Harvesting The Heart Part 17

Astrid thought about the photographs spread across her study, the old Ladakhi women with heavy feather necklaces, the bare brown children playing tag in front of ancient Buddhist monasteries. She had been writing the introduction to her latest book of photos, centering on the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau. She was three days late on her deadline already, and her editor was going to call first thing Monday morning to badger her again. "As a matter of fact," Astrid said, "I haven't a thing to do all day."

Nicholas sighed so gently that even his mother did not notice. He sank against the stiff frame of the chair, thinking of the blue-and-white-striped overstuffed love seats Paige had found at a fire sale for the living room in their old apartment. She had sweet-talked a drummer she met on the street outside the diner into helping her bring the couches home in his van, and then she spent three weeks asking Nicholas whether they were too much sofa for such a little room. Look at those elephant legs, Look at those elephant legs, she had said. she had said. Aren't they all wrong? Aren't they all wrong? "I need your help," Nicholas said softly. "I need your help," Nicholas said softly.

Whatever hesitation Astrid might still have had, whatever warnings she had been trying to heed to go slowly, all of that shattered when Nicholas spoke. She stood and walked over to her son. Silently, she folded him in her arms and rocked back and forth. She had not held Nicholas like this since he was thirteen and had taken her aside after she'd embraced him at a school soccer match and told her he was too old for that.

Nicholas did not try to push her away. His arms came up to press against the small of her back; and he closed his eyes and wondered where his mother, brought up with afternoon tea parties and Junior League b.a.l.l.s, had got all her courage.

Astrid brought iced coffee and a cinnamon ring and let Nicholas eat, while she kept Max from chewing on the fireplace tools and loose electrical cords. "I don't understand," she said, smiling down at Max. "How could she have left?"

Nicholas tried to remember a time when he would have defended Paige to the end, railed at his mother and his father, and sacrificed his right arm before letting them criticize his wife. He opened his mouth to make an excuse, but he could not think of one. "I don't know," he said. "I really don't know." He ran his finger around the edge of his gla.s.s. "I can't even tell you what the h.e.l.l she was thinking, thinking, to be honest. It's like she had this whole different agenda that she never bothered to mention to me. She could have said something. I would have-" Nicholas broke off. He would have what? Helped her? Listened? to be honest. It's like she had this whole different agenda that she never bothered to mention to me. She could have said something. I would have-" Nicholas broke off. He would have what? Helped her? Listened?

"You wouldn't have done a d.a.m.n thing, Nicholas," Astrid said pointedly. "You're just like your father. When I fly off for a shoot, it takes him three days to notice I'm gone."

"This isn't my fault," Nicholas shouted. "Don't blame this on me."

Astrid shrugged. "You're putting words in my mouth. I was only wondering what reasons Paige gave you, if she's planning on coming back, that sort of thing."

"I don't give a d.a.m.n," Nicholas muttered.

"Of course you do," Astrid said. She picked up Max and bounced him on her lap. "You're just like your father."

Nicholas put his gla.s.s down on the table, taking a small amount of satisfaction in the fact that there was no coaster and that it would leave a ring. "But you you aren't like Paige," he said, aren't like Paige," he said, "You "You would never have left your own child." would never have left your own child."

Astrid pulled Max closer, and he began to suck on her pearls. "That doesn't mean I didn't think about it," she said.

Nicholas stood abruptly and took the baby out of his mother's arms. Nothing was going the way he had planned. His mother was supposed to have been so overwhelmed with grat.i.tude to see Max that she wouldn't ask these questions, that she would beg to watch her grandson for the day, the week, whatever. His mother was not not supposed to make him think about Paige, was supposed to make him think about Paige, was not not supposed to take her G.o.dd.a.m.ned side. "Forget it," he said. "We're going. I thought you'd be able to understand what I was getting at." supposed to take her G.o.dd.a.m.ned side. "Forget it," he said. "We're going. I thought you'd be able to understand what I was getting at."

