Mercury by Margot Livesey Page A

change.”
    I thought of Bonnie’s hazel eyes; of the shadow only she could see. “So what happened to the brilliant, homely Sandra?”
    â€œShe married a millionaire who worships the ground she walks on—I wish.” He smiled and zipped up his pack. “She’s a single parent, teaching high school in Syracuse. Friends report she works too hard and is happy.”
    On the short drive to his apartment he made me describe the journey. It was Hilary’s idea; if he learned that the bad pothole was by the post office, the long traffic light was at School Street, then, even in a car, he would always know where he was. When we were settled in his living room, he told me she had taken him to meet Mercury.
    â€œBeforehand I was thinking all horses are the same to a blindman. But then I held out my hand, and he gave a big, warm snort. His breath smelled of grass, and summer.”
    â€œYou could ride,” I said. “Helen Keller did.”
    â€œAre you suggesting I climb onto a tall animal, over which I have zero control, and allow it to carry me around? No thanks. So what’s this about a security issue at Windy Hill?”
    Hilary had noticed the new alarm, and Claudia, in response to her question, had used this vague phrase. Which is worse: breaking a promise or telling a lie? As ten-year-olds, Robert and I had debated this choice and voted for the former. A few months before, when I asked Marcus and Trina, they had said the same. Now, in response to Jack’s question, I followed Claudia’s example, lying to keep my promise. I mentioned the break-ins at the nearby businesses, how the police had advised updating the alarms.
    â€œHilary would go ballistic,” he said, “if anything happened to Mercury.”
    â€œBut she never rides him nowadays.” I was not sure if I was asking, or telling him.
    â€œAnd there’s the rub.” Gradually he had begun to understand that behind her grief about Michael lay a more complicated narrative. For nearly a decade brother and sister had scarcely seen each other. He disapproved of her husband; she disapproved of his feckless lifestyle, his living like a stable rat in his forties.
    The room was growing dark when I said, “I had this patient yesterday. She made me feel I owe you an apology. You were so calm about losing your sight, I never said how sorry I was. I must have seemed like an unsympathetic oaf.”
    â€œActually you seemed like a Hippocratic oaf.” He gave the glint of a smile. “Your stoicism was easier to deal with than the hysteria of friends. You helped me understand that nothing—shouting, praying, smashing every glass in the house—was going to change things. I take it she’s attractive?”
    â€œShe has beautiful eyes, and she works in the cafeteria at the middle school.”
    I would have said then, and I still say now, that I was not in love with Bonnie, but some emotional gear had shifted. Otherwise I would not have copied her number into my phone, and I would not have dialed it the following morning. Fortunately I called her landline, where no missed call would register. Fortunately she did not answer.

14
    I BLAME THE SNOW FOR what happened next. It fell and fell. Our cars were buried, the stables were buried, our lives were buried. The horses had to be kept indoors and exercised in the arena, which meant vastly more work for Viv and Claudia. Jack organized a roster of students to guide him back and forth to his office. My mother worked at home. Marcus and Trina had frequent snow days, and we scrambled to make child-care arrangements, trading with Anne and other parents. I know Viv talked to Claudia and that some kind of peace was brokered, but I did not dare to ask the particulars. Nor did I dare to ask about the dream that had stopped her from getting an abortion. It was long ago, I told myself. What mattered was our family, our shared life, that we had been happy for