“You probably should have let my mom get the babysitter,” she said.
“I don’t know,” Aiden said. “Seemed like a shame for her to spend all that money. I mean . . . I’m right here. And I want to get to know you two anyway.” He paused, realizing he had just told a small untruth. He wanted to get to know Elizabeth. He needed to get to know Milo, but he dreaded it. “Why? Did I just mess him up really bad?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. He’ll be okay. He’d be just as likely to have that much trouble with the babysitter. I just meant . . . for you. You might be sorry you offered.”
Smokey nickered softly in his stall, impatient because he could hear Aiden’s voice. Aiden instinctively moved down the aisle to where the stallion stood with his head extended over the stall door. He stroked the animal’s long face.
“I’m not sorry I offered,” he said.
It wasn’t true. Not really. But he wanted it to be true so badly. Maybe he could make it true. Grow into it somehow.
The girl came closer to Smokey and reached a tentative hand out, and Smokey extended his soft nose to meet it.
“What happened to him?” Aiden asked. Then he wished he could snatch the words back again.
“Well. Our dad. You know . . . abused him.”
Aiden wanted to ask, “Abused him how?” And also he did not want to ask it. Above all he knew it was not his business to ask such a thing. And that if he ever felt it was, he should ask Gwen. Not her daughter.
“Yeah. Got it. Never mind. None of my business anyway. You want to ride?”
“Smokey?” she asked, her eyes wide with fear.
“No. No, I didn’t mean Smokey. He might be a little above your pay grade, if you know what I mean. I was thinking that little pony mare you rode the first time you were here.”
“Yes! I want to. I’d love to. Where is she?”
“Out in pasture. But she’ll come when I call. Just do me a favor. I’ll go get her and tack her up. But run inside for a minute and make sure Milo is right where we left him. Okay?”
By the time Elizabeth came back, Aiden had the little gray mare, Penny, tied to the hitching post in front of the barn. The pony stood with her head down—as far down as the lead rope would allow—eyes partly closed.
The girl gave Aiden a thumbs-up, and he felt something in his gut relax.
“He’s just watching TV,” she said.
“Good. Come on in the barn. I’ll show you how to tack up your own horse, so you can ride whenever you want.”
They walked into the barn together, and Aiden opened the tack room door. They stepped into a sea of western saddles on racks, bridles—some plain and serviceable, some show-fancy—hackamores, breast collars, cinches. Lassos and other, more everyday ropes.
“Is he sick?” Aiden asked. It surprised him. He’d had no idea that he was about to mention Milo, or even that he still had the boy on his mind. “Physically, I mean. He’s just so skinny. I know he doesn’t eat much, but . . . does anybody know why not?”
“My mom had him to the doctor about a hundred times.” She was looking up and around at all the tack as though he’d led her into a room full of gold and jewels and told her to take what she wanted. “But they don’t really know. They said he had something called ‘failure to thrive.’ Or at least one doctor did, anyway. But nobody knows exactly what that is. I mean . . . the doctors must know something about it. But they just use those words to cover up the fact that they don’t know why he isn’t. Thriving. That’s what I think, anyway. But they can’t find anything real. Or, you know . . . in his actual body. So we figure it’s more about what upsets him. Not about being really sick.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“No, it’s okay. I didn’t mind. He would’ve minded. If he was here. He hates it when people talk about him like that. But he’s in the house, so what’s the difference?”
Aiden nodded, suddenly needing to know for a fact that Milo was indeed in the house. He took down the mare’s saddle and hung a bridle over its horn.
“Here,” he said. “Carry this out to where I have her tied. I’ll be right back.”
He waited a moment after handing it to her, to make sure she was up to its weight. But she hoisted it above waist level and lugged it out into the sun.
He walked quickly to the house. Threw the front door wide. The raucous sound of the TV greeted him again. It had been turned back up to max. Slowly—and quietly for reasons that made no real sense—Aiden crept to the doorway of the TV room. With a jolt to his belly, he felt himself suddenly sure that the room would be empty. That Milo would be outside somewhere. Missing.
He could already feel the sense of déjà vu. That nagging feeling that when he finally tracked the boy down he would be sorely sorry he had taken his eyes off Milo. Even for a few minutes.
Just like last time.
He stuck his head through the door.
Milo was collapsed on the couch, much as before, his eyes glued to the screen. He looked up at Aiden for just a brief second. Maybe even a fraction of one. Then he looked away.
