The Grave Maurice

distance from the main buildings. It’s a good half mile from the farm proper. Granddad decided not to use this part a few years back. I’d nearly forgotten it was here. If I believed in luck or deliverance, I’d say luck led me to it. But I don’t believe in luck. Not the good kind.”

Vernon suppressed a smile. “What do you believe in?” His BMW smoothed over the deep ruts in this unused road.

She seemed to be giving this serious thought. “Not much,” she said.

They came to a clearing, what looked to him like an exercise ring, now harboring dead leaves and hedges. From the barn on the other side of the old ring came muffled sounds that he thought must be Nell’s horses. Standing in the main doorway was a chestnut foal. It turned back into the shadowy dark.

Vernon smiled. He had always found foals irresistible-well, at least when he could get his head out of market shares and start-ups long enough to look. “How old’s the foal?”

“Three months. His name’s Charlie. He’s Daisy’s foal. I had to get him out before they came again with the truck that takes them to be sold or slaughtered. Out of the country. He’s a male, see. Of no use at all to them. Come on; they must be hungry.”

Vernon was carrying two bags of seed and a bale of meadow hay, and Nell was carrying a sack of oats and another of bran. “It was really nice of you to stop so we could buy supplies. Mostly, I’ve been taking stuff from the farm. I expect that’s stealing, but I don’t think Granddad would mind.”

“Not if he knew you were the one doing it, that’s certain.”

They were trudging across the rain-drenched land. “You always were nice. You have no idea how much Granddad likes you. More, I sometimes think, than he likes Dad. Certainly more than Uncle Danny, whom he thought a great jockey but not a nice person. It really hurt him to think that about his own son.”

“I doubt he’s as fond of me as you think. You should hear him talk to me.”

“You don’t get it. You’re the only one he does talk to that way. I remember him saying once, ‘You can always depend on that nut Vern.’ ”

“Oh, thanks.” Vernon laughed.

They had reached the barn and gone in. Nell moved down the row of stalls, forking the hay into racks. She stumbled and nearly went down and Vernon took the pitchfork from her. “You’re too tired to do this. You looked like you could have used a week’s sleep when you showed up. Last night certainly didn’t make up for it.”

Nell thought: But it did. It made up for a dozen things; it made up for being by myself for two years; it made up for being the only company these horses ever had; it made up for being in limbo for so long; it made up for things you’ll never know and, because of that, never understand. She said none of this; what she said was, “Last night didn’t tire me out; it made me feel better.”

“Glad of it,” he said, pouring oats into one of the buckets. The horse, Daisy, didn’t seem to mind his presence. Beyond a few shakes of her mane and a bit of stamping she seemed perfectly relaxed.

Nell stood back, rocking a little on her heels, enjoying watching him fork hay into the racks, getting more on the floor than in the rack, trying to keep a distance between himself and the mild-mannered mares.

When it was done, Vernon said, “Backbreaking. My Lord, Nellie, I hope this isn’t what you were doing as Lady Hobbs’s indentured servant.” He waved her toward him. “Come on, let’s eat. I’m starved.”

He got the hamper out of the back, and the horse blanket, which he shook out on the ground. He set the hamper down and took out the provisions, one provision being a bottle of a very good burgundy. Bobby was a wine expert, not because he drank it, which he hardly ever did, but because he traded in it. Bobby was an authority on anything he traded in. So was Daphne.

“I can’t believe you went to all this trouble,” said Nell, unwrapping a chunk of Cheshire cheese and a slab of cheddar.

Vernon was uncorking the wine. “Me? No, it was Bobby who went to the trouble.”

“Well, it wasn’t Bobby who thought of it, and it’s so nice. A picnic in January.”

He drew the cork from the bottle, saying, “You deserve a lot more than a picnic in January.”

Unbidden, the thought flew into her mind. No, I don’t. She had not expunged the sight of that musty attic room from her thoughts. No matter how much it receded, as if it were an image in a rearview mirror, it still caught up with her whenever her guard was down-hot, sweaty, implacably vile. She had been little more than contraband in that house. And following fast on the heels of the image was the question: Had it happened at all? It was like looking through fog.

When she looked up, she saw Vernon watching her. His clear gray eyes were sharp, like diamonds.

“Nellie, what else? There’s something else?”

She lowered her eyes to the cheese she still held and shrugged. “No?”

He laughed. “You tell me.”

She felt herself slip away and was afraid, when that happened, as it had many times before, that she was losing her mind. Vernon wouldn’t press her for an answer, she knew. She felt that tightness in her throat that was the advent of tears. Don’t cry, she commanded herself. If you do, it will all tumble out. If that happens, you cannot go back; he will cut you loose. Absurd! She knew it was absurd.

When she looked up, she saw Vernon still watching her. He did not look away. Slowly, he chewed a sandwich.

Blushing, she said this much: “I just wonder sometimes if I’m crazy, if I’m round the bend, as they say.”

“Why?” He poured wine and handed her a plastic glass.

Nell looked off into blankness, saw trees, hedges, barn as items arranged on a picture postcard. “I feel sometimes as if things weren’t real. As if I were seeing pictures of things, as if the scene weren’t really there.”

Vernon drank some wine, said, “Maybe it’s me.” “You?” She was astonished he’d think this. “Vernon, you’re the only real thing here!” Grabbing back that sentiment, she added, “Along with the horses, of course.”

He laughed. “That’s a compliment, for sure, to be as real to you as the horses.”

Nell relaxed. The danger had been circumvented, and they ate and drank in one of those blessed silences, broken only by the sounds coming from the barn.

He said, “Listen, I’ll bargain with you. I’ll take on Wyeth Labs if you’ll tell your dad and Arthur you’re back.”

“But-”

Vernon shook his head, hard. “No. No ‘buts,’ Nellie. You’ll do it, and the sooner, the better. Like today.”

Adrenaline sluiced through her veins. She said nothing.

“You shouldn’t mind now because we’re going to get those mares away from Hobbs’s place.” But that, Vernon thought, wasn’t the all of it; the horses were only part of it. She was