The Horse Whisperer

Then, with a terrible sound, sufficient alone to ratify the passing of his life, the hooves came down upon his head and struck him like a crumbled icon to the ground.

The stallion reared again but not so high and only now to find some safer surface for his feet than the man's body. He seemed for a moment fazed by such prompt capitulation and pawed the dust uncertainly around Tom's head. Then, tossing his mane, he cried out one last time, then swerved toward the gap and was gone.

Part Five

Chapter Thirty-six

Spring came late to Chatham the following year. One night, in the closing days of April, there fell a full foot of snow. It was of that heavy, languid kind and gone within the day, but A

Now the show was past its best, the pink of the petals faded and delicately edged in brown. With each stir of the breeze another flurry would dislodge, littering the grass in wide circumference. Those that fell unbidden were mostly lost among the longer grass that grew around the roots. Some few however found a final brief reprieve on the white gauze netting of a cradle which, since the weather had grown mild, stood daily in the dappled shade.

The cradle was old and made of woven wicker. It had been handed down by an aunt of Robert's when Grace was born and prior to her had sheltered the cranial formation of several more or less distinguished lawyers. The netting, across which A

It was too early to tell whose looks he had. His skin was fair and his hair a light brown, though in the sun it seemed to have a reddish tinge that was surely A

A

Were it not for the steady configuration in her womb A

A

She looked at her watch. It was nearly four. In an hour Robert and Grace would be setting off from the city. A

They'd buried Tom Booker beside his father. A

The intention, Frank said, had been to keep the funeral small, pretty much only for family. But on the day about three hundred people turned up, some from as far afield as Charleston and Santa Fe. There was room for only a few in the church, so they'd opened wide the doors and windows and everyone else stood outside in the sunshine.

Frank said he thought A

The main purpose of his writing, he went on to say, was that on the day before he died Tom had apparently told Joe that he wanted to give Grace a present. The two of them had come up with the idea that she should have Bronty's foal. Frank wanted to know how A

It was Robert's idea to build the stable. A

Both horses lifted their heads at her approach then went calmly back to their grazing. Bronty's 'foal' was now a boisterous yearling who in public was treated by Pilgrim with a kind of lofty disdain. It was mostly an act. Many times now, A

Grace worked with the colt every weekend. Watching her, it was so clear to A

She found it hard to think of Grace nowadays without a feeling of reverence and wonder. The girl, now nearly fifteen, was a constantly revealing miracle.

The week that followed Tom's death was still a blur and it was probably best for both of them that it remained so. They'd left as soon as Grace was fit to travel and flown back to New York. For days the girl was almost catatonic.

It was the sight of the horses that August morning which seemed to bring about the change. It unlocked a sluice gate in her and for two weeks she wept and poured forth her agony. It might have swept them all away. But in the flooded calm of its aftermath,

Grace seemed to take stock and decide, like Pilgrim, to survive.

In that moment Grace became an adult. But sometimes now, when she didn't know she was being watched, you could catch a glimpse in her eyes of something that was more than merely adult. Twice gone to hell and twice returned. She had seen what she had seen and from it gleaned some sad and stilling wisdom that was as old as time itself.

In the fall Grace went back to school and the welcome she got there from her friends was worth a thousand sessions with her new therapist, whom nonetheless, even now, she still visited every week. When at last, with great trepidation, A

Neither had Robert. No test had established the fact, nor had he sought one. It seemed to A

A