Once he got Elizabeth up into the saddle, Aiden no longer felt comfortable leaving her alone to go check on Milo. Although one time he had her ride beside him right up to the front door, then stuck his head inside and listened for the TV. He could see one sneakered foot through the doorway into the TV room.
“We’re good,” he told her.
They began to do their best to let the girl ride.
What he really wanted was to mount a horse of his own—Smokey, oddly enough for a stallion, was the one who had grown to tolerate his fear reactions—and ride with her. They could have gone all through the woods, up the hills and down again. They could have waded through streams. It would have been something like the old days, when Aiden’s new stepfather had gone riding with him.
In other words, if only there were no such thing as Milo. Or, more charitably, if only Milo had wanted to ride as well. Aiden consciously corrected his brain onto a more magnanimous course of thinking.
“Ride her down to that creek,” Aiden said. “You can gallop if you want. But when you get down there, give her a free rein and let her take a drink if she needs one.”
“What creek?” Elizabeth asked, squinting into the sun and shading her eyes with one hand. Her helmet was comically floppy. She had to hoist it up off her right eyebrow now and then.
“Well, you can’t see the creek from here. But you can see that line of trees.”
“Oh. Right.”
“And I can see you from here. So I’ll know you’re okay.”
“I can gallop?”
“Sure. Just be aware of your pony. It’s okay if she gets a little sweaty. We’ll cool her off and give her a nice sponge-down after. But watch her nostrils. And listen. If she’s blowing, that’s too much. If you can feel her sides heaving, walk her. Right away. That would mean you’re overdoing it. If you tune in to her, you’ll know. You’re on her back. You have no idea how much she knows about you when you’re on her back. The slightest shift of your weight. If you’re afraid. Try to be almost that sensitive to her.”
He looked up to see Elizabeth staring at him, a curious look on her face.
“She knows when I’m afraid?”
“Absolutely she does.”
“How does she know what I’m feeling?”
“There are little tells. There’ll be more tension in your thighs. You’ll grip her sides more tightly without realizing it. Your hands’ll harden on the reins. But . . . I don’t know. There might be more to it than that. I think they literally sense us in some ways I can’t explain. Any time an animal is domesticated . . . well, their whole life is about getting along with people. But we can’t talk to each other. So they learn us in other ways. It’s like if a person loses their sight. Their other senses become stronger. I think we develop whatever senses we need to get by in the world.”
“Hmm,” Elizabeth said.
She wa
s not riding away. She did not seem inclined to ride away.
“‘Hmm,’ what?”
“I wonder why it doesn’t work both ways. We can’t talk to them. Why don’t we grow extra senses to know what they’re feeling?”
Aiden sat with the question for a moment. Not really thinking of an answer. Just letting it rattle around inside him. He could tell her that it wasn’t unheard of. That it occasionally worked both ways.
And he would, most likely. But not today.
“Because we’re on top,” he said. “Unfair but true. They have to please us. Not so much the other way around.”
“I want to please this pony,” she said.
“Good.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to gallop down to the creek.”
“Ask her.”
“How?”
“Put your heels to her sides and ask her to do it. If you’re paying attention, you’ll know if she’s enjoying herself or not.”
Without taking time to reply, Elizabeth lifted the reins and galloped off. He watched them grow smaller in the shimmering sun. She stopped the pony at the creek, and seemed to wait. But the gray did not drop her neck and drink. Aiden hadn’t assumed that she would. He just wanted to train the girl well. Right from the start.
They rode back to him again at a bouncy trot.
“She likes to run,” Elizabeth announced proudly.
“Not surprised,” Aiden said. “It’s in her nature.”
It might have been the third trip to the creek and back when Aiden began to get the uneasy feeling, or it might have been the fourth. It was hard to remember, even in the moment. And there was no outward tell of trouble. No clear sign that anything was wrong.
It was more a rising sense of panic in Aiden’s gut.
It was a familiar panic. It wasn’t his. That was also familiar—to feel something that clearly did not belong to him. That came to him across the space between himself and other living things.
Elizabeth was out of shouting range, but he waved his arms wildly to get her attention. He wanted her to ride back to him, and fast, so he could go check on Milo.
She didn’t see him.
The discomfort spiked in his belly. And in his chest. He felt breathless.
He thought of leaving her alone. Running inside to see if the boy was still in front of the TV. But maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was a couple of his mares squaring off over some issue of a hay feeder or dominance in a group pasture.
