Foster

by Claire Keegan

‘You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.’

‘Ah, the women are nearly always right, all the same,’ he says. ‘Do you know what the women have a gift for?’ ‘What?’ ‘Eventualities. A good woman can look far down the line and smell what’s coming before a man even gets a sniff of it.’

A little bit of talk starts up then, rolls back and forth, bumping between them for a while.

My heart does not so much feel that it is in my chest as in my hands, and that I am carrying it along swiftly, as though I have become the messenger for what is going on inside of me.