Astrid blocked his exit. "Don't be an idiot, Nicholas," she said. "I know exactly what you're getting at. I didn't say Paige was right for leaving, I just said I'd considered it a couple of times myself. Now give me that gorgeous child and go fix hearts."

Nicholas blinked. His mother pulled the baby out of his arms. He hadn't told her his plan; hadn't even mentioned that he needed her to baby-sit while he worked. Astrid, who had started to carry Max back to the parlor, turned around and stared at Nicholas. "I'm your mother," mother," she said by way of explanation. "I know how you think." she said by way of explanation. "I know how you think."

Nicholas closed the top of the baby grand piano and spread out the plastic foam pad from the diaper bag, forming a makes.h.i.+ft changing table. "I use A&D on him," he said to Astrid. "It keeps him from getting diaper rash, and powder dries out his skin." He explained when Max ate, how much he took, the best way to keep him from spitting strained green beans back in your face. He brought in Max's car seat/carrier and said it would work for a nap. He said that if Max decided to sleep at all, it would be between two and four.

He left Astrid his beeper number in case of emergency. She and Max walked him to the door. "Don't worry," she said, touching Nicholas's sleeve. "I've done it before. And I did a d.a.m.n good job." She reached up to kiss Nicholas on the cheek, remembering the change in course her life had taken on the day her once-little son was able to look her in the eye.

Nicholas set off down the slate path, unenc.u.mbered. He did not turn back to wave to Max or even bother to kiss him goodbye. He rolled the muscles bunched in his shoulders from the cutting straps of the diaper bag and the uneven weight of an eighteen-pound baby. He was amazed at how much he knew about Max, how much he'd been able to tell his mother about the routine. He began to whistle and was so proud of his accomplishments that he didn't even think about Robert Prescott until he reached his car.

With his hand still touching the warm metal of the door handle, he turned back to face his mother. She and Max were standing in the doorway, dwarfed by the enormity of the house behind them. Meeting his mother had been fairly simple after all the tentative phone conversations. But in all that time, Robert Prescott hadn't even been mentioned. Nicholas had no idea if his father would be thrilled to see the child who would carry on his name, or if he would disown Max as effortlessly as he had disowned his son. He had no idea what his father was like anymore. "What will Dad say?" he whispered.

His mother could not possibly have heard him at such a distance, but she seemed to understand his question. "I imagine," she said, stepping into a neat square of the brilliant afternoon, "he'll say, 'h.e.l.lo, Max.' "

Nothing could have surprised Nicholas more than the scene that met him when he arrived at his parents' close to midnight to pick up the baby. Filling the parlor was a tumbled clutter of educational toys, a Porta-Crib, a playpen, a baby swing. A big green quilt with a dinosaur head sewn on to its corner was spread across the floor. A panda mobile replaced the trailing spider plant that had hung over the piano. Stacked on the piano, beside the foam pad Nicholas had placed there earlier for diapering, was the largest vat of A&D ointment Nicholas had ever seen and a carton of Pampers. And in the middle of it all was Nicholas's father-taller than he remembered and thinner too, with a shock of now-white hair-asleep on the spindled sofa, with Max curled over his chest.

Nicholas drew in his breath. He had antic.i.p.ated many things about this first meeting with his father: awkward silence, condescension, maybe even a shred of hate. But Nicholas had not expected his father to be so old.

He stepped back quietly to close the door to the room, but his foot tripped over a jangling terry-cloth ball. His father's eyes opened, bright and alert. Robert Prescott did not sit up, knowing that would wake Max. But he did not tear his gaze away from his son.

Nicholas waited for his father to say something-anything. He remembered the first time he'd lost a crew race in high school, after a three-year winning streak. There had been seven other rowers in the boat, and Nicholas had known that the six-man wasn't pulling hard during the power tens. In no way was it Nicholas's fault the race was lost. But he had taken it that way, and when he met his father after the race, he had hung his head, waiting for the accusations. His father had said nothing, nothing at all, and Nicholas had always believed that stung more than any words his father could have uttered. "Dad," Nicholas said quietly, "how's he been?"

