The Letters (19 page)

“Will, I’m going to be fine.” She said it firmly, a mother to a son. “I can handle this. I won’t have you jeopardizing your future because of me. You stay put at Cornell and I’ll call you with the results. The minute I hear. Until then, no news is . . . no news.”

She heard him exhale loudly. “Either way? You’ll tell me the truth? The absolute truth?”

“I promise.”

“Mom . . . do you think you and Dad can fix this?”
Something in his voice reminded Delia of Will as a little boy, wanting a Band-Aid or a hug to make the hurt go away.

“Maybe. But I want you to know that I will be fine. And so will you. I love you. Now . . . go study.”

Delia didn’t leave the sheriff’s office until he assured her that Charles had been released from questioning. She thought about calling Charles but knew he would be furious, and she couldn’t take any more upset today. She still felt shaky from that call with her son.

Her mind drifted back to Will’s question: Could this marriage be fixed? She was still trying to figure out when it had broken, and why.

Delia thought about a dinner she had at P.F. Chang’s with Charles just last month. It was their favorite restaurant. He had left the table four times to make urgent phone calls and returned edgy, distracted. Delia had seen nothing unusual about it at the time. He was often edgy and distracted, though he had become far more so in the last month, since the malpractice suit.

Charles had a patient, a middle-aged woman, who had come to him with an enormous aneurysm pressing against her brain stem—a very dangerous situation. The brain could be surprisingly forgiving and tended to accommodate aneurysms or tumors as long as they grew slowly. Not in the brain stem with its tight pack of nerves. He explained all that and more to the patient, concerned she didn’t understand how serious the situation was. The aneurysm had to be dealt with before it proved fatal. Charles persisted and she finally agreed to the surgery. The procedure was successful.

Delia remembered that evening—how satisfied Charles had been as he described wrapping coil after coil around the
large aneurysm. She could tell he was pleased with himself. He had saved the patient’s life.

And then the hospital called. Delia had never seen a look of fear on Charles’s face until he hung up from that phone call. He didn’t move for a long moment, and she heard him say, “Oh God, please no.” The patient suffered a massive stroke and was having difficulty speaking.

The patient’s husband ended up slapping a malpractice suit on Charles—his first. The husband insisted that his wife did not understand the risks of the surgery and that she would never have agreed to the procedure if she had known she might have ended up impaired. She didn’t mind dying, he said, but she would mind living with such loss of function. And that was when Charles connected with Robyn Dixon, the attorney who represented him.

When Delia first learned of the lawsuit, she thought it might even be a good thing. Charles was so proud, taking on riskier and riskier surgeries. He thought he could do anything and do it well. He’d had very few failures in his career. He needed to remember that even he had clay feet.

Robyn Dixon convinced him to countersue, based on the fact—and it was a documented fact—that the patient had signed an agreement to have the surgery and therefore was duly informed of the risks. The countersuit claimed that the patient was causing him undue professional harm.

Delia had tried to talk Charles out of a countersuit. The poor woman and her husband had suffered enough.

Charles wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s never easy making decisions in matters concerning life and limb. Every surgery has its risks. She knew that. Bad outcomes are part of the medical profession. I’m only human.”

If Charles really believed that, then why didn’t he just admit he might have minimized any risk in his eagerness to have the patient agree to the surgery? He frightened the patient into thinking the aneurysm might kill her, but did he help her to understand that her life might never be the same, even with the surgery? In this situation, Delia thought his impatience and arrogance had interfered with his judgment.

But wasn’t that the fatal flaw in Charles’s character? He was never wrong, never at fault.

As Delia drove back to Stoney Ridge, she listened to her messages. There were quite a few from Will and Charles, increasingly frantic as they wondered where she was and why she wouldn’t return their calls. She listened to two calm ones from Dr. Zimmerman’s receptionist, asking her to call to schedule her follow-up visit, and then the voice mail said the box was full. She was just about to erase them all but decided to leave it full. She didn’t want to hear anything more today. Not from anybody.

She pulled into the driveway and stayed in the car for a moment. Delia dabbed her eyes with an already damp tissue. Her face crumpled, and she started weeping softly.

Far above her flew the eagle couple, swirling in a courting ritual, skimming the distant trees, disappearing beyond the ridge. Their life was so simple. Why then did human beings not keep theirs simple too? Love, marry, till death do us part?

She was startled by a tap on her car window. Rose was waiting to speak to her. Delia didn’t know what she was going to say. Ask her to leave, perhaps? She wouldn’t blame her at all.

Until that phone message was left by Lois, Delia knew Rose had no idea why a stranger had arrived at Eagle Hill and collapsed like a rag doll. She was far too polite to ask,
but now, it must have all become clear. She wondered what Rose told the family: Delia Stoltz’s husband had left her for another woman. And a happenstance meeting with a stranger at a gas station convinced her to come here for her nervous breakdown.

Well, wasn’t that the truth?

Delia opened the car door and stepped out.

“I need to take something over to the neighbor’s,” Rose said. “Would you like to come with me? Get some fresh air? It’s a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky.”

For the first time in hours, the tight, pained feeling in Delia’s abdomen lessened a little. “I believe I would,” she said with a hint of a smile.

So Rose and Delia took a loaf of extra bread over to Galen and stayed to watch him work his horses. They leaned against the top of the corral fence, transfixed by Galen’s calm manner with very high-strung Thoroughbreds. Delia looked up. A dome of the lightest blue filled with air, with swirls and eddies of wispy clouds. She breathed in deeply, and felt the sweet air fill her with a buoyant optimism. Life, for just this moment, was good.

