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or Gloucester had ever volunteered a word about them.
He’d been too shy to ask, or afraid of what he might learn.
If Tammy was the best he could do for a guardian, maybe there were worse secrets in the family cupboard.
“Does anyone else know this?”
“I doubt it,” Allen shrugged. “Maybe.”
Oliver felt as though a wave of icy seawater had broken over his head. His eyes burned, his ears rang, and he gasped for breath. When he surfaced, his hands were tight around Allen’s neck.
“You son-of-a-bitch. You goddamn son-of-a-bitch, you didn’t tell me?”
Allen twisted loose, but Oliver grabbed his arm and pinned it behind him. “I’d come here begging for food, and you’d turn your nose up at me. Your daughters laughed at my clothes.” Oliver tightened his grip. “All that time you knew this, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t need Tammy mad at me,” said Allen.
“You aren’t stupid enough to believe she’s a witch, are you?” Oliver said. “Are you as dumb as all that?”
Allen had his reasons for keeping on Tammy’s good side. She’d made it clear long ago that his silence about the Younger will would keep her quiet about his regular trips to the harbor’s whores. It had been a good enough bargain, till now.
“I’m going to break your arm,” Oliver said. “And then I’m going to break the other one.”
“It ain’t me you want, boy,” Allen said. “It’s Tammy that did you the harm. Go settle up with her. Go find yourself that will, that’s what you need to do. It’s probably in the house somewhere.”
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Oliver twisted Allen’s arm one last time before rushing headlong into the woods. He moved as quickly as he could, kicking at the underbrush as the whole of his hungry, lonely boyhood came back at him. He had been a slave in his own house and he could have been his own man years ago.
But the truth was that Oliver could have become his own man long ago. He could have moved out of Tammy’s house. Easter would have taken him in if he’d asked. Or he could have bound himself to a blacksmith or a cooper; by now he’d have a trade and the means to marry Polly.
But he had been too weak and too afraid, as Tammy had made him. Maybe she was a witch, after all. Oliver might appear to be a grown man, but in fact, he had the spine of a jellyfish. It was past time that he found his nerve.
Oliver thought of the long knife in Polly’s kitchen and ran all the way back to the house, to find her there, waiting for him with a big smile and arms open. He walked past her without saying a word.
“What happened to your eye?” Polly cried.
Oliver brushed her hand aside with what felt like a slap.
“Ollie!”
“I fell,” he said as he found the knife and set to sharpening it.
“What is it?” Polly said. “What happened to you? What do you want with that?”
He turned the blade over and started on the other side.
“Please, Ollie,” she begged. “Tell me what happened.