Not How have How have you you been, been, not not What have I missed in your life. What have I missed in your life. Nicholas figured that if he kept the conversation limited to Max, the ache that rounded the bottom of his stomach might go away. He clenched his fists behind his back and looked into his father's eyes. There were shadows there that Nicholas could not read, but there were also promises. Nicholas figured that if he kept the conversation limited to Max, the ache that rounded the bottom of his stomach might go away. He clenched his fists behind his back and looked into his father's eyes. There were shadows there that Nicholas could not read, but there were also promises. Too much has happened; I will not bring it up, Too much has happened; I will not bring it up, Robert seemed to say. Robert seemed to say. And neither will you. And neither will you.

"You've done well," Robert said, stroking Max's hunched shoulders. Nicholas raised his eyebrows. "We never stopped asking questions about you, Nicholas," he said gently. "We always kept tabs."

Nicholas remembered Fogerty's tight-lipped grin when he saw him enter the hospital today at noon without Max. "Oh," he had bellowed past Nicholas in the hall. "Si sic omnia!" "Si sic omnia!" Then he had come up to Nicholas, paternally gripping his shoulders with a strong arm. "I take it, Dr. Prescott," Fogerty said, "that you are once again of sound mind in sound body and that we won't have a repeat of that ridiculous debacle." Fogerty lowered his voice. "You are my protege, Nicholas," he said. "Don't f.u.c.k up a sure thing." Then he had come up to Nicholas, paternally gripping his shoulders with a strong arm. "I take it, Dr. Prescott," Fogerty said, "that you are once again of sound mind in sound body and that we won't have a repeat of that ridiculous debacle." Fogerty lowered his voice. "You are my protege, Nicholas," he said. "Don't f.u.c.k up a sure thing."

Nicholas's father was well known in the Boston medical community; it wouldn't have been hard for him to track his son's quick rise in the cardiothoracic hierarchy at Ma.s.s General. Still, it unnerved Nicholas. He wondered what his father had asked. He wondered whom he had approached and who had been willing to answer.

Nicholas cleared his throat. "Was he good?" he repeated, gesturing toward Max.

"Ask your mother," Robert said. "She's in her darkroom."

Nicholas walked down the corridor to the Blue Room, where the circular black-curtained entrance to his mother's workplace was. He had just parted the first curtain when he felt the warm brush of his mother's fingers. He jumped back.

"Oh, Nicholas," Astrid said, pressing her hand to her throat. "I think I scared you as much as you scared me." She was carrying two fresh prints, still smelling faintly of fixer. She waved them, one in each hand, helping them to dry.

"I saw Dad," Nicholas said.

"And?"

Nicholas smiled. "And nothing."

Astrid laid the two prints on a nearby table. "Yes," she said, scanning them with her critical eyes, "it's amazing how several years can soften even the hardest heads." She stood up and groaned, kneading her hands into the small of her back. "Well, my grandson was as good as gold," she said. "You noticed we went shopping? A wonderful baby store in Newton, and then I had had to go to F. A. O. Schwarz. Max didn't cry the whole time. Really rose to the occasion." to go to F. A. O. Schwarz. Max didn't cry the whole time. Really rose to the occasion."

Nicholas tried to imagine his son sitting quietly in his infant seat, watching the rush of colors fly past a car window, and stretching his arms toward the panorama of toys at F. A. O. Schwarz. But in his experience, Max had never gone more than an hour without pitching a fit. "Maybe it's me," he murmured.

"Did you say something?" Astrid said.

Nicholas pinched the bridge of his nose. It had not been an easy day: a quadruple bypa.s.s, and then he got word that his last heart transplant patient had rejected the organ. He had a valve replacement at seven the next morning; if he was lucky-if Max was cooperative -he could get about five hours of sleep.

