Sanctuary Island

by Everett, Lily

  “Come on in here, Ella,” he said, jerking his chin in the direction of the mare.

  “Really?” she squeaked.

  “Both of you,” Jo said, with a glance at Merry, who appeared simultaneously eager to get as close to the horses as possible, while staying as far away from her sister as she could.

  “I don’t know,” Ella said again, rubbing her palms against the front of her thighs.

  “Hey,” he said quietly. “You wanted to know how Jo helped me when I came to the island. Well, this is how it starts.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Ella stared in dismay at the stolid mare in front of her. “This is impossible. Merry, stay back.”

  “It’s not impossible.” The horse’s long ears twitched in the direction of Merry’s voice as she stepped forward to ruffle a confident hand through the mare’s mane. “Just because you don’t know how to do something doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”

  Peony snorted and sidestepped away from Merry and into Ella, nearly knocking her off her feet. Recovering her balance, Ella lifted her chin at her sister. “I don’t think she likes it when you snark at me.”

  “She doesn’t,” Grady confirmed from his seat atop his giant gray gelding. He leaned forward over the pommel of the saddle, as easy and comfortable as if he were sitting in a lounge chair instead of straddling a thousand pounds of pure muscle.

  Ella swallowed hard and inched backward, away from Peony, who gave her a look out of one of her chocolate-dark eyes.

  “In the wild, horses are prey animals. They’ve evolved to be amazingly attuned to their surroundings, the emotions and intentions of every creature around them.”

  It was easy for Jo to lecture from the safety of her position leaning against the paddock’s rail fence.

  “So Peony knows you’re angry, Merry,” Jo pointed out. “And Ella, she can tell you’re afraid, but she doesn’t know of what. The two of you together are making her nervous.”

  “That’s fair,” Ella muttered. “Since she’s making me plenty nervous. Hey! No, not this way, you’re supposed to be going that way!”

  Peony ignored Ella’s tentative arm waving, shooing her toward the obstacle course of rails and barrels Jo had set up in the center of the paddock. Instead, Peony seemed intent on walking over to check out Voyager, and maybe to snatch a mouthful of the grass growing by the gate.

  “If you’d put the halter back on her,” Merry complained, “we could get her over to the obstacle course easily. Or I could ride her!”

  Ella’s immediate “No!” was actually a chorus of voices, with Jo and Grady both weighing in and sharing Merry’s scowl among them equally.

  Jo hitched herself up to sit on the top rail of the fence. “The obstacle course isn’t the point.”

  “Easy isn’t the point, either,” Grady added.

  Wondering when everyone around her had turned into Yoda, Ella gritted her teeth and stood her ground, arms spread out like a goalie blocking a trick shot. Part of her wanted to put her hands on the horse’s shoulder and just push.

  It had been a lot easier to dive in and help that wild mare out at Heartbreak Cove, she reflected. A horse on the ground, focused on one thing and one thing only—giving birth—was a lot less nervous-making than a fully ambulatory mare who wanted to flirt with the handsome gelding on the other side of the paddock.

  She and Merry had been tasked with leading the unhaltered, unbridled, unsaddled, uninterested mare through the obstacle course. And, as Ella had quickly realized, it was less about leading and more about persuading.

  Clucking gently to get Peony’s attention, Merry smiled and began walking backward when the mare’s large head swung in her direction. Ella bit her lip, but Merry was being careful, placing her feet with deliberate attention to the uneven floor of the paddock.

  Keeping one ear swiveled toward Ella, Peony took a few slow steps after Merry. Admiration and pride glowed in Ella’s chest. “You’re doing it! That’s amazing, keep it up.”

  Merry walked the mare to the center of the paddock, clucking whenever it seemed Peony might be losing focus on her. Ella followed a few feet behind, feeling utterly useless.

  Until they hit the obstacle course, which began with a white-painted wooden pole laid flat in the sawdust between two overturned barrels. Despite the fact that there was a good five feet of space between the barrels, Peony balked.

