The Horse Whisperer Read Free

the gate that led into the woods. Their tracks cut a perfect diagonal across the unblemished square of the field. And as they reached the woods, at last the sun came up over the ridge and filled the valley behind them with tilted shadows.
       One of the things Grace’s mother hated most about weekends was the mountain of newsprint she had to read. It accumulated all week like some malign volcanic mass. Each day, recklessly, she stacked it higher with the weeklies and all those sections of
The New York Times
she didn’t dare trash. By Saturday it had become too menacing to ignore and with several more tons of Sunday’s
New York Times
horribly imminent, she knew that if she didn’t act now, she would be swept away and buried. All those words, let loose on the world. All thateffort. Just to make you feel guilty. Annie tossed another slab to the floor and wearily picked up the
New York Post
.
    The Macleans’ apartment was on the eighth floor of an elegant old building on Central Park West. Annie sat with her feet tucked up on the yellow sofa by the window. She was wearing black leggings and a light gray sweatshirt. Her bobbed auburn hair, tied in a stubby ponytail, was set aflame by the sun that streamed in behind her and made a shadow of her on the matching sofa across the living room.
    The room was long and painted a pale yellow. It was lined at one end with books and there were pieces of African art and a grand piano, one gleaming end of which was now caught by the angling sun. If Annie had turned she would have seen seagulls strutting on the ice of the reservoir. Even in the snow, even this early on a Saturday morning, there were joggers out, pounding the circuit that she herself would be pounding as soon as she had finished the papers. She took a sip from her mug of tea and was about to junk the
Post
when she spotted a small item hidden away in a column she usually skipped.
    “I don’t believe it,” she said aloud. “You little rat.”
    She clunked the mug down on the table and went briskly to get the phone from the hallway. She came back already punching the number and stood facing the window now, tapping a foot while she waited for an answer. Below the reservoir an old man wearing skis and an absurdly large radio headset was tramping ferociously toward the trees. A woman was scolding a leashed gaggle of tiny dogs, all with matching knitted coats and with legs so short they had to leap and sledge to make progress.
    “Anthony? Did you see the
Post?”
Annie had obviouslywoken her young assistant but it didn’t occur to her to apologize. “They’ve got a piece about me and Fiske. The little shit’s saying I fired him and that I faked the new circulation figures.”
    Anthony said something sympathetic but it wasn’t sympathy Annie was after. “Do you have Don Farlow’s weekend number?” He went to get it. Out in the park, the dog woman had given up and was now dragging them back toward the street. Anthony returned with the number and Annie jotted it down.
    “Good,” she said. “Go back to sleep.” She hung up and immediately dialed Farlow’s number.
    Don Farlow was the publishing group’s stormtrooper lawyer. In the six months since Annie Graves (professionally she had always used her maiden name) was brought in as editor-in-chief to salvage its sinking flagship magazine, he had become an ally and almost a friend. Together they had set about the ousting of the Old Guard. Blood had flowed—new blood in and old blood out—and the press had relished every drop. Among those to whom she and Farlow had shown the door were several well-connected writers who had promptly taken their revenge in the gossip columns. The place became known as the Graves Yard.
    Annie could understand their bitterness. Some had been there so many years, they felt they owned the place. To be uprooted at all was demeaning enough. To be uprooted by an upstart forty-three-year-old woman, and English to boot, was intolerable. The