"I took some pictures of Max," Nicholas heard his mother say. "Quite a good little subject-he likes the flash of the light meter. Here." She thrust one of the photographs toward Nicholas.

He had never understood how his mother did it. He was too impatient for photography. He relied on an autofocus camera, and he could usually get a person's image without cutting off the top of the head. But his mother not only recorded a moment; she also stole its soul. Max's downy blue-black hair capped his head. One hand was held out in front of him, reaching toward the camera, and the other was draped across the gray plastic edge of his infant seat, devil-may-care. But it was his eyes that really made the picture. They were wide and amused, as if someone had just told him he was going to have to stay in this world for a good deal longer.

Nicholas was impressed. He had seen his mother capture the pain of grieving military widows, the horror of maimed Romanian orphans, even the rapture and calm piety of the Pope. But this time she had done something truly amazing: she had taken Nicholas's own son and trapped him in time, so that at least here he would never grow up. "You're so d.a.m.n good," he murmured.

Astrid laughed. "That's what they tell me."

Something twitched at the back of Nicholas's mind. He had been just as impressed by Paige, by her haunted drawings and the secrets that spilled out of her like prophecies she couldn't seem to control. Paige, like his mother, did not just capture an image. Paige drew directly from the heart.

"What is it?" Astrid asked. "You're a million miles away."

"It's nothing," Nicholas said. What had happened to Paige's art stuff? He hadn't been able to move three feet in the apartment without tripping over a spray fixative or crus.h.i.+ng a box of charcoal. But Paige hadn't really drawn in years. He had once complained because she'd hung her sketches over the curtain rod of the shower while the fixative was drying. He remembered watching her from behind, when she didn't know he was there, marveling as her fingers flew over the smooth vanilla paper to coax images out of hiding.

Astrid held out the other photo she had carried from her darkroom. "Thought you might like this too," she said. She pa.s.sed him a candid portrait, and for a moment the dim light in the room caught only the white glare of the damp photographic paper. Then he realized he was staring at Paige.

She was sitting at a table, looking at something off to the left. It was a black-and-white, but Nicholas could clearly see the color of her hair. When he envisioned Cambridge, he pictured it as the shade of Paige's hair-deep and rich, the red of generations.

"How did you get this?" he whispered. Paige's hair was shorter here, just to her shoulders, not long as it had been when she'd met Astrid years before. This was a recent photo.

"I saw her once in Boston, and I couldn't resist. I took it with a telephoto lens. She never saw me." Astrid moved closer to Nicholas and touched her finger to the top of the photograph. "Max has her eyes."

Nicholas did not know why he hadn't noticed it before; it was so obvious. It wasn't the shape or the color as much as the demeanor. Like Max, Paige was looking at something Nicholas could not see. Like Max, her expression was one of blameless surprise, as if she had just been told she was going to have to stay for a while longer.

"Yes," Astrid said, pulling the photo of Max to sit beside the one of Paige. "Definitely his mother's eyes."

Nicholas tucked the picture of Paige behind the one of Max. "Let's hope," he said, "that's all he inherits from her."

chapter 27

Paige Fly By Night Farm was not really a farm at all. In fact, it was part of a larger complex called Pegasus Stables, and that was the only sign visible from the road. But when I had parked the car and wandered past the lazy stream and the dancing paddocked horses, I noticed the small carved maple plaque: FLY BY NIGHT. LILY RUBENS, PROPRIETOR.

That morning, the woman who owned the tack shop with my mother's horses running across the ceiling had given me directions. My mother had painted the mural eight years before, when she first moved to Farleyville. She had traded her commission for a used saddle and something called draw reins. Lily was well known on the circuit, according to this woman. In fact, when people came for lesson referrals, she always pointed them toward Fly By Night.