  No amount of clucking could get her moving again. She planted her hooves in front of the pole and refused to step forward, tail swishing and hide twitching as if she were being annoyed by flies.

  “Any hints?” Ella called, after five long minutes of coaxing got them no closer to starting the actual obstacle course.

  “You’re doing great.” There was a smile in Jo’s voice, but nothing more helpful than that.

  Thanks a lot.

  “Try some different things,” Grady advised, his drawl slow and patient. “If you keep doing what you always do, you’re going to get what you’ve always got.”

  Seriously, Ella thought. It’s like Yoda and Oprah had a love child.

  Pretty clearly, something had to give, or they’d be here until Merry went into labor. Ella was the queen of negotiating! How could it be so difficult to convince one dumb animal to do what she wanted?

  The hot curl of aggravation and failure in Ella’s belly overrode her nerves. Lifting her hands, she put them on the mare’s warm side.

  Short, straight hairs tickled against her fingers before she pressed in, leaning her weight against the horse. Ella gasped, pushing hard enough that her boots slipped and slid in the loose sawdust floor of the paddock—but, other than a curious glance over her shoulder, Peony never budged.

  “You can’t force her,” Merry said. “I love you, but it’s your default to try and make everyone around you do whatever you think is best. That’s not going to work on her. She’s bigger than you … and she doesn’t have years of love and gratitude for everything you’ve done for her in the back of her mind at all times. You can’t just push her.”

  Eyes burning, Ella dropped her hands and panted. “Merry, you don’t have to be grateful to me. You’re my sister. You and me against the world, right?”

  Over Peony’s back, Merry shot her a tremulous smile. “Always. And I am grateful—you’ve taken care of me for a long time. But now that I’m going to be a mom, I think it’s time I started trying to take care of myself.”

  They were going to be okay. Ella felt her spirits lift. Merry’s smile had always had that effect on her, since they were kids. She took a cleansing breath, inhaling the warm, clean scents of hay and leather.

  Time to take a step back to survey the situation.

  Ella cocked her head. “What if I go in front?”

  Lifting her booted foot in a big, exaggerated step, Ella hopped over the pole and walked between the two barrels. She turned to look back at Peony, and jumped in surprise to find the horse right behind her, almost breathing over her shoulder.

  “She followed you!” Merry clapped her hands together. “Okay, good, keep going.”

  Borne upward on the wings of accomplishment, Ella headed off toward the next obstacle, four hula hoops laid flat on the ground and spaced diagonally. But Peony hadn’t moved.

  Ella frowned. “Maybe if you do that clucking thing again.”

  The quiet, encouraging chirrup from Merry got Peony walking forward. Working together, Ella and Merry coaxed the mare through the rest of the obstacle course. There were some stops and starts, and a major stumbling block at the low jump Jo had set up—no more than a foot off the ground, but it required Peony to pick up her hooves farther than was natural, and all she wanted in the world was to walk around it.

  But with every obstacle successfully passed, Ella felt her confidence grow. She could look at Merry and know what her sister was thinking, how they should move together to encourage the mare in the right direction.

  By the time they reached the final obstacle, Ella and Merry were both walking beside
Peony, each with a guiding hand on the mare’s gleaming reddish-brown neck.

  Jo waited for them at the end of the course, ready to slip the worn red rope halter over Peony’s patient head. Merry held out an insistent hand for the lead rope, and Jo handed it over with a grin. She hesitated only a moment before slinging an arm around Merry’s shoulders and giving her a squeeze.

  “Well done, both of you,” Jo said.

  For the first time since they’d hit the island, Ella watched her mother and sister together, and didn’t feel like a puppy with her nose pressed up against the pet store window. Still so connected with Merry that she could feel her sister’s pride and giddiness at impressing Jo Ellen like a warm lump in her own throat, Ella stroked her hand along Peony’s back and smiled.

  “That was harder than I thought it would be,” she confessed as Grady rode up to their little group.

  “The first time Jo told me I had to get Voyager over those hula hoops without a lead rope, I thought she was nuts,” he said, leaning down to give his gray gelding a friendly slap on the shoulder. “But it was kind of amazing. Got me out of my head for the first time in what felt like forever.”

