Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

'When my daddy moved us all out here, Frank and I would come up here sometimes and have ourselves a race back down to the corral for a dime or maybe a quarter if we were feeling rich. He'd take one creek and I'd take the other.'

'Who won?'

'Well, he was younger and mostly he went so darn fast he fell off and I'd have to hang around in the trees down there and time it just right so we finished neck and neck. It made him real happy to win, so most times that's what happened.'

She smiled at him.

'You ride pretty good,' he said. She made a face.

'This horse of yours would make anyone look good.'

She reached down and rubbed Rimrock's neck and for a moment the only sound was the soft frupping of the horses' nostrils. She sat back up and looked down the valley again. You could just see the tip of the creek house above the trees.

'Who's R.B.?' she said.

He frowned. 'R.B.?'

'On the well, by the house. There are some initials, T.B. - which I guessed was you - and R.B.' He laughed.

'Rachel. My wife.'

'You're married?'

'My ex-wife. We got divorced. A long time ago.'

'Do you have children?'

'Uh-huh, one. He's twenty years old. Lives with his mother and stepfather in New York City.'

'What's his name?'

She sure asked a whole lot of questions. That was her job, he guessed, and he didn't mind at all. In fact he liked the way she was so direct, just looked you right in the eye and came out with it. He smiled.

'Hal.'

'Hal Booker. That's nice.'

'Well, he's a nice guy. You look kind of surprised.'

Right away he felt bad for saying it for he could tell from the way she colored up that he'd embarrassed her.

'No, not at all. I just—'

'He was born right down there in the creek house.'

'Is that where you lived?'

'Yup. Rachel didn't take to it out here. The winters can get kind of hard if you're not used to it.'

A shadow passed over the heads of the horses and he looked up at the sky and so did she. It was a pair of golden eagles and he told her how you could know this from their size and the shape and color of their wings. And together, in silence, they watched them soar slowly up the valley until they were lost beneath the massive gray wall of mountain beyond.

'Been there yet?' Diane said, as the Albertasaurus watched them go by the museum on their way out of town. Grace said she hadn't. Diane drove brusquely, handling the car as though it needed to be taught a lesson.

'Joe loves it. The twins prefer Nintendo.'

Grace laughed. She liked Diane. She was sort of spiky but she'd been nice to her right from the start. Well, they all had, but there was something special about the way Diane talked with her, something confiding, almost sisterly. It occurred to Grace that it might be to do with her having only had sons.

'They say dinosaurs used this whole area as a breeding ground,' she went on. 'And you know what, Grace? They're still around. You just meet some of the men hereabouts.'

They talked about school and Grace told her how, on the mornings she didn't have to come in to the clinic, Annie made her do schoolwork. Diane agreed that was tough.

'How does your dad feel about you both being out here?'

'He gets a little lonely.'

'I bet he does.'

'But he's got some big important case on at the moment so I maybe wouldn't see too much of him anyway.'

'They're a real glitzy pair your mom and dad, huh? These big careers and all.'

'Oh, Dad's not like that.' It came right out and the silence that followed made it sound worse. Grace hadn't meant to imply any criticism of her mother but she knew from the way Diane looked at her that this was how it had sounded.

'Does she ever get to take a vacation?'

The tone was knowing, sympathetic and it made Grace feel like a traitor, that she'd handed Diane some kind of weapon and she wanted to say no, you've got it wrong, it's not like that at all. But instead she just shrugged and said, 'Oh yes, sometimes.'

She looked away and for some miles neither of them spoke. There were some things other people could never understand, she thought. It always had to be one way or the other and it was more complicated than that. She was proud of her mother, for heaven's sake. Although she'd never dream of letting her know, Annie was how she herself wanted to be when she grew up. Not exactly maybe, but it seemed natural and right that women should have such careers. She liked the way all her friends knew about her mother, how successful she was and everything. She wouldn't want it any other way and though she sometimes gave Annie a hard time for not being around as much as other people's moms, if she was honest, she never felt she was missing out. It was often just her and her dad, but that was okay. It was more than okay, sometimes she even preferred it that way. It was just that Annie was, well, so sure about everything. So extreme and purposeful. It made you want to fight her even when you agreed.

'Pretty, isn't it?' Diane said.

'Yes.' Grace had been staring out at the plains but she hadn't taken anything in and, now that she did, pretty didn't seem the right word at all. It seemed a desolate kind of place.

'You wouldn't dream there's enough nuclear weapons buried out there to blow up the entire planet, would you?'

Grace looked at her. 'Really?'

'You betcha.' She grinned. 'Missile silos all over the place. We may not have too many people out here but bombs and beef, oh boy, we're second to none.'

Annie had the phone tucked into her neck and was half-listening to Don Farlow while she played around on the keyboard with a sentence she'd just typed. She was trying to write an editorial, the only writing she got to do nowadays. Today she was rubbishing a new street crime initiative just announced by the mayor of New York City but she was having trouble finding the old mix of wit and vitriol that used to characterize Annie Graves at her best.

Farlow was getting her up to speed on assorted things he and his legal hitmen had been working on, none of which interested Annie remotely. She gave up on the sentence and looked out of the window. The sun was getting low and down at the big arena she could see Tom leaning on the rail talking with Grace and Joe. She saw him throw his head back and laugh at something. Behind him the barn threw a long wedge of shadow on the red sand.

They'd been working all afternoon with Pilgrim, who now stood watching from the other end of the arena, the sweat shining on his back. Joe had only just got back from school and had as usual gone right out to join them. Every now and then, over the past few hours, Annie had looked down there at Tom and Grace and felt just an inkling of something that, if she didn't know herself better, she might have mistaken for jealousy.

Her thighs ached from the morning's ride. Muscles she hadn't used for thirty years were making their complaints known and Annie relished the pain like a keepsake. It was years since she'd felt the exhilaration that had been there this morning. It was like someone had let her out of a cage. Still excited, she'd told Grace all about it as soon as Diane dropped her home. The girl's face had fallen a little before clicking on the disinterest with which lately she greeted all her mother's news and Annie cursed herself for blurting it out. It had been insensitive, she thought; although later, on reflection, she wasn't quite sure why.

'And he said to call a halt,' Farlow was saying.

'What? Sorry Don, could you say that again?'

'He said to drop the lawsuit.'

'Who did?'

'Annie! Are you feeling okay?'

'I'm sorry Don, I'm just fiddling around with something here.'

'Gates told me to drop the Fiske case. Remember? Fenimore Fiske? "And who, pray, is Martin Scorsese?'"

It was one of Fiske's many immortal gaffes. He'd dug himself in even deeper some years later by calling Taxi Driver a squalid little film from a trifling talent.