The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

“Only because Susan made her. She still thinks I’ve got the mark of the
devil.” He held my hand as we walked back to the house. “When you weren’t
here Susan didn’t say you were dead in a ditch. She said you were probably
having a nice time and I shouldn’t worry.” He paused. “She was worried,
though. I could tell.”
I snorted. “She doesn’t need to worry. Nor you.”
Dinner was waiting. I fell to eating, so hungry that for a few minutes I
didn’t think of anything else. Then I said, “I saw something strange from the
top of the hill. Far away. Like grass, stretched out a long way, and flat, but
different—blue and gray. When the sun hit it, it looked shiny.”
“That’s the ocean,” Miss Smith said. “The English Channel. I told you
before we weren’t far from it.”
I stared at her. I wanted to say she hadn’t told me anything. I wanted to say
she’d crippled my pony, ignoring him. I wanted to say she should have
showed us the ocean, she should have taken us there.
I wanted to say she never needed to worry about either of us. She didn’t
need to bother. I could take care of Jamie, and I could take care of myself. I
always had.
I wanted to say a lot of things, but, as usual, I didn’t have the words for the
thoughts inside my head. I dropped my head and went back to eating.
“Did Grimes help you?” Miss Smith asked.
“Yes,” I said, rudely, through a mouthful of food.
“Why wouldn’t Butter trot?”
I swallowed. I took a deep breath. I said, “Because you crippled him.”
Miss Smith looked up, sharp. “Explain.”
I didn’t want to talk, but eventually she got the whole story out of me. She
sighed. “Well, I am sorry. It was ignorance, not deliberate abuse—but that’s
never an excuse, is it?” She reached out to pat my arm, but I jerked away. “I
understand why you’re angry with me,” she said. “I’d be angry too.”
After dinner she marched me out to the pasture. She made me show her
what Butter’s feet looked like now, and tell her how they had been. She made
me tell her what else Grimes had taught me, and then she went into the
storage room and looked at all the tack. “It’s awful having to face your own
shortcomings,” she said. “Did Butter feel better after he had his feet fixed?”
“They’re not fixed,” I said. “They won’t be fixed for weeks and weeks.
And I don’t know how he felt. I got lost.”