The Horse Whisperer

'I saw her move,' A

'Keep on squeezing,' said the intern. He took a penlight out of his breast pocket and opened one of Grace's eyes. He shone the light into it and watched for a reaction. The nurse was checking the monitors. The heartbeat had steadied out at a hundred and twenty. The intern took Grace's earphones off. 'Talk to her.'

A

'Gracie? It's me. Darling, it's time to wake up now. Please wake up now.'

'Look,' the intern said. He was still holding Grace's eye open and A

'Her blood pressure's up to one-fifty,' said the nurse. 'What does that mean?'

'It means she's responding,' said the intern. 'May I?'

He took Grace's hand from A

'Grace,' he said. 'I'm going to squeeze your hand now and I want you to try and squeeze back if you can. Try as hard as you can now, okay?'

He squeezed, looking into the eye all the time.

'There,' he said. He passed the girl's hand to A

A

Grace was in a tu

Then she heard voices. They were coming from the place where the light was dimmer. She couldn't see who it was but she knew one of the voices was her mother's. There was a man's voice too, but not her father's. It was some other man, someone she didn't know. She tried to move toward them along the tu

They didn't seem to know she was there. Why couldn't they see her? They sounded such a long way off and she was suddenly worried they might go and leave her all alone. But now, yes, the man was calling her name. They had seen her. And although she still couldn't see them, she knew they were reaching out for her and if she could only make one final, great effort, maybe the glue would let her through and they could haul her out.

Chapter Four

Robert paid in the farm shop and by the time he came out, the two boys had tied the tree up with string and were loading it into the back of the Ford Lariat crew-cab he'd bought last summer to ferry Pilgrim up from Kentucky. It had been a surprise for both Grace and A

He thanked the two boys, wished them a Merry Christmas and pulled out of the muddy, potholed parking lot onto the road. He had never bought a Christmas tree so late before. Usually he and Grace would go out the weekend before and get one, though they always left it until Christmas Eve to bring it inside and decorate it. At least she would be there to do that, to decorate it. Christmas Eve was tomorrow and Grace was coming home.

The doctors weren't totally happy about it. It was only two weeks since she'd come out of the coma but he and A

He pulled up outside the Chatham Bakery and went in to pick up some bread and muffins. Breakfast at the bakery had become a weekend ritual for them. The young woman behind the counter sometimes babysat Grace.

'How's your beautiful girl?' she asked.

'Coming home tomorrow.'

'Really? That's great!'

Robert saw others were listening too. Everyone seemed to know about the accident and people he had never talked to before asked after Grace. He noticed though how no one ever spoke about the leg.

'Well, you make sure you give her my love.'

'I sure will, thanks. Merry Christmas.' Robert saw them watching from the window as he got back into the Lariat. He drove past the animal feed plant, slowed to cross the railroad, and headed for home through Chatham Village. The store windows along Main Street were full of Christmas festoonery and the narrow sidewalks, strung above with colored lights, were busy with shoppers. Robert exchanged waves with those he knew as he drove by. The creche on the central square looked pretty - undoubtedly a violation of the First Amendment - but pretty nonetheless and hey, it was Christmas. Only the weather seemed not to know it.

Since the rain had stopped, on the day Grace mouthed her first words, it had been ludicrously warm. Fresh from pontificating about hurricane floods, media climatologists were having their most lucrative Christmas in years. The world was officially a greenhouse or at least upside down. When he got back to the house, A

'A star?' she said, in disbelief. 'A star? He's the complete opposite of a star. The guy's a goddamned black hole!'

Robert might normally have smiled at this but the aggression in her voice was dispelling the seasonal glow he had come home with. He knew she found it frustrating trying to run a chic metropolitan magazine from an upstate farmhouse. But it was more than that. Since the accident, A

'What! You agreed to pay him that?' she howled. 'You must be out of your mind! Is he going to do it nude or something?'

Robert put the coffee on and laid the table for breakfast. The muffins were the ones A

'I'm sorry John, I'm not going with it. You'll have to call and cancel… I don't care… Yes, you can fax it to me. Okay.'

He heard her hang up. No goodbye, but then there rarely was with A

'No. I had some cereal.'

He tried not to look disappointed. She saw the muffins on the table.

'Sorry.'

'No problem. All the more for me. Like some coffee?'

A

'Get the tree?' she asked.

'You bet. Not as good as last year's, but it's pretty.'

There was another silence. He poured coffee for them both and sat down at the table. The muffins tasted good. It was so quiet he could hear himself chewing. A

'Well, I suppose we ought to get it done tonight,' she said. She took a sip of coffee.

'What?'

'The tree. Decorate it.'

Robert frowned. 'Without Grace? Why? She'd hate it if we did it without her.'