I walked into the cool, dark stable, kicking at a tuft of straw with my feet. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I found myself just inches away from a horse, its fermenting breath hot on my ear. I put my hand against the wire mesh gate that separated the horse's stall from the main aisle of the stable. The horse whinnied, and its jaundiced teeth curved around the chain links, trying to bite at the flesh of my palm. As its lips brushed my skin, they left behind a green slime that smelled faintly of hay.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice said, and I whipped around. "But then again, I am you, and you are me, and that's the beauty." A kid no older than eighteen stood propped on a strange skinny rake beside a wheelbarrow piled with manure. He wore a T-s.h.i.+rt colored by a fading portrait of Nietzsche, and his dirty-blond hair was pulled away from his face. "Andy's a biter," he said, coming forward to stroke the horse's nose.

He disappeared as quickly as he'd come, behind the cage door of a different stall. The barn was about half filled with horses, each of them different from the others. There was a chestnut, with hair the same shade as mine; a bay, with a coa.r.s.e black mane. There was a white Thoroughbred, straight out of a fairy tale; and one tremendous, majestic horse hovering in the shadows, the color of a pitch-dark night.

I walked the length of the aisle, pa.s.sing the boy, who was heaving wet tufts of hay into the wheelbarrow. It was clear that my mother was not in this barn, and I sighed in relief. I turned to a small table at the end of the aisle. It held a wooden chest and-of all things-an Astrid Prescott photo desk calendar, opened to the current date. I ran my fingers over the misty image of Mount Kilimanjaro, wondering why my mother couldn't have escaped the way Nicholas's mother had-months at a time, but always with a promise to return. Sighing, I turned to the facing page. Neatly lettered beside the printed hours were female names: Brittany, Jane, Anastasia, Merleen. The handwriting was my mother's.

I remembered it from before, although when she left I hadn't been able to read it. I remembered the way her letters all sloped to the left, in spite of the fact that every other written word I'd ever seen leaned a little to the right. After all, that's what the sisters taught me later in penmans.h.i.+p cla.s.s. Even when she wrote, my mother bucked the system.

I did not know what I planned to do once I had found her. I did not have a speech ready. On the one hand, I wanted to stare her down and yell at her, one minute for every year since she'd left me. On the other hand, I wanted to touch her, to feel that the substance of her skin was as warm as mine. I wanted to believe I had grown up like her, in spite of the circ.u.mstances. I wanted this so badly it hurt, but I knew better than to hedge my bets. After all, I was not sure if, when it came down to it, I would throw myself into her arms or spit at her feet.

I became aware of the blood in my body, which surged down my arms, down my sides. When I remembered well enough how to move again, I pushed through the fear that hung like a net and walked to the boy in the stall. "Excuse me," I said. "I don't mean to bother you."

He did not look up at me or break his rhythmic shoveling. "What are you," he said, "but a speed b.u.mp on the autobahn of life?"

I did not know if he expected an answer, so I took a step into the stall, feeling the damp, soft hay give way under my heel. "I'm looking for Lily Rubens," I said, trying out her name on my tongue. "I've come to see Lily Rubens."

The boy shrugged. "She's around," he said. "Check the ring."

The ring. The ring. I nodded to the boy's back and walked down the stable's aisle again, staring at the telephone tucked against the wall and waiting a moment for magic to happen. What did he mean by the ring?

I slipped out of the dark barn and stepped into such bright sun that for a moment the world was only white. Then I saw the brook, running on this side of the stable as well, and a big metal hangar that reminded me of a roller-skating rink in Skokie that had been turned into a flea market. Right beside the barn I had been in was another barn, and down the bend of a little hill was a third barn, built into the slope of a terraced field. There were two gravel paths, which split to either side of the hangar. One seemed to go across a field where a big horse was bucking, and the other sidelined the little brook. I took a deep breath and set off down that one.

