“Want to go into the paddock with them?” Anne asked.
“I guess,” Becca said, then sighed. “Not a good idea. I might fall on my face. She leaned close to Anne and said softly, “I don’t see how this can work. One of those little things can’t hold me up when I start to fall over.”
Anne whispered back. “You don’t generally go all the way, do you?”
Becca pulled her shoulders back and spoke in a normal voice. The others were walking back to the patio. “What I do is stumble, then go into this little sideways two-step until I find something to grab hold of. Everybody thinks I’m drunk or stoned. It’s why I don’t drive on the highway. If I got stopped and had to walk one of those lines, I’d wind up in the drunk tank.”
“Do you get dizzy when you drive?”
“Never as long as I’m holding the wheel.”
“So what’s the difference between holding on to the wheel to keep your equilibrium and holding on to a horse’s training harness?”
Becca frowned. “I...I don’t really know. You think it might work?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out. We’ve barely started this training, and frankly, I’m darned near as much an amateur as you are, but Tom Thumb is wicked smart, loves people. So far he figures out what we want from him quickly, then goes ahead and does it.”
“He looks different from the little mare. She’s taller and prettier. His legs look funny.”
“He’s actually a dwarf. It’s a genetic anomaly. Mini breeders have been trying to get rid of it from the gene pool, but it still crops up. Tom is lucky. Frequently endocrine and heart problems go along with the condition, but Tom seems to be totally healthy. He’s just short and stubby.”
Becca had been avoiding looking at either horse, but now she peered down at Tom Thumb, then Molly. From the slow smile she gave the two, it was obvious that she was hooked.
Anne nodded. Becca had cleared the first hurdle.
“How many of these things are here?” Becca asked.
“Eight total. Then there are the regular-sized horses that board here.”
“Did you bring your guy with you?”
“Yep, I brought Trusty, plus there are several boarders’ horses, and Victoria’s Morgan, her driving horse. We plan to teach the minis to pull a carriage, if they aren’t suited to be helper horses.”
“What makes the difference?”
“I’m not certain yet, but I know that Tom Thumb will be a helper horse. He already seems to understand what is wanted from him, and he likes people. Molly—the little mare who came over with him—maybe, maybe not.” She waggled her hand. “She should be able to pull a mini carriage...”
“They have tiny carriages?”
“For tiny horses. Yep. And tiny harnesses and tiny shoes and...”
Becca snickered. “Okay, I get it. So maybe they’re not exactly a skin growth. Can we go see the others?”
“Let’s get you settled first. You have your own bedroom in my cottage, but I do not do maid service.”
“Neither does my mother. While I was in rehab, I tried to learn to cook. I’m limited, but not bad so long as you don’t want beef Wellington or coq au vin.”
“Pity. I love beef Wellington.”
“Who can afford it? Hey, my mother’s waving at me. I think she wants to find out whether or not I’m staying.”
“Are you?”
Anne heard the catch in Becca’s voice.
“The horse movers were coming after lunch to pick up Aeolus. He’s going to Virginia. I didn’t want to be there when he leaves.” Her shoulders hunched. “I know it’s the right thing to do. The girl who bought him loves him to pieces. But...” She began to sob. “He’s my horse.”
Anne opened her arms. “Oh, Becca, I’m so sorry.”
“I said goodbye this morning before we left to drive up here. I’ll never be able to ride him again, and I just can’t stand it.” She moved into Anne’s arms, laid her head against Anne’s shoulder and sobbed.
Anne patted her and rubbed her back.
She was crying, too. What a hard thing for Becca to have to suffer. Aeolus would be happy, but he wouldn’t understand why his human, his person, had gone out of his life. And he’d remember. Anne had met one of her old school horses two years back at a horse show in Atlanta. She heard him nicker before she saw him. Happy, content, the idol of the girl who rode him. Still, she felt as though she had to walk away from a member of her family.
When Becca encountered Aeolus, and the chances were that she would, they would know one another and remember. Just as she and Trust Fund would always have a special bond, even if they never saw one another again. There was no sense of communication like the one between horse and rider. Feeling the horse respond to the slightest change in balance or leg pressure was glorious. When it was right, it was as though the two became one mind. How could Becca get past the longing for that feeling?
“Becca, honey, are you all right?” Willa Stout was trotting down the gravel path toward them with her arms outstretched, her face a mask of concern.
Becca caught her breath, sniffed and stepped away from Anne. She ran her fingertips under her eyes to brush away the tears without smearing her eyeliner, gulped and said without turning to face her mother, “I’m fine, Mom. Little tired is all. Can we go take my stuff into the cottage?”
“Sure,” Anne said. “You hungry?”
“We had lunch in Williamston at that diner you recommended on the phone,” Mrs. Stout said. “So, Becca, honey, I guess that means you’re staying for the weekend.”
“I guess. Can you bring my duffel? I’ll probably stagger if I try to carry it down.” Becca strode past Anne and her mother and down the hill to the cottage with no sign of balance problems.
“Sure,” Anne said, and picked it up.
