Carter realized he’d finished his tea. Amy’s was done with the cosmos and was tidying up the beds. Carter thought to tell her to rest a spell, he’d get to the weeds directly, but he knew that she’d refuse; when there was work to do, she did it.
The waiting was hard for her. Not just because of the things she’d have to face, but for what she’d given up. She never said a word about it, that wasn’t Amy’s way, but Carter could tell. He knew what it was like to love a person and lose them in this life.
Because Zero would come calling. That was a fact. Carter knew that man, knew he wouldn’t rest until the whole world was a mirror to his grief. Thing was, Carter couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. Carter had been in that station himself. Weren’t the question the man had wrong, it was his way of asking it.
Carter got up from his chair, put on his hat, and went to where Amy was kneeling in the dirt.
“Have a good nap?” she asked, looking up.
“Was I sleeping?”
She tossed a weed onto the pile. “You should have heard yourself snoring.”
Now, that was news to Carter. Although, come to think of it, he might have rested his eyes there for a second.
Amy rocked back on her heels and held her arms wide over the newly planted beds. “What do you think?”
He stepped back to look. Everything was neat as a pin. “Those cosmos is pretty. Mrs. Wood will like ’em. Miss Haley, too.”
“They’ll need water.”
“I’ll see to it. You should get out of the sun for a bit. Tea’s still there you want it.”
He was hooking the hose to the spigot near the gate when he heard the soft pressure of tires on asphalt and saw the Denali coming down the street. It halted at the corner, then crept forward. Carter could just make out the shape of Mrs. Wood’s face through the darkly tinted windows. The car cruised slowly by the house, barely moving but never stopping either, the way a ghost might do, then accelerated and sped away.
Amy appeared beside him. “I heard the girls playing earlier.” She, too, was looking down the street, though the Denali was long gone. “I brought you this.”
Amy was holding a wand. For a second Carter was unable to connect the idea of it to anything else. But it was for the cosmos, of course.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Carter responded with a shrug. He threaded the wand to the end of the hose and opened the spigot. Amy returned to the patio while Carter dragged the hose to the beds and began to water them down. It hardly mattered, he knew; autumn would be here soon. The leaves would pale and fall, the garden fade, the wind grow raw. Frost would wick the tips of the grass, and the body of Mrs. Wood would rise. All things found their ends. But still Carter went on with it, passing his wand over the flowers, back and forth, back and forth, his heart always believing that even the smallest things could make a difference.
44
All day long the rain poured down. Everyone was antsy, trapped in the house. Caleb could tell that Pim’s patience with her sister was wearing thin, and he felt a row coming. A few days ago, he might have welcomed such a development, if only to get it over with.
Dusk was near when the clouds broke. A radiant sun streamed low across the fields, everything sopping and glinting in the light. Caleb scanned the ground around the house for ants; finding none, he declared that they could go out to enjoy the last of the day. All that remained of the mounds were ovals of depressed mud barely distinguishable from the surrounding earth. Relax, he told himself. You’re letting the isolation get to you, that’s all.
Kate and Pim supervised the children making mud pies while Caleb went to check on the horses. He’d built an open-sided shelter on the far side of the paddock to give them cover from the weather, and that was where he found them now. Handsome seemed none the worse for wear, but Jeb was breathing hard and showing the whites of his eyes. He was also holding his left rear hoof off the ground. The horse let him bend the joint long enough for Caleb to see a small puncture wound in the raised central structure of the horse’s hoof. Something long and sharp was stuck in there. He walked to the shed and returned with a halter, needle-nosed pliers, and a rope. He was fixing Jeb’s halter when he saw Kate coming his way.
“He doesn’t look so happy.”
“Got a pricker in his hoof.”
“Could you use an extra set of hands?”
He was fine on his own, but the woman’s sudden interest in helping out wasn’t anything he was going to say no to. “The ropes should hold him. Just keep a hand on his halter.”
Kate gripped the leather near the horse’s mouth. “He looks sick. Should he be breathing like that?”
Caleb was crouched at the rear of the animal. “You’re the doctor—you tell me.”
He lifted the horse’s foot. With his other hand, he angled the pliers to the wound. There wasn’t much to grab hold of. As the tips made contact, the animal shoved his weight backward, whinnying and tossing his head.
“Keep him still, damn it!”
“I’m trying!”
“He’s a horse, Kate. Show him who’s boss.”