The path forked again at a st.u.r.dy wooden fence. It either continued up a heathered hill or let you through a gate into a big oval littered with fences and bars and redwood barricades. Riding along the edge of the oval, toward me, was a woman on a horse. I could not see her face, but she was tall and thin and seemed to know what she was doing. The horse shook his head from left to right. "Jeez, Eddy," she said as she came by me, "take it easy. Everyone's got to deal with the bugs. You think you've got a monopoly on them?"

I listened carefully, trying to remember my mother's voice, but I honestly wouldn't have been able to pick it out from others. This could be my mother-if I could just see her face. But she had rounded the curve and was now riding away from me. The only other person there was a man, kind of short, wearing jeans and a big polo s.h.i.+rt and a tweed newsboy's cap. I could not hear his voice, but he was calling out to the woman riding.

The woman kicked the horse, and he began flying around the edge of the track. He jumped a thick blue wall, and then another high rail, and suddenly he was coming a hundred miles an hour directly toward me. I could hear the heavy breath of the rider and see the flared nostrils of the horse as he thundered closer. He wasn't going to stop. He was going to take the gate next, and I was right in his way.

I crouched down and covered my head with my arms just as the horse came to a dead halt inches in front of me. His heavy head was above the gate, his nose grazed my fingers. In the background, the man called something out. "Yes," the woman said, looking down at me. "It was the best line yet, but I think we've scared someone half to death." She smiled at me, and I could see that her hair was blond and her eyes were brown and that her shoulders were much wider than any I'd ever seen on a woman; that she wasn't my mother at all.

I mumbled an apology and headed up the other fork of the path. It opened into a vast field that was sprinkled with b.u.t.tercups and wild daisies, with gra.s.s growing higher than my thighs. Before I saw them, I heard the rhythm of their hooves-da da dum, da da dum-two horses tearing across the field as if they were being chased by the devil. They jumped a brook and ran up to the fenced edge of the pasture. They lowered their heads to graze, their tails switching back and forth in metronome time like the long swinging hair of exotic dancers.

By the time I returned, there was no one riding in the little oval. I headed back toward the barn where that boy had been, figuring I could ask for better directions. As I walked up the hill, I saw the man who had been calling out the things I couldn't hear, holding tight to a thick leather strap that was clipped to Eddy's halter. He held a dripping sponge in his other hand, but as soon as he touched it to Eddy's flank, the horse twisted away violently. I kept my distance, half hidden. The man dripped the sponge over the horse's back, and again it bucked to the left. The man dropped the sponge and lightly whipped the horse twice across the neck with the strap, then tucked it over the nose and through the muzzle of the halter. The horse quieted and bowed his head, and the man began to talk softly, running his hand over the horse's spine.

I decided to ask this man about my mother, so I stepped forward. He put down the sponge and lifted his head, but his back was to me. "Excuse me," I said quietly, and he spun around so fast that his hat came off and a thick tumble of dark-red hair fell down.

This was not a man. This was my mother.

She was taller than I was, and leaner, and her skin was the color of honey. But her hair was like mine, and her eyes were like mine, and there was no mistaking it. "Oh, my G.o.d," she said.

The horse snorted over her shoulder, and water dripped off his mane to form a puddle on my mother's s.h.i.+rt. She did not seem to notice. "I'm Paige," I said, stiffly, and impulsively I held out my hand to shake hers. "I'm, um, your daughter."

My mother began to smile, and it melted her from her head to her feet, making her able to move again. "I know who you are," she said. She did not take my hand. She shook her head and knotted her fingers around the leather lead. She fidgeted, scuffing the toes of her boots in the loose gravel. "Let me get rid of Eddy," she said. She pulled on the lead and then stopped to turn back to me. Her eyes were huge and pale, the eyes of a beggar. "Don't go anywhere," she said.

I followed a few steps behind the horse she led. She disappeared into a stall-the one the boy had been cleaning-and slid the halter off the horse's head. She stepped out, latched the mesh gate, and hung the leather contraption on a nail pegged to the right of the stall. "Paige," she said, breathing my name as if it were forbidden to speak aloud.

