The Probable Future

“Pizza it is,” the doctor agreed.

They drove to the doctor’s house, which he had helped to design and build fifty years earlier, when he was newly married to Adele. He had wanted a house which was completely different from his family home, a cottage he had donated to the town. The Stewart House was the first edifice to be built in Unity after the great fire; it was now a dark and rather moldy gift shop where imitation Revolutionary War trinkets were sold to tourists who happened by in summer and fall, looking for a piece of the Freedom Trail. The doctor’s current house had a great deal of glass and overlooked a vista of rhododendrons and azaleas that bloomed pink and white and purple. There was a stockade fence between the driveway and a rolling field on the other side. Once the car had been parked, they all trooped in to the kitchen, exhausted, mud on their feet. Hap called the pizza place in town, to order the delivery of a large pie with everything, while the doctor went to wash up.

David Stewart, Hap’s father, was a tall, rumpled man who had just gotten home from work. He was in the den, fiddling with the TV, searching for the Red Sox game, when Hap brought Stella in to meet him.

“So you’re Stella,” David Stewart said when they were introduced. “Well, well. You’re nothing like your mother.”

Since Stella had always believed being different from her mother to be one of her primary goals in life, Mr. Stewart’s comment should have pleased her. Instead, she felt her face color. Somehow, she felt insulted.

“Your mother had all that dark, beautiful hair the Sparrow women are known for. Guys at school used to follow her around. Everybody was crazy about her, but she wasn’t interested in anybody but Will Avery.”

If Juliet Aronson had been there she would have probably said, Oh, yeah? Well, I’m sure you were the guy she was least interested in, Mr. Stewart, you punk, you skunk. You’re an idiot even now. Stella, on the other hand, merely stood there smiling, politely frozen and deeply taken aback by the comparison with her mother. So she was nothing, invisible, a pale imitation of the real thing.

“My father’s kind of a jerk,” Hap said apologetically when they went outside to wait for the pizza delivery van. “I think he was a disappointment to my grandfather. He sells pharmaceuticals and he does okay, but he was supposed to be a doctor. Kind of like me.”

“You’re nothing like your father.” They both laughed at that echo of David Stewart’s assessment. Still, Mr. Stewart’s comment stung. Stella was less than her mother, that’s what he’d been telling her. The sort of girl no one in his right mind would follow around. “My father’s kind of a jerk, too. But a nice one. He listens to me. At least, he tries.”

The face of the patient who’d been in the accident kept surfacing in Stella’s mind, even now, hours after the event. As she gazed at the rhododendrons, as she brushed a strand of hair away or spoke about her father, it was that young man’s face she was seeing. It was the look in his eyes. Something had passed between them that could never be taken back or denied. Perhaps that was all there really was in this world: seeing someone, if even for a moment, looking inside to the deepest core.

A breeze had come up and there was the scent of loam in the air. Hay and fertilizer. Sweet grass and wild ginger. April. Stella was just starting to relax from the intensity of the day when she noticed something in the field. The thing was eating leaves off a hazel tree. It looked like a camel in reverse, the kind of creature that only existed in dreams, made up of pieces and parts, hoof and head and tail.

“What is that? Is there some sort of animal out there?”

“It’s Sooner. My grandfather’s horse.”

Stella felt herself grow cold, even though the day was still mild, the sunshine bright. She had seen an image of Hap being thrown from a horse on the day she met him; he was in the air, falling much too fast with no one nearby to catch him.

“They supposedly hate each other, but they’re stuck with each other. Look at Sooner’s back. Ever see such a swayback?”

“You didn’t tell me you had a horse. Jesus, Hap. You should have told me. We’re supposed to be such good friends, and now this comes out. What else have you kept hidden?”

“I don’t have a horse.” Hap was surprised by how upset Stella was. “I told you, it’s my grandfather’s.”

Dr. Stewart had taken in the horse as a favor to a farmer in North Arthur who’d been his patient for decades, despite the many times he couldn’t pay the doctor’s fee. The old farmer was dying, he hadn’t anyone in the world he cared about, except this huge, ancient horse, dusty brown with white markings on its face that formed the shape of tears.