“This is Isabelle. Wilson’s daughter.”

“Isabelle!” he says. He crosses toward her. “It’s very nice to meet you,” he says. He grips her hand firmly with both of his. His eyes are a cold blue and seem to be peering past wrinkles and lashes and curls and the lenses of his glasses from somewhere very far away. They glow, it seems to Isabelle, and when she focuses on the glass before them instead of on the eyes themselves, she can see the reflection of Agnes behind her, and she imagines that in this reflection she can see in the horse’s eyes her own self reflected there, staring at the reflection of a reflection.

“Isabelle is quite shy,” her grandmother explains.

“Ah,” Dr. Marks says. “Wilson’s daughter, you said?”

“Yes.”

Dr. Marks turns back toward Isabelle. “Your father was very shy, too, you know.”

“It’s something she’ll have to work on, isn’t it, Isabelle?”

Isabelle looks at her grandmother and then at the ground. The stable floor is cracked and strewn with scattered hay.

“Well, in good time,” Dr. Marks says. He sniffs. Isabelle watches his boots cross back to his bag. They disappear beneath folds of coat as the man stoops down to open the bag. He pulls out a bandage roll and scissors. “And how does Mr. Adrien seem today?” he asks.

“We haven’t been in to him this morning yet, but he seems to be doing remarkably well considering he cut his ankle, when was it, only a week ago?”

“Any limping? Visible signs of pain? Staining through the bandage?”

Isabelle watches her grandmother and this doctor walk slowly toward a stall. She follows at a distance. Her grandmother is shaking her head to each listed symptom.

“Appetite changes? Sometimes comes with infection.”

“No.” Her grandmother shakes her head. “I tell you I’ve never seen a horse heal so quickly. I don’t know how you did it.”

“Magic touch,” Dr. Marks says. He has opened the stall door and crouched down. He runs his hand down the back side of Adrien’s lower leg, and the horse curls his foot to be held. This horse is much bigger than Agnes. He is black and towering, his eyes quick. Isabelle watches nervously as he lets out a whinnying breath.

“Hey. Hey.” Dr. Marks stands up and brings his face close against the horse. He whispers things that Isabelle can’t hear. The horse’s blinking slows. His stomach swells with deepening breaths, and he hangs his head. “That’s a boy,” the doctor murmurs. “Yes, you know. You know.”

He pulls a stool from the corner of the room and sits at the horse’s front feet. The horse allows him to hold the hoof this time long enough to cut away the bandage from around his ankle. “Yes,” the doctor says. “Good boy.” He looks up. “That was a nice-looking cut, too,” he says.