The Horse Whisperer

'I'm sorry. I can't do that. Even if I had the time, frankly I don't know how much use it'd be.'

'Couldn't you spare just a day or two? I don't care what it would cost.' She heard him give a little laugh and she regretted saying it.

'Ma'am, I hope you don't mind if I speak plainly with you, but you've got to understand. There's a limit to the amount of suffering these creatures can take. I believe this horse of yours has been living in the shadow for too long now.'

'So you think we should put him down? Like everyone else does?' There was a pause. 'If he was your horse Mr Booker, would you put him down?'

'Well ma'am. He's not my horse and I'm glad it's not my decision. But in your shoes, yes, that's what I'd do.'

She tried again to persuade him to come, but she could tell it was no use. He was courteous and calm and totally unmovable. She thanked him and hung up, then walked down the corridor and into the living room.

The lights had all been turned off and the top of the piano shone dimly in the darkness. She went slowly over to the window and stood there for a long time, looking out across the treetops of the park toward the towering apartment blocks of the East Side. It was like a stage backdrop, ten thousand tiny windows, pinpricks of light in a fake night sky. It was impossible to believe that inside every one of them was a different life with its own special pain and destiny. Robert had fallen asleep. She took his book from his hands, turned off his bedside light and undressed in the dark. For a long time she lay on her back beside him, listening to his breathing and watching the orange shapes made on the ceiling by the streetlamps spilling around the edges of the blinds. She already knew what she was going to do. But she wasn't going to tell Robert, or Grace, until she had it all arranged.

Chapter Twelve

For his talent in nurturing young and ruthless recruits to run his mighty empire, Crawford Gates was known, among many names less flattering, as The Face That Launched a Thousand Shits. For this reason A

He was sitting opposite her, eating his seared swordfish meticulously without taking his eyes off her. And as she talked, A

She knew a month was a lot to ask but she felt she was owed it. Until the accident she had barely taken a day off and even since then she hadn't taken many.

I'll have the phone, fax, modem, everything,' she said. 'You won't even know I'm not here.'

She cursed to herself. She'd been talking for fifteen minutes and was getting the tone all wrong. It sounded like she was pleading. She should be doing it from strength, just telling him straight what she was going to do. There was nothing about his ma

'Are you going to take Robert and Grace too?'

'Just Grace. Robert's got too much on. But Grace really needs to get away. Since she went back to school she's started to sink a little. The break'll do her good.'

What she didn't say was that even now neither Grace nor Robert had the faintest idea of what she was pla

The house she had found to rent was in Choteau, which was the nearest town of any size to Tom Booker's ranch. There hadn't been much choice, but the place was furnished and, from the details the real estate agent had sent, it seemed adequate. She had found a physical therapist nearby for Grace and some stables who were prepared to take Pilgrim, though A

Crawford Gates dabbed his lips clean.

'A

From someone who'd walked out on four marriages and twice that many children, A

Cruising back to the office in his absurdly long black Cadillac, A

The only other person she needed to inform was the one upon whom the whole plan hinged: Tom Booker. It would seem to others curious, she reflected, that this of all things worried her least. But A

It was, she believed, a simple and unassailable fact of life that if a woman went to epic lengths to throw herself on the mercy of a man, the man would not, could not, refuse.

Chapter Thirteen

The highway stretched straight ahead of them between converging fences for miles too many to ponder toward the thunder-black dome of the horizon. At this most distant point, where the road seemed to climb into the sky, lightning flickered repeatedly, as if reatomizing blacktop into cloud. Beyond the fences, on either side, the ocean of Iowa prairie spread away flat and featureless to nowhere, lit fitfully through the rushing cloud by vivid, rolling shafts of sun, as though some giant were searching for his prey.

In such a landscape there was dislocation both of time and space and A

In two days they had traveled more than twelve hundred miles and in all that time Grace had hardly spoken. Much of the time she had slept, as she slept now, curled up on the back bench seat. When she woke she would stay there, listening to her Walkman or staring blankly out. Once, and only once, A

She had reacted to her mother's plan much as A