Chapter 8: Saturday

On Saturday, Conal rang the bell at ten o'clock exactly, and he had brought two wooden horses.

They were small and carved by hand, one dappled and one black, each with a real horsehair tail.

"I made them," he said, in the doorway, to the floor. "A long time ago. In case."

"In case of what?" Maisie said.

"In case somebody wanted them."

She took the black one and galloped it up the hall at once.

Bea took the dappled one in both hands, studied it, and carried it to the window seat without a word.

I stood in the kitchen with my cane and my arms folded and looked at the clock.

One hour.

He did not touch me when he came in.

He did not even look at my hands, and I noticed that he did not.

Odette sat on the arm of the couch with a magazine and no intention of reading it.

She had said she was there for moral support, and the moral support was meant for me.

Conal sat on the floor, because the girls were on the floor.

By the fifteen-minute mark, Maisie was on his shoulders.

By thirty, she had named every horse on his ranch, which he had told her one by one, without being asked twice.

"And that one's called Tuesday," Maisie said.

"Because she was born on a Tuesday."

"Because she's lazy."

"That too."

Maisie fell over laughing, and he caught her, and he laughed too.

I had not heard it in four and a half years.

It was the same laugh, a little cracked from lack of use.

I turned toward the window so nobody would see my face.

Bea had crept closer.

She had the dappled horse in her lap, and she was watching his hands.

She held out a crayon.

"Draw one," she said.

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