Free Centaur Rising by Jane Yolen

bites of his hamburger whenever she came to visit. Aunt May would sniff angrily, but his other sister, Aunt Ella, would burst into tears. We hadn’t seen either of them in years. Not since Dad left.
    *   *   *
    By the time Martha and I got home, I expected to see trailers in the driveway and owners collecting their horses. I was surprised that there were only two cars: the Angottis’ blue van and Dr. Herks’ truck.
    Martha parked her car by the little cottage, but instead of putting away her groceries, she headed straight for the farmhouse, probably to report to Mom.
    Not me. I ran into the barn, wondering if they’d all changed their minds about coming to collect the horses. Or else maybe they’d already been and gone while I was at the dentist.
    But once in the barn, I discovered all the horses were still where they belonged.
    Curiouser and curiouser.
    I went to the other side of the barn to check on Kai.
    No one was standing by Agora’s stall, which was locked. But with the Angottis around, why wasn’t somebody guarding the door?
    I raced into the house, taking the back steps two at a time and getting to the kitchen just as Mrs. Angotti marched in through the front door. I could hear her voice three rooms away. Big and booming, like she had a megaphone.
    â€œYeah, I’m sorry I didn’t knock,” she was saying, “but the door was already open—well, at least not exactly locked—and besides, you need to explain something to me and to Joey here, because believe it or not, we got a really iffy situation, which may need some truly extra-careful unraveling, and I think you know what I mean! Because it’s actually ruining your already sinking business and gave my little boy a huge scare! And I don’t like anyone scaring my kids, nobody or nothing, so I think someone, maybe you or maybe the vet here, needs to give me a quick explanation—I’m not talking to Martha, because she’s a sassy loudmouthed…! Or your poor little boy.”
    Mrs. Angotti has a tendency to speak in run-on sentences, the kind my English teacher never lets us use in essays. It’s rule number three on her first-day handout, right after No exclamation marks and Watch that your adverbs don’t propagate .
    Mrs. Angotti would flunk ninth-grade English. When she talks, it’s an amazing thing to listen to, because she doesn’t seem to breathe between sentences. (“Or even paragraphs,” Mom says.) Also, she seems be in love with exclamation points, and she never met an adverb she didn’t like.
    Just as I ran into the room, Mom was saying, “Since you’re suing me, Maria, I shouldn’t be talking to you without a lawyer present.”
    Mom and Dr. Herks were sitting close on the sofa, with a bunch of papers spread out on the coffee table. Martha was standing by the door as if she’d just closed it, but not soon enough. The look on her face sat somewhere between a worry and a thunderstorm. Holding an open book on his lap, Robbie was looking up angrily. He hated being pitied above anything else.
    Mrs. Angotti had a grip on Joey’s arm, like she was furious with him, but as she spoke, all her fury seemed to go outward in an unfocused way. Her hair was unfocused, too. Wiry, shot through with strands of white, it stood up around her head like she’d put her finger in an electric socket. She was wearing her usual jodhpurs.
    Not that she ever got up on a horse. Martha thinks she’s scared. Mom thinks she’s allergic. I think the jodhpurs are a fashion statement.
    Mrs. Angotti must have taken a deep breath, because she’d already started talking again, saying, “I didn’t mean a real suit, with lawyers, I was just mortally piqued, you know, not the p-e-a-k kind of high-on-a-mountain sort of thing, but the I’m-mad-at-you pique and trying to get your attention since your attention seems to be totally wandering