Foster

by Claire Keegan

I am in a spot where I can neither be what I always am nor turn into what I could be.

A type of silence climbs and grows tall between the men while she is out.

As soon as she says this, I realise she is just like everyone else, and wish I was back at home so that all the things I do not understand could be the same as they always are.

Walking back along the path and through the fields, holding her hand, I feel I have her balanced. Without me, I am certain she would tip over. I wonder how she manages when I am not here, and conclude that she must ordinarily fetch two buckets. I try to remember another time when I felt like this and am sad because I can’t remember a time, and happy, too, because I cannot.

Kinsella takes my hand in his. As soon as he takes it, I realise my father has never once held my hand, and some part of me wants Kinsella to let me go so I won’t have to feel this.

Everything about the night feels strange: to walk to a sea that’s always been there, to see it and feel it and fear it in the half dark, and to listen to this man saying things about horses out at sea, about his wife trusting others so she’ll learn who not to trust, things I don’t fully understand, things which may not even be intended for me.

He shines the light along the strand to find our footprints, to follow them back, but the only prints he can find are mine. ‘You must have carried me there,’ he says.