The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,173

how he does it or what it is. He doesn’t know either. But it works on the horses.”

“Yes, it works.” Manny nodded. “It is his talent.”

“Thank you, Manny. I appreciate you seeing it that way.”

He returned my smile, puzzled as if wondering what other way he might see it, but said nothing more before returning to the stable.

I went inside and wept with gratitude.

Initially, Jericho made swift progress, but on the third day she burned with a fever. It took days for the new antibiotic to kick in. Adam stayed with her around the clock, sleeping in the stable. Ray was not optimistic about her chances of a full recovery from the damage to her ligaments. Her owner wanted to put her down, but Adam insisted that she could recuperate. He bought her from the owner to ensure that she had a chance.

At Ray’s instruction, he cleaned and dressed the wounds three times a day for the first few weeks, then twice daily for months, and finally only once a day. Adam eventually coaxed the mare into a confident, nearly normal gait, but the stallion, still boarding with us even after the attack, became progressively more aggressive, kicking when anyone walked through the stable, often striking and rearing when Adam approached him. Manny, a very capable, calm groom, refused to handle him.

“I don’t understand it,” Adam complained repeatedly. “One moment, he’s a normal horse. The next, it’s like there’s no horse in there, just rage and fear. Nothing I do reaches him then. Something’s not right. I don’t know what to do. This has never happened before. I don’t know how to fix this.” He rubbed his face as if to wake himself.

One afternoon, I heard the stallion’s angry neighs and kicks repeatedly interrupt the soothing ring of Adam’s voice. That evening, when I took Adam’s supper out to him in the stable office, I found him drowsing at his desk. He looked tired, unfocused.

“I feel like a snake ready to shed,” he muttered, ignoring the plate I set on his desk. “Things seem veiled, as if there’s a caul over my head.” He waved his hand in front of his eyes.

I rubbed his arm and felt the firm muscle and his smooth skin. Our trip to Kentucky had taken something out of both of us. A dull, helpless dread nagged me. I could feel it in my bones, and was uncertain if it was a fordable obstacle or the foreshadowing of my body’s eventual surrender. In Adam, I sensed resistance, his energies deferred. He’d been willing to become old for me. Instead, he would, in the youthful skin of Roy Hope, escort me into my old age. He would watch my vigor and remaining beauty slip away. Then I would leave him here to grow old at his own unique rate. The bitter bile of sorrow threatened. I pressed it down, pushed it away, and turned my attention to the comforts I could offer him now. “You need more sleep. Come to bed. I’ll give you a back rub.”

As we settled into bed that evening, he said, “There’s a waterfall in the mountains that I always go to. Near the top of the falls there is a place you can walk behind the water. The ledge is deep, the water falls clear as glass. One night, I saw the full moon through it. And if you stick your head through the curtain of water on a clear day, you can see for miles.”

“Yes?” I whispered.

“I think of that place when I’m tired or discouraged. The water never stops. No matter what happens to any of us, to anyone, anywhere, water keeps coming off the mountain. It moves. It was. Is. Will be.”

I reached back and rubbed his thigh. “Go. As soon as you can, go.”

A few days later, the stallion’s owner, unhappy with Adam’s lack of progress, arranged to move the horse to another stable—another first for Adam. When the new stable came to pick up the stallion, the horse was having one of his better days, his neck and back supple. Adam pressed his face against the horse’s shoulder before leading him out of our stable. At the trailer ramp, he stepped back and held his arms open as he released the horse. I remembered him standing in the rain so many years ago, his arms open to Darling the day Cole broke his leg.

The winter sun bounced off the side of the trailer as it turned onto