“I’ve been bringing fresh bread to Galen every other day, to thank him for tolerating the boys’ help with his horses,” Rose whispered. “Mostly, it’s my excuse to spy on the boys and make sure they’re behaving. But I do like to watch how Galen works with those prickly horses. He gets a look on his face as if he has a vision of what the horse will be like, once trained.”

An Amish couple drove up in a buggy with a beautiful gelding tied behind them. Rose and Delia watched from afar as the husband explained to Galen that this horse had been
a gift to his wife. The gelding had been a reliable horse, he was told from the previous owner, but now was behaving unpredictably in traffic.

The woman was quite upset. “I don’t want to get rid of him. But I can’t seem to get him to mind me. He bolts at the slightest thing.”

Galen walked around the horse, stroked his neck. “The problem is you don’t understand him.”

“But I love this horse,” the woman said. “I’m very kind to him.”

“I didn’t mean that you’re mistreating him,” Galen said. “Just the opposite. Horses from the racetrack are taught to go forward and run, no matter what. As long as they’re headed in the right direction, forward, the trainers don’t care how they behave. They don’t want to kill the drive to win the race. So that’s what the horse is trying to do now. Win the race.”

The husband took off his hat and scratched his head. “What can you do to change that?”

“I need to work with him so he doesn’t think running is the right choice. If he’s in doubt or encounters the unexpected, he needs to pay attention to you.”

The couple left the gelding in Galen’s care. Delia overheard him tell Jimmy Fisher that most of the time the horse’s training was just fine, and his job was about retraining the horse owners.

Delia wished Will could watch Galen work with these horses—he would find it fascinating, like watching a horse whisperer. Just being around Galen was very calming to the spirit.

She wondered what Rose thought about Galen. She was nice and polite to him, and he was as pleasant as could be
to Rose, but now and then he seemed to look at her in a wondering sort of way. Why was that?

It was the kind of discussion Delia would have had with Charles over dinner, and he would vaguely answer as if he was listening to her, which he wasn’t.

But there was the rub: there were so many things she wanted to tell Charles. Every day she thought of something new.

12

C
all Jimmy Fisher what you will, but don’t call him a quitter. He made a list of all of the spring mud sales that would be held in Lancaster County and decided to go to each one, every Saturday, handing out posters that described Lodestar. Someone, somewhere, must have seen his horse.

What he didn’t expect was to find Lodestar at the very next mud sale of the season over at the Bird-in-Hand fire station. He had tied up his horse and buggy, picked up the posters he had printed, turned around and . . . there he was! None other than Lodestar. He dropped the posters back in the buggy, picked up a lead rope—something he had kept in the buggy in case he’d found Lodestar—and bolted to the stall where the horse was held. The chocolate brown horse looked healthy and cared for, which relieved Jimmy.

Jimmy stared at him, transfixed. This horse was regal—tall, elegant, confident. Jimmy held out his hand and the horse’s ears perked up, thinking there might be a carrot. Lodestar edged his way over toward Jimmy and sniffed his open hand. With his other hand, Jimmy clipped the lead onto Lodestar’s harness.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?”

Jimmy spun around to face Jonah Hershberger. “You sold me this horse, square and fair.”

Jonah tilted his head. “You’re the one who didn’t keep him in a place that could contain him.”

“You put him in that pasture!”

“Temporarily. I was just doing you a favor by delivering the horse to you. Door-to-door service. It was your job to keep him from getting out. He’s a stallion! All he needed was a whiff of a mare in season and he’s out the door. If you’re going to have a stud farm, you’re going to have to pay attention to those kinds of things.”

Jimmy frowned. That was a point he couldn’t dispute. He hadn’t given much thought to the mechanics of having a stud. Galen constantly chewed him out for not thinking into the future. “How did you find him, anyhow?”

Jonah looked at Jimmy as if his lantern seemed a little dim. “He found me. He’s smart like that.”

Dang! That
was
smart
.
Jimmy
had
to have this horse
.
“Look, I really need this horse.”

Jonah sighed. “Then why did your check bounce?”

It bounced? Oh, boy. Jimmy was afraid of that. He wasn’t exactly sure how much he had in his account when he had written that check to Jonah. He was hoping there had been enough. “I’ll cover it.”

Jonah looked at Lodestar. “You’ve put me to a lot of extra trouble.” He rubbed his chin. “But there’s something about you I like. I guess you remind me of me, a few years back. Okay . . . get me the deposit in cash this time, and we’ll try it again.” He stuck out his hand.

Jimmy looked down at it, looked over at Lodestar—what
a magnificent beast!—and shook Jonah’s hand. “Deal. I’ll be back in an hour.” He would get to the farmers’ market and borrow the money from his brother, Paul. It was pretty generous of Jonah to give him a second chance, and to only ask for the deposit too. He was afraid he would want the entire amount, cash on the barrel. As he untied his buggy horse from the hitching post, he grinned. He thought about the large humble pie Galen King would be eating after Jimmy informed him that Lodestar was in his barn, safe and sound and ready to be the cornerstone of Jimmy Fisher’s Stud Farm.

And if his brother was in a friendly mood and could be quick about lending him the cash, he might have time to stop in the Stoney Ridge Bar & Grill and check up on Bethany Schrock. He could tell he made her nervous—she always dropped or spilled something when he was around—and he got a kick out of that.