  “Where did you get the idea for the obstacle course?” Ella asked, glancing at Jo.

  Jo Ellen’s eyes flickered with shadows for a moment, but she answered easily enough. “In rehab, actually.”

  Ella controlled a wince. She really hadn’t been trying to ruin the moment by bringing up such a sore subject. But before she could apologize, Jo lifted her chin in an eerily familiar gesture.

  “No, it’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it. The year after y’all left was the worst of my life, and I easily could’ve spiraled down. The clinic Aunt Dottie got me into changed all that.”

  If she were ruthlessly honest with herself, Ella had to admit she wasn’t sure she’d be able to talk about her past mistakes so openly. Wanting to know more, she asked, “Where was the clinic?”

  Jo’s face took on a remembering cast. “Just outside Winter Harbor. The director had a deal with a young man who runs a horse rescue operation next door to the clinic. He takes in stallions from the racetrack, or horses that local authorities find suffering from neglect or abuse, and fosters them, retrains them and gets them healthy, until they can be adopted. It’s a nonprofit deal, so he always needs volunteers, and in exchange for help around the barn, he lets the clinic’s therapists and patients use some of the more stable horses in different therapies.”

  “Like the obstacle course.” Merry curled her arm over Peony’s withers as the mare stamped her hoof.

  Jo nodded. “But even just being around them felt like therapy to me. Some of those horses had been starved, beaten—you’d think that would turn them violent or aggressive. And there were a couple of horses no one could get near except Sam, the man who runs the place. But most of them?” She paused, pressed her lips together, and Ella saw that her distant blue eyes were damp. “Most of them were so gentle. They knew they’d been rescued, and they were thankful. You could feel it, every time you put out a fresh bale of hay or ran a currycomb over their hides.”

  Ella felt the sting of unshed tears behind her eyes. The connection Jo had felt with those horses was obvious. Even more obvious was that the entire experience had truly altered the course of her life.

  It couldn’t have been easy to share all that, Ella knew. Especially considering that Jo was well aware of Ella’s bitterness and lingering anger … but she didn’t feel bitter or angry right now. She looked at her mother and saw a woman with deep flaws who’d made terrible choices and damaging mistakes—but who’d worked hard to overcome them.

  “I think I get it,” she said, as clearly and honestly as she could. “Thank you for showing me this. I’ll never forget it.”

  Merry reached over Peony’s back to squeeze her shoulder, and Jo’s hopeful smile was like dawn breaking after a bad storm, almost too bright to look at directly. Scrambling for distance, Ella plastered on a grin and stepped back.

  She caught Grady’s gaze and swallowed hard at the expression of peace relaxing his handsome face.

  Suddenly, an idea percolated in her brain, fizzing and popping with enough possibilities to make her dizzy.

  She needed more information, needed to do more research—and she was almost out of time. The reality of her looming departure hit her hard, and to cover, she gave Grady her best smile.

  “So now that we made it through the obstacle course, have I earned the chance to try actually getting up on a horse?”

  CHAPTER 25

  Progress, Grady decided, ducking as the trail Voyager followed took them under a low-hanging branch. They’d definitely made progress.

  He twisted in the saddle to check on Ella. She and Peony followed along behind Voyager, nose to tail. Grady was glad to see that her white-knuckled grasp on the reins had eased up. Instead of staring fixedly at the ground far beneath her booted heels, she was relaxed enough now to take in the scenery with bright, curious eyes.

  As if sensing his stare, she turned her head and caught him. “Hey, watch the road!”

  Just to wind her up, Grady cocked a brow and leaned a casual hand on Voyager’s rump. “Don’t need to. This guy’s watching it for me.”

  She struggled with that for a moment—he could practically feel her desire to argue that if he wasn’t in complete control of his mount at all times, Voyager might mindlessly wander off the trail and fall over a cliff or something.

  Finally, she settled for, “How far are we going?”

  Grady frowned. “Not having fun?”