“This has been a really hard day for her,” Mrs. Stout said. Her voice quavered. “Saying goodbye to Aeolus...it liked to have killed both of us. I’m so glad we could come up here on such short notice. I tried to explain to her father what giving up riding means to her. I said it was like telling a seventeen-year-old Tom Brady that he could never throw a football again because he’d had too many concussions.”
“Did he get it?” Anne asked.
Mrs. Stout shrugged. “Maybe a little. He’s just afraid she’ll ride anyway. That’s why we desperately need some kind of alternative that gives her at least a touch of horses without the risk of riding.”
She took a deep breath. Her eyes followed Becca’s long-limbed body until she shut the door of Anne’s cottage behind her. “Should I stay for a while?”
“I’d prefer that you didn’t,” Anne said. “Like leaving your kid on the first day of school. It’s tough, but it’s better.”
“Do you know what you’ll be doing today?”
Anne walked beside Mrs. Stout toward the cottage. “Probably just playing around. Maybe trying on harnesses. Bits and pieces. Just get her comfortable with the idea of trusting an animal again.”
“Have you picked out her mini?”
“I think so, but it’s not a hundred percent settled. I may harness up Victoria’s Morgan gelding to her carriage and let Becca get the feel of the reins behind a big horse that’s trained to drive already. She’ll be using reins to control her mini initially.” She held the door of the cottage open for Mrs. Stout. They could hear Becca in the spare bedroom. She’d already set up her sound system. The walls were thin, so the music came through at top volume.
Anne dropped Becca’s duffel beside the couch and blinked at the noise level. “Boy, does that make me feel old. It’s no wonder some of the kids I taught already have hearing issues.”
“Becca, turn that down,” Mrs. Stout called. “Becca, now!”
Something slammed down inside the room, but the music stopped.
“At least sh
e’s not tethered to her cell phone the way most of her friends are,” Mrs. Stout said. “She couldn’t use it in the hospital. Against the rules. Besides, reading the numbers made her sick to her stomach. Now I think she’s outgrown it.” Mrs. Stout sank onto the blue denim sofa in front of the fireplace. “She lost all her horse friends and most of her nonhorse friends. Hard to keep up with your acquaintances when you’re in a coma.” She wiped the tears from her eyes just as Becca had done.
“She’ll be going to college in the fall if she can get around campus without falling, but she’ll still be living at home. We can’t trust her to manage dorm life on her own.” She leaned across and took Anne’s hand. “You have to help her, Anne.”
“I warned you both this is our first experiment. We’ll do our best, but we’re going to make mistakes. I don’t want Becca to pay for them.”
“I can look after myself,” Becca said from the doorway to her bedroom. “Go home, Mom. I’ll be fine.”
Anne noticed that Becca kept one hand on the doorjamb.
Willa pasted a smile on her face. “See you Monday.”
Anne and Becca stared at one another for a long moment after she left. Then Anne said, “You’ve marooned yourself.”
“I can always steal the farm truck and drive home.”
“You said you can’t drive on the highway.”
“Not can’t, just don’t.”
“What happens if you take your hand off the doorjamb?”
“I’ve been in position long enough for my equilibrium to stabilize. Nothing should happen. What tees me off is that I never know when it’ll happen. Some days it’s nothing. Others, I’m doing the sideways shuffle a dozen times.”
“What do the doctors say?”
“That it will probably keep getting better. Fewer episodes, shorter duration. They don’t think I’ll ever be back to a hundred percent. So no foot in the stirrup or butt in the saddle. Ever. But hey, what do they know?”
“What, indeed. Come on. Let’s go get Tom Thumb—that’s the dwarf—and see if we can find a harness that will fit him.”
CHAPTER NINE
TOM THUMB SEEMED delighted to have his very own person. He transferred his allegiance from Anne to Becca in the first fifteen minutes of following her around the arena. Anne walked on Becca’s right side to catch her if she started to fall.
After a couple of circuits of the arena, Becca leaned on the fence. “Man, I’ve got the stamina of an earthworm.” She closed her eyes and took deep breaths. “I used to be able to ride all day and party at night on the weekends after horse shows.”
“Takes time to get your strength back.”
“How would you know?” Becca snapped.
“I missed my thirteenth birthday party because I was in the emergency room with a minor concussion after going through the jump standard helmet-first,” Anne said. “That was before I got Trust Fund.”
Becca turned away from her. “I still can’t talk about Aeolus. I’ll never forget him. The feeling when he went over a big jump and we were together—it was like flying, like we were one creature.”
“I know,” Anne said. “Doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s magic.”
Becca turned to her with her eyes wide. “I try to tell people, but, like, my parents don’t get it, you know? Daddy keeps telling me to take up golf. As if.”
“I had my share of falls. Comes with the territory.”
Becca snapped at her. “You had one little concussion. Big deal. I was in a coma and then rehab for a year.”
“It was an accident, Becca. Could have been me.”
“But it wasn’t. You didn’t have to stop riding. I’ve seen you ride at horse shows. You’re fearless. I couldn’t go over a five-foot jump on my best day before the accident.”
“That’s not fearless. I’m always scared. I know Trusty can take the fence if I get out of his way, but that’s not to say that he won’t slip on a wet patch or trail a fence pole under his hind legs. It’s a dangerous sport.”
