The Horse Whisperer

It wasn't that she doubted for one moment his love. How could she? There was just something about him, some sad foreshadowing that was almost fatalistic. She had seen it today, in his desperate intent that she should understand what he had done to Pilgrim.

There was a brief flooding of light now at the end of the passageway to the barn. He stopped and sca

When at last she could speak, she stood in the safety of his arms and told him that she was going to leave Robert. She spoke with such calm as she could muster, her cheek pressed to his chest, fearful perhaps of what she might see in his eyes were she to look. She said she knew how terrible the pain would be for all of them. Unlike the pain of losing Tom however, it was a pain she could at least imagine.

He listened in silence, holding her to him and stroking her face and hair. But when she had finished, still he didn't speak and A

'Oh A

'What? Tell me.'

'You can't do that.'

'I can. I'll go back and tell him.'

'And Grace? You think you can tell Grace?'

She peered at him, searching his eyes. Why was he doing this? She'd hoped for validation and he'd proffered only doubt, thrusting at her immediately the one issue she'd dared not confront. And now A

He said, 'After what she's suffered—'

'You think I don't know!'

'Of course you do. What I was going to say is that because of that, because you know, you'll never let yourself do this, even if now you think you can.'

She felt tears coming and knew she couldn't stop them.

'I have no choice.' It was uttered in a small cry that echoed around the bare walls like a lament.

He said, 'That's what you said about Pilgrim, but you were wrong.'

'The only other choice is losing you!' He nodded. 'That's not a choice, can't you see? Could you choose to lose me?'

'No,' he said simply. 'But I don't have to.'

'Remember what you said about Pilgrim? You said he went to the brink and saw what was beyond and then chose to accept it.'

'But if what you see there is pain and suffering, then only a fool would choose to accept it.'

'But for us it wouldn't be pain and suffering.'

He shook his head. A

'You don't want me,' she said and hated herself at once for her maudlin self-pity, then even more for the triumph she felt as his eyes welled with tears.

'Oh A

She cried in his arms and lost all sense of time and place. She told him she couldn't live without him and saw no portent when he told her this was true for him but not for her. He said that in time she would assess these days not with regret but as some gift of nature that had left all their lives the better.

When she could cry no more, she washed her face in the cool water of the pool and he found a towel and helped her mop the mascara that had swum from her eyes. They waited, saying little more, while the blotching faded from her cheeks. Then separately, when all seemed safe, they left.

Chapter Thirty-five

A

Grace had come up to her soon after she and Tom came out of the barn and said bluntly that she wanted to go. She looked pale and troubled, but when A

'From the punch?'

'I don't know.'

'How many glasses did you have?'

'I don't know! It's no big deal, don't go on about it.'

She went straight up to bed and when A

She reached for her watch now and had to force her muffled brain to focus on it. It was coming up to eight o'clock. She remembered Frank, as they left last night, asking if they'd be coming to church this morning and because it seemed appropriate, somehow punishingly final, she'd said yes. She hauled her reluctant body out of bed and along to the bathroom. Grace's door was slightly ajar. A

She lay in the steaming water and tried to hold on to the last lacing of the sleeping pill. Through it she could feel already a cold geometry of pain configuring within her. These are the shapes which now inhabit you, she told herself, and to whose points and lines and angles you must become accustomed.

She dressed and went to the kitchen to get Grace's juice. It was eight-thirty. Since her drowsiness had gone she'd sought distraction in compiling mental lists of what needed to be done on this last day at the Double Divide. They had to pack; clean the house up; get the oil and tires checked; get some food and drink for the journey; settle up with the Bookers…

As she came to the top of the stairs, she saw Grace's door hadn't moved. She tapped on it as she went in. The drapes were still closed and she went across and drew them a little apart. It was a beautiful morning.

Then she turned to the bed and saw it was empty.

It was Joe who first discovered Pilgrim was missing too. By then they'd searched every cobwebbed corner of every outbuilding on the ranch and found no trace of her. They split up and combed both sides of the creek, the twins hollering her name over and over and getting no reply but birdsong. Then Joe came yelling from down by the corrals, saying the horse was gone and they all ran to the barn and found the saddle and bridle were gone too.

'She'll be okay,' Diane said. 'She's just taken him for a ride somewhere.' Tom saw the fear in A

'She done anything like this before?' he said.