RITA MACE WALSTON

I lowered the gun, fairly certain the shot had been heard by the mourners gathered in my home. The stable was large, but not that distant from the house, and the three sets of tall French doors leading from the dining and living rooms onto the bluestone terrace were open to the gentle afternoon breeze.

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I stepped over the dead horse and out of the stall, the hem of my black skirt skimming the once-strong neck. I felt the weight of the revolver in my hand, imagined I could still feel the rever- beration of the gunshot running up my arm. August had been so proud of that damn horse—all seventeen hands and fourteen hundred pounds of him. Proud that no one could handle him the way he could. That horse had nearly taken a chunk out of my shoulder two years before. Well, this time I’d handled him just fine.

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I heard the other horses, agitated in their stalls, though everything sounded muffled since I’d pulled the trigger. The smell of cordite was familiar to them, the explosion of sound that always preceded it, the scent of blood that frequently followed. These were horses ridden to the hunt, trained to stand placid as August and others brought down prey, bearing the carcasses back from the field. It wasn’t the sound and smell of death that was causing my mare and the others to whinny and kick against the heavy, scarred wood of the stalls, shifting restlessly over straw that would have been changed just earlier that morning. It was because the sound of the gun, the smell of the cordite that mingled in the air with the tang of fresh blood, was here, instead of out in the fields and woods and up the slopes of the ridge where it belonged. I didn’t comfort them, didn’t pause to stroke the deep brown velvet nose of my mare. I just didn’t have it in me to comfort anything or anyone at the moment. Besides, I had spatters of blood on my hands that might further spook the horses and I wanted to put the gun away. There were still five bullets in it, and shooting the horse that had been an accessory to my husband’s death hadn’t given me the release I’d expected. I still felt the storm in my chest, held back only by the pain I felt in my sternum, the feeling of bruised bone. But there was no visible mark, nothing to be detected with stethoscope or other medical instrument. And so the doctor had told me, in what I’m sure he thought was a calming voice, that the sternum pain was all in my head. Just recalling his patronizing tone reinforced it really was best I put the gun away. Our stable manager and horse trainer, Grant Brodigan, was in the house with the rest of the mourners. The horses would calm when he came to investigate the sound of the gunshot.

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I took the gun to the tack room, locked it in the metal box that held petty cash, and pocketed the key. I’d clean it later; take it back to my bedroom after everyone was gone. If I walked into the house with it now, likely that fool on the other horse—what was his name? Pritchard? Packard?—would break the furniture or himself in his hurry to exit the premises. The man had been so damn apologetic when he’d approached me after the funeral to say how sorry, how very very sorry he was about August’s accident. He’d stressed the word accident. Repeated it several times as he’d noted how awful it was when these things happened, as they did, he said, from time to time. I had smiled at him—at least I think it was a smile; it seemed to startle him—and focused on keeping my eyes dry and steady. Idiot. It wasn’t his fault my husband was dead. Some might see it that way, but I knew better.

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I had seen August fall.

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It was during the Owners Race of the first point-to-point of the season, just after the water obstacle on the third turn. I’d had the binoculars up to my eyes, had been watching his black and gold riding helmet every time it had reappeared from behind a stand of trees or crested yet another of the rolling hills. I hadn’t been watching his hands. It’s unlikely I would have been able to see them anyway, amidst all the riders. So I couldn’t say how or why he fell. I just saw his helmet suddenly disappear, his horse continuing without him. And then I saw him on the ground. His body jerked and spasmed when another horse, trailing the pack by a couple of lengths, ran over him.

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And in that moment, a flash of light hit my eyes and I felt an unbelievable pressure on my chest. I heard screams around me, and through the light that made everything look gold I saw Grant and a few other men vault the rail to run to where August lay still in the hoof-churned turf. The pressure suddenly lifted, went away, taking the golden light, my breath, and something torn from inside me with it. I realized I was clutching the rail, wooden splinters digging into my hands.

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I felt my knees buckle but I clutched the rail tighter and stayed upright. And I knew.

I’d just felt August’s soul leave.

He’d taken a piece of my own with it.

The doctor said later that August’s neck had broken in the fall; that it was either the fall that killed him or perhaps a massive heart attack that had caused the fall, but definitely not the weight of fourteen hundred pounds of horse traveling down one sleek leg into the hoof that had planted squarely on my husband’s sternum. I had declined an autopsy. Dead was dead, I said, whether it had come from a heart attack, the fall, or being run over by a horse. An autopsy wouldn’t change anything. The coroner agreed. There had been plenty of witnesses to the accident; the Owners Race always drew a crowd at the rails.

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I was told the mortuary had done a fine job, given the circumstances. But don’t let anyone ever tell you different: a body drained of its essence and filled with formaldehyde does not look a person sleeping, I don’t care how expertly the air brushing and makeup are applied. I had taken one look at the mannequin they had said was my husband and told them it would be a closed-casket funeral. Following the graveside service, everyone had come back to Lockeswood. I had stayed with my guests as long as I could stand it before climbing the stairs to fetch the gun from the nightstand on August’s side of the bed and going out to the stable.

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I watched the blood swirl and sluice away as I washed my hands in the stable’s deep work sink. I thought of Lady Macbeth as I washed, but I didn’t fear any sort of haunting residue. Lady Macbeth had plotted murder; had spiraled later into madness. I had executed justice. There was a difference. And I knew she wouldn’t speak to me from the book in the library anyway. That wasn’t how it worked.

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Which usually disappointed me, but in this case . . . Well, let’s just say I didn’t want her opinion on the matter.

