Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

wanted to say. ‘I don’t—’

She paused, her expression softening.

She got up with a sudden movement and poured some of the mug’s contents into an empty glass by his bedside. It was red. ‘Have this.’

Alec nodded and drank, the motion hurting his arm. He’d thought, briefly, that it might be alcohol, the way Cooper was guarding it.

But it was just some kind of fruit cordial. That was all. It was strange. It reminded him of being a child again.

He didn’t know why he expected much else. It was a hospital. She wouldn’t be drinking. She wouldn’t be allowed to bring spirits in here.

Yet he’d hoped, all the same. He needed something.

He did not feel like himself.

‘What happened to us?’ he asked. ‘What—’

She showed him the letter.

You—

You could have saved him.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

She watched him as he read.

These things I did I did and no one knew until I let them. I have held the dancing plague. I blossom, now.

His face was tired more than anything. His eyes drooped, barely recovered from their bruising. His cheek now bore a fresh scar. His hair had only just started to become more than a buzz cut. There was so little of the man she’d so briefly known. She’d made more of him from three weeks of reading than three days of partnership. She had mythologized him, just like she always did.

Here he was.

He didn’t cry.

He didn’t even shake, not much.

He just held the letter loosely, like he couldn’t remember how to read.

After what felt like an age, he began to speak, his head turning slowly, the paper still held in his hands.

‘They think Simon’s dead, don’t they?’

Cooper said nothing.

‘They think the person who wrote this letter took him.’

There was laughter in the hallway. The silhouettes of nurses moved past the translucent glass. There was no indication they had seen or heard any of their conversation. They were just happy.

‘Why are you still in town?’ he asked.

A light was blinking, now, across the chamber.

‘There’s something else,’ Cooper said, and Alec opened his eyes again, not realizing he’d closed them, not realizing he’d almost dozed off. But there would be no true sleep there, not now. It had taken a car crash and anthrax to cure him of his long insomnia, and she – she’d brought it back. ‘This number.’

She passed him another piece of paper.

He took it, sitting up fully this time before looking down.

‘Whose number is this?’ She hesitated. ‘Why was this in your handwriting?’

‘Because I wrote it,’ he said, his voice gaining some of its old strength. ‘You found this in my home.’

She nodded.

‘I asked you a question, Cooper. Why are you still here? You were supposed to – you were going to be here for four days. You—’

‘Tired of me?’ She tried to smile, and he surprised himself by smiling too. He liked the way she smiled. He liked her.

He didn’t say anything back, and her smile faded.

‘Your son phoned that number,’ she said. ‘And the person with that number phoned him.’

‘When?’

‘Over the last year. Hundreds of calls.’

He noticed it then, in Cooper’s face.

It wasn’t just sympathy. Wasn’t just pity.

It was curiosity.

She wanted to see how he responded. Releasing information every so often . . . seeing how he coped . . . seeing what he gave away.

‘Are you telling me everything?’ he asked, and after a moment she nodded, but it was there, wasn’t it?

A delay.

A flicker of an eye.

‘The phone number – I got it from the farmer and his daughter. I brought it back the night we found the horses. I didn’t – I didn’t have time to follow up, it didn’t seem like a priority. I tried a couple of times, but—’

‘Who did the number belong to, Alec?’

‘It was the mother’s number. Grace Cole.’

‘You did nothing wrong.’

She sat, shivering.

‘You did nothing wrong, OK?’

She did not look.

‘This is the beginning, not the end.’

A hand touched her face, touched her tears.

‘It’s not over. It’s—’

‘I love you,’ she said.

‘I love you.’

Day Twenty-Eight

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

(Woman, 36)

He pulled Rebecca out of school a few days after his wife left him. We tried fining him for the absence, but he had her registered as home-schooled and that was that. There was nothing I could really do, I suppose. Nothing that anyone could have done. It was a shame.

(Man, 49)

Most companies around here, they run on account, usually – farm supplies, vets, shearers – you don’t always have to pay immediately, everyone understands how things can be. But I don’t know a single business around here who’d let him buy on credit. Fool me thrice, shame on both of us. That was all it was.

(Woman, 35)

Portugal or somewhere. I think Grace is happier now. It’s hard to know. It must be nice. She posts these lovely photos.

No one had seen Grace Cole for over a year. Phone calls to her number had all reached a full voicemail box, the line most likely disconnected. Attempts to communicate with her on dormant social network accounts also failed.

All that Cooper could find of the woman were the memories of others, recorded in phone-ins and reports about the whole family in those early days of the quarantine. These accounts focused more on the farmer than on his prodigal wife.

It was plain to many, the poison of marriage.

(Man, 28)

I don’t want to talk about this. He’s dead. People are dead. This is—

(Woman, 35)

Was it him? People are saying it was.

(Man, 49)

I know he sold a lot of his flock out there a while back. There’d be way too many animals to a field, just way too many – not sheared, too, June and full fleeced – not enough water, not by a long shot. He was struggling, I think, when Grace went.

(Man, 23)

Is his girl OK? There’s not been any news.

(Woman, 41)

I don’t gossip.

Local officers interviewed Grace’s old employers from those few brief jobs and extra shifts she’d taken since the farm had begun to fail. A launderette out