The Horse Whisperer

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. A

Grace's door creaked when A

'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?'

A

'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.'

A

Grace looked at her and the hate and hurt in her eyes almost took A

'Why should I tell you?'

'Grace—'

'No why? Huh? Because you care? Or just because you have to know everything and control everything and not let anybody do anything unless you say so! Is that it?'

'Oh Grace.' A

'Don't! I don't want it on!'

The blow hit A

'You pretend you care but all you really care about is you and what people think of you. And your job and your big-shot friends.'

She propped herself up on her elbows as if to bolster a rage already made worse by the tears distorting her face.

'Anyway, you said you didn't want me to ride again so why the hell should I tell you? Why should I tell you anything? I hate you!'

A

'Get out! Just leave me alone! Get out!'

A

'What?' A

She waited and whether it was her own grief or Grace's that shrouded the words a second time she didn't know, but there was something about the way they were spoken that made her go back. She walked to the bed and stood close enough to touch but didn't, for fear her hand might be struck away.

'Grace? I didn't hear what you said.'

'I said… I've started.'

It came amid sobs and for a moment A

'You've started?'

'My period.'

'What, tonight?'

Grace nodded.

'I felt it happen downstairs and when I came up there was blood in my panties. I washed them in the bathroom but it wouldn't come out.'

'Oh Gracie.'

A

'Who's going to want me?'

'What, honey?'

'Whoever's going to want me? Nobody will.'

'Oh Grade, that's not true…'

'Why should they?'

'Because you're you. You're incredible. You're beautiful and you're strong. And you're the bravest person I ever met in my whole life.'

They held each other and wept. And when they could speak again, Grace told her she hadn't meant the terrible things she'd said and A

'All those years you and Dad were trying for another baby? Every night I used to pray this time let it be okay. And it wasn't for your sake or because I wanted a brother or a sister or anything like that. But just so I wouldn't have to go on being so… oh I don't know.'

'Tell me.'

'So special. Because I was the only one, I felt you both expected me to be so good at everything, so perfect and I wasn't, I was just me. And now I've gone and spoiled it all anyway.'

A

How long they sat there A

She listened to her daughter's breathing, even and trusting, and for a while watched the breeze stirring the pale drapes at the window. Then A

Chapter Twenty-four

Robert looked out through the rain-streaked window of the black cab at the woman on the billboard who'd been waving the same wave at him for the last ten minutes. It was one of those electronically animated jobs, where the arm actually moved. She was wearing Ray-Bans and a bright pink bathing suit and in her other hand had what was probably meant to be a pina colada. She was doing her best to persuade Robert and several hundred other traffic-snarled, rain-soaked travelers that they'd be better off buying an air ticket to Florida.

It was debatable. And a harder sell than it seemed, Robert knew, because the English newspapers had been going to town on stories about British tourists in Florida being mugged, raped, and shot. As the cab crawled forward, Robert could see some wag had scrawled by the woman's feet, Don't forget your Uzi.

He realized too late that he should have taken the Underground. Every time he'd been to London in the last ten years they'd been digging up some new section of the road out to the airport and he was pretty sure they didn't just save it up for when he came. The flight to Geneva was due to leave in thirty-five minutes and at this rate he'd miss it by about two years. The cabdriver had already informed him, with something suspiciously approaching relish, that out at the airport there was a 'right peasouper'.

There was. And he didn't miss his flight; it was canceled. He sat in the business-class lounge and for a couple of hours enjoyed the camaraderie of a growing band of harassed executives, each pursuing his or her own self-important path to a coronary. He tried calling A