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The water was cold and numbed my fingers. I thought of the day of the horse race. I remembered August had looked tired, but had he rubbed his left arm? Surely I’d recall if he had—would have done something other than kiss him before he mounted Rockefeller, the horse now sprawled with a sizable hole in its head. He’d held my face between his hands and kissed me gently, tenderly. Then he’d mounted the horse and looked down at me. What had been that expression on his face?

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Watching him through the binoculars on that third turn, I had been focused on his helmet, hoping to get the right angle to see his face, to see joy on it. The joy of the race, of the competition. Riding—and especially riding in a point-to-point—was his escape from all the other pressures, he’d told me so often.

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So of course he hadn’t purposely let go of the reins.

Of course not.
 

I felt a sudden surge in my gut and leaned over the sink, coughing up bile, since there was nothing in my stomach. The strain made my sternum ache and threaten to breach, which would let loose the storm held at bay in my chest. I gripped the metal sides of the sink and clenched my eyes shut. Now was not the time to fall apart. I could do that later, privately. Grant would walk into the stable any minute. One word of solicitude from him, one look of concern, would be my undoing. I needed to focus.

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I needed the storm to keep me from dissolving into my grief, but I needed it contained.

I wasn’t quite sure yet who or what was to blame for taking August from me, how the blame should be apportioned. The bay Thoroughbred had been a start. Much as it twisted my insides to contemplate, I had to consider that a good part of the blame might rest with August himself. Had it truly been just an accident? Was it hubris, August overconfident that he could handle the horse? His father had died in a riding accident, with whispers afterward that maybe it hadn’t been an accident. Was history repeating itself? If so, was there anyone else involved?

If Aunt Genevieve were here, she’d already have a mental list of half dozen books that might have something to say on the matter. She would expect me to do the same.
 

I turned off the water and, drying my hands on the rough towel that hung next to the sink, glanced across the room at the shelf above the desk where the petty cash box with the gun inside sat center stage. As ever, I could feel the presence of the books I kept there, although with no one in the stable other than me, they were silent. I should have brought some of them to the point-to-point. Maybe one would have spoken a clue that would have let me know not to let August get on the horse. Then again, I was considered eccentric enough without showing up at the rail with a stack of novels. I’d promised August a few years before to limit the “book toting” to events and occasions where it didn’t seem entirely out of place. His and my definition of “out of place” had not always matched.

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I checked again to make sure the petty cash box was locked, and I left the stable. I heard a hoof bang impatiently against the wall as I shut the door behind me. My hearing was almost back to normal.

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Grant met me halfway across the lawn on my way back to the house. He was wearing a dark suit and a relieved expression. It occurred to me that the last time I’d seen him in a suit had been at my wedding; that he was relieved because he hadn’t been sure I’d walk out of the stable.

That thought led me to picture the people currently in my house, the groupings and cliques that form when an event draws together those who are otherwise unlikely to ever associate with one another. I imagined Trey Janus and the handful of August’s colleagues from the investment firm who’d come to pay their respects. At the sound of the gunshot, would they perhaps have paused in their appreciation of the deceased’s finest single malt?

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Which one of them would have been the first to propose odds? Which would look disappointed, a wager lost, when I crossed over the bluestone terrace and came through the French doors, accompanied by the mild April breeze, the dark velvet of my black sleeves masking the horse’s blood?

The two of us stood there a moment, looking at one another.

“I never liked that horse anyway,” said Grant.

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He walked past me, and I knew he would settle things in the stable. I was grateful for his calm. I didn’t say anything; didn’t watch him go. I continued on to the house. Grant was my Jake Barnes. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” I’d heard The Sun Also Rises tell me years ago when August, Grant, and I had sat in the library to toast August’s first Owners Race win. It was one of only two times a book ever spoke to me about Grant, and I remember it startled me and I spilled some of my red wine on the rug. I can still find that spot, even though it blends with the pattern. Even after I reread the book, that line the very last, it took me a while to acclimate myself to what that particular passage of Hemingway’s meant, what it said about Grant’s perception of me.
 

I walked through the middle set of French doors, the storm still in my chest, feeding me. I kept my head high, my eyes dry. I knew I likely looked cold and unsympathetic and I didn’t care. I had my hair pulled back into a tight chignon, and I was wearing little makeup and a Forties-era black dress August and I had found on an antiquing foray. About half of the people in the room had known August before we’d married almost a decade before. He had been nearly twenty years older than me, and more than a few of them thought he’d robbed the cradle, that I’d married him for his money. I felt most of the people in our home were there to honor August, rather than in support of his widow. Maybe that was unfair, a harsh assessment, I chided myself as I looked around the room, picking out familiar, concerned faces. But August had been the engaging, gregarious one. He’d been bigger than life, six foot three with a full head of hair even in his fifties. Blue eyes that had crinkled at the corners when he smiled, which he’d done a lot. He’d had a laugh that often ended on a hiccup, which had startled people who didn’t know him because it wasn’t what they’d expected to come out of such a broad chest. I, by comparison, was considered eccentric. Very pretty, charming in her own way, and a good horsewoman, I’d overhead at one party, “but she is very peculiar when it comes to books . . . ”

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The tone of the room was different than when I’d left, the conversation more of a buzz than a hum. Looks now darted my way, heads leaned toward one another. Trey Janus was across the room, standing, as he had been when I’d left, with the cluster of colleagues from the investment firm. He saw me, and a hint of a smile touched his lips. He raised his glass slightly, a toast to the widow of his childhood friend and business partner. Wager won or lost? I wondered. I felt the storm swell in my chest, and I pulled my shoulders back to give it more space so it wouldn’t force its way out of my body.

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I was glad I’d left the Smith & Wesson locked away in the tack room.