“Ya think? Come on, Tom, little guy, let’s see if I can walk right across the arena back to the barn.”
Anne fell into step beside her. She could tell Becca was tired and kept a close eye on her. A dozen steps from the door to the stable, she listed to her left. Before Anne could grab her arm to keep her upright, she stepped sideways. She dropped her hand on Tom’s withers, the spot where neck met shoulder.
Anne reached for Becca, but missed and grabbed the tail of her T-shirt. She expected both horse and girl to collapse into the sand.
Instead, Tom braced all four of his stubby legs and took the weight of Becca’s outstretched arm and hand on his shoulder. She leaned her hip against him, stabilized her balance and grabbed Anne’s hand on her other side.
It seemed to Anne as though they stayed that way for an eternity, although in reality it was probably no more than a few seconds. She hooked her fingers through Becca’s belt and hauled her upright.
Tom didn’t move until Becca took a tentative step away from him. He swung his head and cut his eyes up at her as if to say, Okay, we good?
Neither Anne nor Becca said a word until Becca sat on a couple of hay bales stacked in the aisle inside the barn.
Then Becca grabbed the cheek pieces of Tom’s halter and pulled him close to her, where she could nuzzle his face. He lifted his front legs onto the edge of the lower bale of hay and laid his head in her lap.
Anne watched her scratch between Tom’s ears and croon to him.
She turned away so Becca wouldn’t catch her sniffling and spotted Vince’s silhouette at the front door of the barn.
Anne went to him. He took both her hands, leaned over and whispered, “Congratulations.”
“It worked. It really worked.” She looked back over her shoulder. Neither horse nor girl had moved, but remained cuddled together. “Come on, leave them to it.”
Outside, Anne leaned against the wall of the barn and gulped air. “I have never been so scared in my life as when she started to fall. I was planning to grab her before she went down. I expected Tom would walk out from under her. Instead, he just stood there. Nobody taught him to do that—I haven’t had time yet. It’s as if he knows instinctively.”
“Doesn’t mean Molly would, or any of the others. You might not have been able to catch her with Molly or Grumpy.”
“I do not need any more thunderstorms on my parade, thank you, Doctor. It was a success, however it came about. The point is, it’s possible. Don’t you scientific types say you have to be able to duplicate an experiment to prove its value?”
“If you can’t?”
“I can and I will.”
“Admit it may not work. What’ll happen to the horses with no skills when no one wants them? The people that need them will find another solution, but there is no solution for the minis.”
“If I can’t train them, I’ll find somebody that can. Is that what you wanted to hear? I’ll give up? I won’t abandon them even if I have to go back to bartending full-time to pay for them. Now I have to look after Becca and start working the other horses.” She glared up at him. “Why are you here? I thought you weren’t scheduled for today.”
“Just checking on any possible overnight disasters. When I saw what you were doing I wanted to watch. Now I’m on my way to give eighteen piglets their first shots.”
She shoved off the wall and grinned at him. “Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”
* * *
IN HIS REARVIEW MIRROR, Vince watched Anne standing outside the barn, hands on her elegant hips in their tight britches. He seemed to appeal to clingy women, which was probably why he didn’t appeal to her. He doubted she’d cling to him if she was about to be thrown into Kilauea volcano.
She was about the most stubborn woman he’d ever met. Maybe that’s why they seemed to butt heads. She wan
ted to do things her way. He knew better.
He hadn’t really grown up with horses, not the way she had—training them to jump fences and ride with a foxhunt. She also had experience working with disabled kids and adults. In Wyoming he found he had a talent for getting horses ready to work cattle, but that was a far cry from what Anne did and planned to do.
He didn’t want to see her fail. Maybe she’d succeed. He’d be the first to applaud her efforts. He might not agree with her, but he liked her. She’d give this horse thing her best shot.
At home in Mississippi there were always horses around for riding the fields and working the cows, ponies for the children and their friends, and his father’s beloved grand champion walking horse mare. His father loved that mare in a way he had never loved his sons. He was more demonstrative with her than with any of them.
Vince had practically lived on a horse during the summer after he graduated from Mississippi State. At the Wyoming ranch where he’d taken a summer job, he had broken horses to ride and taught them basic roping and cutting commands. Nothing fancy. Pretty didn’t matter. Utility and trustworthiness did. They were the work vehicles on the ranch. Good working quarter horses, the ones with talent, seemed to take to herding cattle instinctively. The most talented flat-out hated cows and enjoyed shoving them around.
It was still better to use horses to work cattle than ATVs. At least in Wyoming. Too many hills, too many prairie dog holes, too much bad weather from tornadoes to hail to blizzards. He hadn’t been there long enough to encounter the blizzards, but his ranch buddies told him horror stories that were probably no more than ten percent fantasy. He had learned to judge how to keep the mustangs healthy and how to know when they were too tired or hot or being worked too hard. He’d carried that skill home to vet school with him. Checking and measuring his clients’ horses had become second nature. He thought Anne was conscientious as well, but he would still keep an eye on the minis she was training.
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