She reached toward me and touched her palm to my shoulder. I could not help it; I s.h.i.+vered and stepped back. "I'm sorry," I said, looking away.

At that moment the boy who had been working the stable earlier appeared out of nowhere. "I'm done for the day, Lily," he said, although it was only noon.

My mother dragged her gaze away from me. "Josh," she said, "this is Paige. My daughter, Paige."

Josh nodded at me. "Cool," he said. He turned to my mother. "Aurora and Andy need to be brought in. I'll see you tomorrow. Although," he said, "tomorrow is just the flip side of today."

As he walked down the long aisle of the barn, my mother turned to me. "He's a little bit Zen," she said, "but he's all I can afford right now."

Without another word, my mother walked out of the barn and headed down the gravel path toward the field that ran to the left. When she reached the field she propped her elbows against the wooden gate and watched the horse at the far end. Even at this distance he was one of the largest horses I had ever seen. He was sleek and sable-colored, with the exception of his two front legs. They turned pure white halfway down, as if he'd only just stepped into heaven. "How did you find me?" my mother asked nonchalantly.

"You didn't make it easy," I snapped. I was fuming. My mother didn't seem the tiniest bit put out by my appearance. I was more rattled than she was. Sure, there had been that shock of surprise, but now she was acting cool and relaxed, as if she'd known I was coming. This was not the way I'd thought she would be. I realized that at the very least, I'd expected her to be curious. At the very most, I had wanted her to care.

I turned to her, waiting for a splinter of real recognition to hit me-some gesture or smile or even the lilt of her voice. But this was an entirely different woman from the one who had left me when I was five years old. I had spent the past few days-the past twenty years-conjuring up comparisons between us, making a.s.sumptions. I knew we would bear a resemblance to each other. I knew that we had both been driven away from out homes, although I didn't know why she had left. I imagined that I would meet her and she would reach out her arms for me and there I would be, in the place where I always knew I would fit best. I imagined that we would sound the same, walk the same, think the same. But this was her world, and I knew nothing about it. This was her life, and it had gone smoothly without me around. The truth was that I barely knew her when she left and that I did not know her now. "A friend of mine introduced me to a private eye, and he tracked you to Bridles & Bits," I said, "and then I saw the ceiling."

"The ceiling," my mother whispered, her thoughts far away. "Oh-the ceiling. ceiling. Like Chicago." Like Chicago."

"Just like," I said, my words clipped and bitten.

My mother turned abruptly. "I didn't mean to leave you, Paige," she said. "I only meant to leave." leave."

I shrugged as if I did not care at all. But something sparked inside me. I thought of Max's round little face and flat chin, and of Nicholas, pulling me against the hot line of his chest. I had not meant to leave them; I had only meant to leave. I wasn't running away from them; I was only running away. I peered at my mother from the corner of my eye. Maybe this went deeper than appearances. Maybe, after all, we had more in common than it seemed.

As if she knew I needed proof, my mother whistled to the horse at the far end of the field. He exploded toward us, running at a breakneck pace, but slowed as he approached my mother. Gentling, he circled until he was calm. He nodded and tossed his head, and then he leaned down and nuzzled my mother's hand.

He was easily the most beautiful animal I had ever seen. I wanted to draw him, but I knew I'd never be able to capture his energy on paper. "This is my best show horse," my mother said. "Worth over seventy-five thousand dollars. This whole thing"-here she swept her hand across the vast farm-"my lessons and my training and everything else I do, is just to support him, so I can show him on weekends. We show in the elite shows, and we've even come in first in our division."

I was impressed, but I did not understand why she was telling me this now when there were so many other things that needed to be said. "I don't own this land," my mother continued, slipping the halter over the horse's head. "I rent from Pegasus Stables. I rent my house and my trailer and my truck from them. This horse is just about the only thing I can really say is mine. Do you understand?"

"Not really," I said impatiently, stepping back as the horse lifted his head to dodge a fly.