Foster

by Claire Keegan

It is something I am used to, this way men have of not talking: they like to kick a divot out of the grass with a boot heel, to slap the roof of a car before it takes off, to spit, to sit with their legs wide apart, as though they do not care.

‘Where there’s a secret,’ she says, ‘there’s shame – and shame is something we can do without.’

it tastes of my father leaving, of him never having been there, of having nothing after he was gone. I dip it again and lift it level with the sunlight. I drink six measures of water and wish, for now, that this place without shame or secrets could be my home.

Walking down the road, there’s a taste of something darker in the air, of something that might fall and blow and change things.

‘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.’