[vulture- Robinson Jeffers]

“How long has your uncle been hitting you?”

Meera stopped short. 

“Never! I mean ... only the once.” She was genuinely surprised, but after a second thought, she realized how it must look to anyone else. She instinctively cradled her arm, the purple cast still hanging awkwardly at her side. “It’s not as if he’s an abusive old man. He’s a good man.”

Dr. Renfield pursed her lips.

“Really! It was just once!” Meera couldn’t quite tell why she was protesting. “He’s not sure how to be nice, but he tries to take care of us. Or he did.” She kept trying to explain Uncle Ram. “He’d always lived alone, and now we’re in his house, and ...”

The bartender stopped at their table and practically flung their food into place. Meera didn’t notice until Dick stopped her for a moment. “Food’s here”

She prodded the sausages sticking out of the mash of potatoes warily, then tried a piece.

Dr. Renfield sat, prodding the food on her own plate, never quite taking a piece to her tight-pressed lips.

“You’re safe at Dick’s?”

“I suppose.”

“Do you have anyone else watching out for you?”

“I ... er. Not really.” Meera looked ashamed. Dick just shook his head.

“I can make sure you have a meal waiting for you at school.”

Meera bit her lip.

“You can eat in my office if you want to avoid the others. I’d love to see you back on your studies again, but shall we start small?”  It wasn’t a question.

Slowly, Meera nodded. “Alright.”

“I can make sure you have breakfast!” Dick protested.

“You need to take care of your own schoolwork, young man.” Dr. Renfield looked about as ready to budge as the stones in the high pasture. You didn’t try to move the stones, you just worked around them.

“Dr. Renfield? Er. Sally?”

Dr. Renfield looked at her and waited for her to continue.

“I don’t have any school clothes. They were all ruined. The day after this,” Meera held up the purple casted arm “Uncle Ram had someone take all my things and just throw them in this old box. There must have been machinery in it. Everything was covered in oil. All my school things, anyway. I have a little bit I can wear.”

“Come tomorrow how you can. I think I might have some other student’s cast off things in my office. Let’s take a look.”

Meera smiled meekly. She never thought that someone else’s school uniform would be the thing that made everything okay again. A tear spilled into her potatoes.

“Thank you.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes, Meera pushing the mashed potatoes back and forth across her plate with the sausages.

“Meera?” Dr. Renfield watched her.

“Have you ever been to the seaside?”

“Only once. And we didn’t stay.”

“Why not?”

“Uncle Ram said it was immodest and he wouldn’t tolerate it.”

Dr. Renfield nodded slowly.

“Want to see it at night?”

Meera just looked at her.

“The seaside’s two hours from here!”

“Forty minutes if you go to the quay. Nobody ever thinks of it because it’s in Wales.”

“Could we really?” Meera felt herself smile for the first time in a long time. The space around her eyes felt tired, as if it hadn’t moved in at least as long.

“I would love to take you. You too, Dick.”

Dick’s impish grin returned and he ran his hand through his wavy red-brown hair.

“It’s low tide about midnight. And I have torches in the bonnet of my car.”