Gwen herself feels a weird sort of sensation inside her; it’s as if something were being boiled.
“Please,” she says.
Hollis considers, then shakes his head. “Not good enough.”
Nothing will ever be good enough, that’s the problem, Gwen sees that now. Some things are done rather than decided, and before she plans it out entirely, Gwen rushes for the door to Tarot’s stall and swings it wide open.
“Go,” she screams, but that’s not necessary. Tarot moves so fast that Hollis has to jump aside, and by the time Hollis is thinking straight enough to go for his gun, his target is out in the open, running so fast the wind can’t keep up, leaving a cloud of his breath behind. Hollis goes to the barn door and fires once, but by then Tarot has jumped the first fence in the field, and is bolting over the next. Hank and Gwen can hear him running, riderless and hot, on this freezing, black night.
When the horse arrives in the Marshes, the Coward is dreaming of snow. He opens his eyes when he hears a clatter, and sure enough, snow is falling and beside the apple tree stands Belinda’s horse, pawing at the frozen ground, searching for apples.
The Coward has been sleeping in his coat and his boots; he goes outside and huddles near the horse and watches him eat. After a while, he gets a rope and ties the horse to the tree.
“There you go,” the Coward tells the horse. “That’s your bed.”
The Coward gets himself a nightcap and sits on his porch until Gwen arrives at his rickety, useless gate, her little white dog trailing behind. Gwen’s eyes look strange and feverish and she has a purple bruise across her face. Hollis hit her only once, as she went past him leaving the barn, but he made certain to strike hard. There are broken blood vessels beneath her skin; he’s left his mark for weeks to come.
When the Coward sees the way she looks, he has a funny feeling in his arms and legs, as though someone had set a match to his flesh. “What did he do to you?” he asks.
The girl looks straight ahead. Tears are falling from her eyes, but she’s not making a sound.
“I won’t let him get to this horse, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the Coward says, suddenly much braver than he imagined he could be. He’d kill any man who came looking for this horse, or be killed himself. If he can stay sober long enough. That’s the hitch, but there’s no need to mention it to this lovely girl.
“Really?” Gwen says, because she’s already realized she can’t take Tarot with her and she can’t stay. “You’d do that?”
“I would,” the Coward vows.
A little while later, Hank comes looking for Gwen. He remained at the house until Hollis calmed down; it was, he believes, the least he could do. He might have leapt to protect Gwen when Hollis reached out and slapped her, but it was so sudden Hank was caught completely by surprise, or so he tells himself. Hollis doesn’t mean to do these things; he’s like a bomb, one which, if you don’t defuse it straightaway, will go off when you least expect it. Surely, Gwen will understand this, and the reason for Hank’s delay. Of course Hank hasn’t sided with Hollis—it’s simply a question of loyalty, not unlike a pledge you make to a country about to enter a foolish, wrongheaded war.
Gwen is sitting on the Coward’s floor when Hank arrives; she’s wrapped in a ratty wool blanket Judith Dale brought here years ago, trying her best to ignore how drunk the Coward has become.
“It’s about time,” the Coward says to Hank when the boy pushes open the door. “God, you are slow.”
But fast or slow no longer matters, Hank realizes that as soon as he sees the mark Hollis left on Gwen’s face. Hollis hit her hard, that’s what Hank sees now, and he meant to. Certainly, Hank can try to explain it away, he can sit beside her and loop his arm around her and whisper how awful this is, how sorry he is, how Hollis probably regrets what has happened already, how he’d never actually go ahead and hurt Tarot, but none of this signifies anymore. Sitting there, more beautiful than ever, Gwen has made the decision to go.
God, you are slow, Hank keeps thinking as Gwen laces her fingers through his and rests her head on his shoulder.
“It’s not your fault,” she tells him, after the Coward has nodded off, and they are as good as alone. “It’s just the way things turned out.”
Hank laughs at that, a short harsh laugh that goes nowhere. He leans against the thin plaster wall where colonies of ants have lived for decades, perhaps for as long as a century. He closes his eyes.
Whose fault is it when love is denied? When youth is a curse rather than a blessing? Oh, if only there weren’t other people involved; if only they were the last two people on earth, just them, opening the door to this old house, looking out at the deep, blue night and all those stars they’ll never learn the names of, all those planets they can’t even see.