Page 33 of Touch the Sky

I tilt my head in surprise, but she plows right on through the subject change.

“All their feet are great. I called Léon tonight and told him he picked a good replacement.”

“Oh,” I mumble. “Thank you. That was really kind of you.”

Jacinthe shrugs. Her fingers are tapping a frantic rhythm on the table. “It’s the truth. I don’t lie about my horses.”

I nod. “Of course.”

This time, I don’t bother trying not to squint. I peer straight at her face as all the pieces start to fall into place.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah,” she says, her voice just a little too bright. “Whatever you want. I am here to help.”

“Are you…buttering me up?”

She balks, her shoulders stiffening against the back of the booth. “Buttering?”

“Like, flattering me? Is this”—I hoist up the bag of treats and nod my head at the pints she paid for—“about the lease, or something?”

Her eyes widen, the whites of them flashing like a panicked horse, and that’s all the confirmation I need.

“What?” she yelps. She’s feigning indignation now, but it’s too late. “No! I just want you to, you know, feel good, so you?—”

“So I’ll sign the lease.”

That’s what the cake and the drinks and the bizarre facial expressions are about. I was starting to wonder if maybe she’d smoked a huge joint on the way over here, and all along, she’s just been trying to be nice.

The fact that this is what Jacinthe’s interpretation of ‘nice’ looks like is too much to resist.

I burst out laughing.

“No, no, no!” Jacinthe protests.

Her face is somewhere between annoyed and crestfallen, which just makes me laugh even more.

“I just wanted to make you feel welcome in town,” she babbles. “You know, because you’re new, and because you thought I hated you, and because?—”

“Because you think I might not take the property?” I cut in. “That’s why you’re doing the creepy smile thing, right?”

She gasps. “Creepy? My smile is not creepy! My smile is charming as fuck.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and glares at me. I have to clutch my stomach I’m laughing so hard.

“Not whatever you’ve been doing tonight,” I wheeze. “It’s haunting, Jacinthe.”

“Haunting?” she barks. “I bring you cakes and beer and you call mehaunting?”

She cocks her head and grumbles a string of Québécois swear words so long and elaborate I notice the people in the booth behind her glance over with their eyebrows raised.

I shake my head, still chuckling. “See now, this is the Jacinthe Gauthier I was expecting to get to know tonight.”

“Gauthier-Laframboise,” she quips.

“Huh?”

“That’s my full last name. Gauthier-Laframboise.”