A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

her. It seemed as though the child, the horse, and all the people around them were on a different planet, far, far away from our world’s ruckus. That really enticed me. Then I suddenly realized that the three of us were sitting in a room and that I needed to answer something about which I had no idea. I looked at Ronnie, bewildered, and then at Tal.

“I asked what brought you to us. Why do you want to volunteer here?”

I didn’t know what to say. I felt that the words were stuck in my head, unable to come out. I felt mute, unable to express myself. But I also realized that this was my shot, that I had to overcome myself.

“Dani?” she asked again.

“I love animals. More than anything else.”

“All right. Let’s take a little tour around the stables. You can meet the horses and see what the work entails. Working with horses can be difficult, too, and smelly and dirty. It’s not always as fun and glamorous as one would think.”

But that was precisely what I wanted. She didn’t manage to discourage me at all. I was glad, and deep down I thanked her for not making me sit and talk anymore.

We walked around the stables together, and with every passing moment I felt more and more strongly that this was where I wanted to be. That I wanted to stay near that unique animal radiating such nobility and strength forever, alongside gentleness and warmth.

“This is Billy. He’s a very nice horse.” Ronnie introduced me to a brown horse. He reminded me of a horse I’d met at a ranch I’d once visited with Dad. I wanted to stay and hold him so badly.

“Billy likes to have his neck scratched,” she said and demonstrated, and Billy lowered his neck, his expression becoming tranquil and utterly devoted. I felt jealous of Ronnie. I wanted to be like that, too, to know precisely what each horse wants and needs, to feel comfortable around animals, but also around humans. I knew that I’d get along with the horses here pretty quickly once I learned the ropes, but I was apprehensive about needing to talk to people. It suddenly dawned on me that working at a ranch also entailed a lot of communication with humans, and that filled me with dread. Nevertheless, I petted Billy and smiled at Ronnie.

“I see that being around horses comes naturally to you. There’s still a lot to learn. Horses can also be dangerous and unpredictable. To begin with, you’ll be assigned to someone at the beginning of each day, and they’ll stick with you and show you the ropes. You won’t be on your own.”

That was precisely what I’d dreaded.

We sat down for dinner on Tal’s little balcony, which was right off her living room. A warm, early-summer breeze blew, and a scent of blossoms filled the air. Tal ate pasta with cream sauce that she’d quickly improvised, and I had the dinner set by my dietician: two slices of bread, four tablespoons of cream cheese, half a tomato, half a cucumber, a teaspoon of olive oil, and one egg. I knew that I had to keep to the menu religiously because otherwise I’d fall into a long and intoxicating fast again. An endless addiction.

We ate silently, each with her own thoughts and palate. Tal was playing with her food for a long time, twisting the pasta around her fork. “You’re going to kill me,” she then blurted.

I looked at her, not overly excited, but curious nonetheless.

“I told Dad. I didn’t mean to. It just came out. I thought that it’s important for him to know what’s happening with you. . . “

“What did you tell him?” I interrupted her.

“About what you think Grandpa did to you.”

I didn’t know what to say. My heart started to pound, palpitations of panic. I felt my pulse in my ears and my feet. I felt my knees weakening and the food getting stuck in my throat. I tried to swallow what I had in my mouth, and to digest what I’d just heard. How dare she!

“Listen, Dani, it’s not that bad. Maybe this way he’ll understand you and stop giving you such a hard time and worrying so much.”

I remained silent.

“I think he did it to me, too,” she added.

I looked at her. I felt all the blood rushing down to my legs and getting stuck there. I felt hot inside, but also pale and breathless. And it was getting worse and worse.

“Come on. Say something! Why are you so quiet?”

“Because I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say something. Anything!”

“What can I say? I didn’t want Dad to know. What good can come of it? He’ll just blame himself, or not even believe me. He’ll probably say that I’m making it up. He doesn’t know how to handle reality, so why should he start now? And I definitely didn’t want him to hear it from someone else, and now you’re telling me that you think that you went through it too. . .” I finally took a breath.

“For a while now I’ve known that there’s something inside of me,” Tal said. “Something that I need to let out. Something distressing that is causing these panic attacks. The new therapy has made it clear. The credit is all yours − well, a lot of it is. I realized that Grandpa did it to me, too. Maybe not as much as he did it to you. And he never blamed me for imagining things or forced me to sleep alone in his work room, but he touched me at every opportunity. He’d make sure that Iddo was fast asleep and then he’d come to me and put his hands under my clothes . . .”

She spoke as though she were in a trance, with a kind of gushing speech. I felt that with her every word I was becoming more and more distant, traveling to a whole other world, but at