Free Still Life with Elephant by Judy Reene Singer Page A

times before another half-step. It was just the beginnings of a piaffe, this half-step, half-prance that she offered me, and I dismounted right away and fed her handfuls of sugar cubes, marveling at how she was beginning to understand.
    â€œRichie says they’re leaving for Africa in a week,” I told her as I groomed her in her stall. “I have enough problems understanding my own language. What am I going to do in a foreign country?”
    Isis had no answer for me, and I finally had to swear her to secrecy like I did with Alana.
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    The meeting was at seven o’clock in Mrs. Wycliff ’s living room. I came late, deciding that I could slip out the door if I spotted Matt with Holly-Breeder. He wasn’t there when I arrived, but I still took a chair near the door.
    The living room was spacious but plain. Two sofas were covered with afghan throws and several cats of various colors, there was a practical-looking Berber rug on the floor, and a carved mahogany table by the bay window with violets in little ceramic elephant planters.
    In all the years I had accompanied Matt to the sanctuary, this was only the fourth or fifth time I had seen Mrs. Wycliff, and she hadn’t changed one bit. She still looked like she was in her mid-seventies, still wore no makeup, still kept her gray hair pulled back in a hastily made bun, and, as far as I could determine, was still dressed in the same jeans and white Irish knit sweater that she was wearing the day I first met her. She poured us all tea and passed around lumpy homemade cupcakes, which told me she was more interested in spending money on her animals than in lavishly entertaining. Richie and Jackie were already sitting in the two upholstered chairs by the window. They gave me sympathetic smiles when they saw me walk in. I did not want sympathetic, because the second part of that word is “pathetic,” but I smiled back anyway before glancing discreetly around. There were about six other people seated, and I didn’t know any of them.
    I sat in a chair at the edge of the room and waited for Matt. It was getting late, and I was trying not to jump every time I thought I heard something near the door. Several times it turned out to be Mrs. Wycliff’s two apparently weak-bladdered black Labs that had to be let out, then in, then out, only to come back in. Conversation buzzed all around me—everyone seemed to know each other—and I overheard words like “poaching” and “hostile environment” and “dangerous.” I just sipped my tea and let the voices jumble on. Richie’s cell phone rang and he jumped, checking his watch, before taking the call in another room.
    â€œThat was Tom,” he announced, coming back. “He should be here in an hour. He got stuck in some traffic coming up from the city.”
    Thomas Princeton Pennington. The man with the money.
    Richie’s phone rang again. He answered it, and I saw him glance quickly in my direction. I knew this time it was Matt.
    Richie made his second announcement. “Well, Dr. Sterling—the vet who will be helping us—just called. He can’t make it tonight. He’s doing an emergency surgery.”
    Oh, those late-night emergency surgeries, I thought, but kept my face parked in neutral, wondering if it would look bad for me to get up and leave now. Too obvious, I realized, and stayed put and studied my cupcake.
    It was vanilla-frosted, and I chastised myself for not taking a chocolate one. Atop the frosting was a blue sugar-wafer elephant, and I spent some time sucking its head off, followed by each individual foot. One hour and two more cupcakes later, both chocolate, Thomas Princeton Pennington arrived.
    He wasn’t what I expected at all. I expected a fifty-two-year-old polished tycoon wearing a custom-made suit and crisp shirt and custom-designed tie, like the images I had seen in the media, but Thomas Pennington was dressed in jeans and