Did she? She didn't move away. She moves away from most people. I know, Clara told me. A pause.
What happened to her? I don't know exactly. I bought her from a man last spring who said she'd been spooked by something. He didn't say what. She trusts me, Jonah said.
Not proudly. Just observationally the way he said most things. She does, Calder. Agreed. Jonah handed him a nail.
Can I name the lame one? He said the one in the barn you call Penelope. I already named her Penelope. You said she doesn't respond to it. She doesn't respond to anything.
She responded to me. Jonah said this morning when I went to feed her, she put her nose on my shoulder. Calder stopped hammering. He looked at Jonah, who was holding the post and looking back at him with quiet, absolute seriousness. You went in with the lame mayor by yourself, Calder said.
I was careful. She's unpredictable when she's in pain. I know, but she wasn't in pain this morning. She was just standing there. Jonah paused.
I think she's lonely. Calder looked at this 9-year-old boy who had diagnosed a lame horse's emotional state accurately on his fifth day at the ranch. What name were you thinking? Calder said, "Pearl. " Jonah said it simply because Maisy's name means Pearl and Maisie can't walk very fast either and they're kind of the same. Calder put the hammer down on the porch railing.
He was almost finished building and rubbed his face with his hand for a moment. Pearl it is, he said. He picked the hammer back up. "Jonah," he said after a moment. "What?
You're going to be fine here. " Jonah handed him another nail. I know," he said, as if it were a straightforward fact he'd already assessed and settled. The second week brought its own education. Red Hollow had opinions. Red Hollow had always had opinions about weather, about land prices, about the county's various inefficiencies.