Nicholas Evans - The Horse Whisperer

'You okay?'

She nodded without looking at him.

'I'm going upstairs.'

She picked up her cane and made her way with awkward haste across the room.

'Grace…' Annie said gently.

'No Mom!'

She went out and the three of them stood and listened to the sound of her uneven footsteps on the stairs. Annie saw the embarrassment on Diane's face. On Tom's there was a compassion that, if she'd let it, would have made her weep. She inhaled and tried to smile.

'Did you know about this?' she said. 'Did everyone know except me?'

Tom shook his head. 'I don't think any of us knew.'

'Maybe she wanted it to be a surprise,' Diane said.

Annie laughed.

'Yeah, well.'

She wanted them only to go, but Diane insisted on staying to clear the place up and so they stacked the dishwasher and cleared the broken glass from the table. Then Diane rolled up her sleeves and got going on the pots and pans. She clearly thought it best to be chirpy and chattered on at the sink about the barn dance Hank had invited them all to on Monday.

Tom said barely a word. He helped Annie haul the table back to the window and waited while she switched off the computer. Then, working side by side, they started to load all her work things back onto the table.

What prompted her, Annie didn't know, but suddenly she asked how Pilgrim was. He didn't answer right away, just went on sorting some cables, not looking at her, while he considered. His tone, when at last he spoke, was almost matter-of-fact.

'Oh, I reckon he'll make it.'

'You do?'

'Uh-huh.'

'Are you sure?'

'No. But you see Annie, where there's pain, there's still feeling and where there's feeling, there's hope.'

He fixed the last cable.

'There you go.' He turned to face her and they looked each other in the eye. 'Thanks,' Annie said quietly. 'Ma'am, it's my pleasure. Don't let her turn you away.'

When they came back to the kitchen, Diane had finished and all except the things she'd lent was put away in places she knew better than Annie. And when Diane had brushed aside Annie's thanks and apologized again for the boys, she and Tom said their good-nights and went.

Annie stood under the porch light and watched them walk away. And as their figures were swallowed by the darkness, she wanted to call after him to stay and hold her and keep her from the cold that fell again upon the house.

Tom said good-night to Diane outside the barn and went on in to check the sick filly. Walking down from the creek house, Diane had gone on about how dumb Joe was to take the girl riding like that without telling a soul. Tom said he didn't think it was dumb at all, he could understand why Grace might want to keep such a thing secret. Joe was being a friend to her, that was all. Diane said it was none of the boy's business and frankly she'd be glad when Annie packed up and took the poor girl back home to New York.

The filly hadn't gotten any worse, though she was still breathing a little fast. Her temperature was down to a hundred and two. Tom rubbed her neck and talked to her gently while with his other hand he felt her pulse behind the elbow. He counted the beats for twenty seconds, then multiplied by three. It was forty-two beats per minute, still above normal.

She was clearly running some kind of fever and maybe he'd have to get the vet up to see her in the morning if there was no change.

The lights of Annie's bedroom were on when he came out and they were still on when he finished reading and switched off his own bedroom light. It was a habit now, this last look up at the creek house where the illuminated yellow blinds of Annie's window stood out against the night. Sometimes he'd see her shadow pass across them as she went about her unknown bedtime rituals and once he'd seen her pause there, framed by the glow, undressing and he'd felt like a snooper and turned away.

Now though, the blinds were open and he knew it meant something had happened or was happening even as he looked. But he knew it was something only they could resolve and, though it was foolish, he told himself that maybe the blinds were open not to let darkness in but to let it out.

Never, since he first laid eyes on Rachel so many years ago, had he met a woman he wanted more.

Tonight was the first time he'd seen her in a dress. It was a simple, cotton print, black dotted with tiny pink flowers, and there were pearl buttons all down the front. It reached well below her knees and it had little cap sleeves that showed the tops of her arms. When he arrived and she'd told him to come into the kitchen to get a drink, he couldn't take his eyes off her. He'd followed her inside and breathed deep the waft of her perfume and while she poured the wine he'd watched her and noticed how she kept her tongue between her teeth to concentrate. He noticed too a glimpse of satin strap at her shoulder which he'd tried all evening not to look at and failed. And she'd handed him the glass and smiled at him, creasing the corners of that mouth in a way he wished was only for him.

Over supper he'd almost got to believe it was, because the smiles she gave Frank and Diane and the kids were nothing like it. And maybe he'd imagined it, but when she talked, no matter how generally, it always seemed somehow directed at him. He'd never seen her with her eyes made up before and he watched how they shone green and trapped the candle flame when she laughed.

When everything had exploded and Grace stormed out, it was only Diane being there that had stopped him from taking Annie in his arms and letting her cry as he could see she wanted to. He didn't fool himself that the urge was merely to console her. It was to hold her and know closely the feel and the shape and the smell of her.

But nor did Tom think this made it shameful, though he knew others might. This woman's pain and her child and the pain of that child were all part of her too, were they not? And what man was God enough to judge the fine divisions of feeling appropriate to each or all or any of these?

All things were one, and like a rider in harmony the best a man could do was recognize the feel and go with it and be as true to it as his soul let him.

She switched all the downstairs lights off and as she went up the stairs she saw Grace's door was closed and beneath it that her room was dark. Annie went to her own room and switched on the light. She paused in the doorway, knowing that crossing the threshold somehow had significance. How could she let this pass? Allow another layer to settle unquestioned with the night between them, as if there were some inexorable geology at work? It didn't have to be so.

Grace's door creaked when Annie opened it, pivoting light into the room from the landing. She thought she saw the bedclothes shift but couldn't be sure, for the bed was beyond the angle of light and Annie's eyes took time to adjust.

'Grace?'

Grace was facing the wall and there was a studied stillness to the shape of her shoulders beneath the sheet.

'Grace?'

'What?' She didn't move.

'Can we talk?'

'I want to go to sleep.'

'So do I, but I think it would be good if we talked.'

'What about?'

Annie walked over to the bed and sat down. The prosthetic leg was propped against the wall by the bedside table. Grace sighed and turned over on her back, staring at the ceiling. Annie took a deep breath. Get it right, she kept telling herself. Don't sound hurt, go easy, be nice.

'So you're riding again.'

'I tried.'

'How was it?'

Grace shrugged. 'Okay.' She was still looking at the ceiling, trying to look bored.

'That's terrific.'

'Is it?'

'Well isn't it?'

'I don't know, you tell me.'

Annie fought the beating of her heart and told herself, keep calm, keep going, just take it. But instead she heard herself say, 'Couldn't you have told me?'