the headlights to guide us home. “Everything just kind of falls into place here. Is it like that for everyone?”
“No.”
I sound way too intense. Her gaze flicks to me and then back to the road again.
It is true, though. She’s not like everyone.
She’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met.
“I mean, most people who come here think it’s a special place,” I say, trying my best to sound casual, “but not everybody wants to stay f?—”
I clamp my jaw shut before I can say ‘forever.’
“For a long time,” I finish instead.
She nods, and we spend a few minutes driving in silence. There’s a strange weight to the air in the car now, like we’ve pumped it full of all the words we don’t know how to say.
There’s still so much we haven’t talked about.
“Wow, is that the time?” Tess glances at the dashboard. “Your mom’s not going to like me much if we don’t hurry up with this movie.”
She laughs, and I force myself to join in.
“Speaking of my mom…”
I trail off and consider letting it go, but Tess is already giving me a curious look.
“I, uh, have been talking with her,” I say, “about the farm. I have something I want to ask you.”
I can see how tight her jaw is clamped. I’m making this sound ominous as hell.
“You know when we were talking with Brooke and Natalie at the pumpkin patch, about turning La Grange Rouge into a boarding stable?” I ask.
She nods. “Uh-huh?”
“And you know how I said I couldn’t do it alone, and Natalie made that joke about you doing it with me?”
Her hands tighten on the wheel. “Yeah?”
I clench my own hands in my lap.
“What if you, um, did?”
She stays silent.
“It is just an idea, of course,” I add. “We were just talking, but my mom says if you want to, you could be a partner in the business.”
She jerks her head around so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t get whiplash. I’m also surprised we don’t go crashing into the ditch.
“A partner?” she squeaks.
She sounds just like me when Maman brought it up.
“Yeah, like, not just an employee,” I explain. “We wouldn’t want you to work for us. More like with us.”
She’s watching the road again, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I just thought it might help with your schedule and being around when Shel gets home from school and stuff like that,” I babble to fill the silence.
“You’re great with the horses, and you know your stuff around the farm.
You already know it better than anyone else we could find, and we…
we wouldn’t want just anyone, you know? We’d want someone special. ”
I wince as the word slips out.
This was supposed to be a business proposal. This was supposed to be about the facts.