Losing Charlotte by Heather Clay Read Free Book Online

one.
    “Your sister is the most …,” one or another of them would say. When she couldn’t come up with the proper word, she might shortcut right to: “You know?” Knox knew. She kept herself from asking: Did you mean to say favored? Enviable? Overrated? Exactness seemed important. But of course she never did anything but smile and cock her head, waiting to be dismissed from the conversation.
    Thank God that part of her life was over.
    The Parrish Barn was cool inside and fairly empty, most of the horses having been turned into the fields for the night. Knox made her way past stall doors labeled with white cards: HEAR THE MUSIC, NO FOAL; SWEET CANDY, NO FOAL; PRIMA DONNA, DROPPED FILLY. Prima Donna had miscarried, then. Knox looked closer; the mare stood at the back of her stall, her muzzle pressed against a barred window. She looked all right, though still heavy and swollen about the middle. Her ankles were bandaged, and a persistent fly worried her withers, causing the skin on them to wrinkle and twitch.
    “You rest, honey,” Knox said. “That’s right.”
    The mare stamped once in the straw. Knox watched her, willing the mare to turn around that she might convey … something. Pity? Understanding? After a minute she gave up and let herself into the observation room.
    The air was close, stung with medicinal smells, stale food and coffee odors, the sharp dust, straw, and manure from outside.There was a littered desk, a thirdhand couch, a large window onto the adjoining stall, through which a vet or groom could keep an eye on whatever mare most needed to be watched. Knox sat at the desk, turned on the computer, and logged into her e-mail account, organizing a few battered Styrofoam cups into a stack as she waited for the connection to fire.
    Three new messages flashed up: one from Marlene, one from herself (a file of unfinished reports she’d sent from the center to the farm address earlier that day), and one from Ned. Knox cleared her throat. She would start in on the reports and ignore everything else for now. She clicked on her file, opened the letter she’d begun to compose to Brad Toffey’s parents. She had decided on addressing the report to “Mr. and Mrs. Toffey,” though she had only ever met Brad’s mother, Dorothea, and had heard from Marlene that she and her husband were having problems—Dorothea herself had apparently called Mr. Toffey a honking bastard when Marlene had asked if he should be included on Brad’s school pickup form. “There’s good Toffeys and bad Toffeys,” Marlene had said. “I know just about everyone in that clan.” Marlene had tried to tell Dorothea to let the center know if there were family issues it needed to be aware of. But unless Brad’s behavior at the center changed drastically, bad Toffeys weren’t really anyone’s business.
    She spent the better part of the next hour explaining to the Toffeys, plural, how their son had progressed during his summer school term. He had begun composing stories of his own (the protagonists were always named Brad and possessed of superhuman powers), whereas back in May he had been nervous even to dictate to her, fearful he would sound stupid. She emphasized everything she could think to about Brad’s accomplishments, knowing that Mrs. Toffey had a hard time, that she tended to wrap her fingers around Brad’s pale, hairless forearm if he got recalcitrant in the carpool line, drag him toward the passenger door, tell him not to “be so damned hyper.” Knox tried to ease Brad out of that grip with her praise and made a mental note to put his rough drawing—of a Laker dunking a basketball, “BT” emblazoned on his uniform—on the front cover of the mimeographed journal her class would publish at the end of the summer.
    She moved on to another report, finished that and two more before she thought to open Marlene’s e-mail, take a tiny break before getting to the final two reports she had to finish. She swiveled round once while