  She sounded surprised when she replied, “Actually, I am. Trail riding is easier than I expected. Way easier than the obstacle course.”

  “Sure.” Grady shrugged and cracked his back with a mighty torque of his ab muscles before facing front again. Tilting his face enough for the breeze to carry his words back to her, he called, “Out on the trail, all Peony wants to do is keep up with Voyager. She’ll follow him anywhere. And all he wants is to get back to his stall and a nice handful of oats. So while we head away from the barn, our pace is going to be slow and easy. The real fun comes when we turn back—because Voyager will know, trust me. And I’ll be holding his head the whole way home, fighting to keep him from galloping flat out.”

  “Don’t they like trail riding?” He could hear the worry in her voice, and it made him want to smile. She was a lot more tenderhearted than she liked to let on.

  “They don’t mind it,” he assured her. “Some horses like being out and about more than others. This big guy’s used to going out in the mornings and evenings—an extra hike in the middle of the day feels like work to him. He’d rather be lazing around the barn, rubbing up against the mares and snoozing.”

  Grady gave Voyager an affectionate scratch along the crest of his mane. “But he’s my boy. He’s never turned me down for a ride yet.”

  “You seem like you make a good team,” Ella said, pausing delicately. Expectation thrummed in the air between them.

  After watching Ella work with her sister and Peony earlier, and hearing Jo’s story again, it wasn’t as hard to talk about this as he would’ve thought.

  “Maybe it sounds corny, but Voyager healed me. Working with him, being around him, it’s like we’re partners.” Grady shook his head. “After the accident, part of me thought I’d never have that again. That maybe I didn’t deserve it. But Voyager doesn’t give a crap about any of that. He trusts me, whether I deserve it or not.”

  During the short silence that followed, Grady tipped his head back and enjoyed the warmth of the sun on his face as they passed through the copse of trees and out into the open marsh. They passed a snowy egret, startling it into ungainly flight.

  “I’ve never been much of an animal person,” Ella said. “I don’t hate them or anything, but I didn’t really get it. After this morning, though…”

  Her voice was so soft and thoughtful, he could barely hear her over the thrush of wind through the prickly
pear plants topped with their showy yellow flowers, the distant lap of waves against the shore. Grady checked to see where they were.

  Oh, perfect.

  Clicking his tongue against his teeth in a signal Voyager knew well, Grady guided them off the well-trodden path and around the back side of the pond that served as one of the wild horse bands’ favorite watering holes. He led them to a sandy rise of land just above the pond and dismounted, looping Voyager’s reins over the pommel of his saddle. Unfazed, Voyager lowered his head to dig into his favorite snack of salt marsh cordgrass.

  “Don’t you need to tie him up?” Ella asked, pulling nervously at the reins and causing Peony to shake her head and back up.

  Grady grabbed the mare’s bridle smoothly and nodded at Ella to drop the reins. “Nah. As long as the supply of grass holds out, he won’t wander far. Need a hand down?”

  She held her arms out to him in answer, and Grady felt something tighten in his chest at the implicit trust. He could be wrong, but he was pretty sure when she first came to Sanctuary, a question like that would’ve resulted in a short, polite refusal—a refusal to be touched, to admit she needed help, that she wasn’t perfectly in control at every moment.

  And now, nearly two weeks later, Ella Preston was a soft, supple weight in his arms, sliding down his body and laughing a little breathlessly when her legs wobbled.

  “Oof! Who knew sitting around while the horse did all the work could be so tiring? My thigh muscles are like jelly.”

  “It’s one of the big misconceptions about horseback riding,” Grady said, enjoying the feel of her slim hips in his palms. He wasn’t letting go until she made him, and from the way she grasped at his shoulders, he didn’t think that was going to be anytime soon.

  “I guess I was squeezing my legs pretty hard to stay on. Probably harder than I needed to.”

  “No, that’s good,” he told her. “Lots of beginners try to keep their balance by hanging on to the horse’s mane, or sawing at the reins, which brutalizes the poor horse’s mouth. You’ve got a very natural seat.”