What if Elizabeth fell while he was gone? Got in some kind of trouble? And then what if it turned out that there was no real reason to leave her alone in the first place? How would he explain himself? To Gwen, to his own conscience? To the deputy sheriff, if there was another hospital visit involved?
Aiden broke into a sprint in the hot sun. The moments, his strides, stretched out. Time began playing that trick Hannah had warned him about. He wished he had her ticking clock with him now, to keep the seconds right-size. Scrub oak trees flashed by in his peripheral vision, their leaves streaked by motion and lack of focus.
His chest began to heave—the warning sign he had told Elizabeth to watch for in her horse. He ignored it.
“Elizabeth!” he shouted when he thought he might be in range. When it made sense to do so.
Her pony spooked and skittered sideways three steps, but the girl stayed on.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Jump down. Walk your pony back. I have to go check on Milo.”
He froze for a second or two. Maybe three. He had to watch her feet touch the ground. He had to know she was safe. He was responsible for her.
Then again, he was responsible for Milo. And he had left the boy alone.
There was an agonizing pause as the girl considered dismounting. She seemed to approach it like a puzzle. Take a minute to make a plan. Though it was likely more of a second. Still, it felt hours long to Aiden.
Then she swung a leg off the little mare’s back, and her foot touched the earth.
Aiden ran for the house.
About halfway there, he heard it. A yelp of pain. A sharp cry that split the air, that cleaved something in Aiden’s midsection.
It was not a human cry.
Aiden followed the sound. He found Milo in the front yard.
With Buddy.
The boy had found a rope lasso, which he had looped around the poor trusting dog’s neck. That in itself might not have been so bad. It might almost have been a decent collar-and-leash substitute if Aiden had used it. But it was prone to tighten if pulled. It needed to be handled with care. Milo was handling it with rage. Yanking the dog back and forth, so much so that poor Buddy had to splay his legs and swing his body to keep from flying off in one direction or the other and choking from the pressure. The dog could not seem to override the tendency to pull back to get away, which tightened the rope further.
As Aiden ran, before he could reach out to them, before he could stop it, Milo looked over his shoulder. Looked right into Aiden’s face.
Then he gave the rope another sharp tug.
The dog yelped in pain, and Aiden felt that pain from the base of his throat all the way down to his groin and down the insides of his thighs. As though someone were splitting him with a sharp knife.
Then he was upon the boy, but he didn’t apply his own brakes. He just crashed right into Milo, and the boy went down. It wasn’t until Milo was sent flying through the air that Aiden remembered the broken arm, and the chance of reinjuring it. But through some unearned moment of luck, the boy landed on his left side.
The rope tumbled out of Milo’s hand.
Aiden grabbed the end of the lasso and hurried to Buddy, who wagged his tail. It was firmly tucked between the dog’s hind legs, mostly hidden under his rounded, bony back. But still he wagged it. Aiden loosened the rope and pulled it free, and the dog lowered his head and gasped air.
Aiden examined Buddy’s neck carefully.
He had a couple of rope burns, one that was just deep enough to weep a clear fluid and a little blood. If the dog had come here with more of a hair coat, it might have protected him. As it stood, Buddy was scraped up. Okay on balance, but slightly injured.
Aiden straightened and turned back to Milo, utterly blind in his rage. The boy was still sprawled in the dirt. He looked up at Aiden. Aiden looked down at him. The boy was smart enough to be afraid.
Aiden leaned down and lassoed Milo around the neck with the rope.
He would go back a hundred times and explain that he wanted only to show the boy how it felt to be so afraid. So abused. That he only wanted Milo to feel the fear that Buddy had felt.
And it was true that he had no intention to injure Milo. But the truth in that moment was that Aiden had lost control. He was outside his body and out of his mind.
Anything could have happened.
Milo stumbled to his feet, eyes wide.
“You think that’s fun?” Aiden shouted, leaning close, his fist tight on the rope. The boy’s eyes blinked and squinted at the ferocity of the words. “You like hurting things? You think it’s a hobby to hurt my dog? How would you feel? How does it feel to you? To have someone hold this kind of power over you? And abuse it?”
And just for a split second, Aiden almost snugged up the rope.
But he didn’t. Thank God he didn’t.
A few things happened, nearly at once.
He looked into Milo’s eyes and saw far more fear than he had ever intended to inspire. He saw that he had swayed far over the line between lesson teacher and aggressor. And just in that moment Milo began to cry pitifully.
Then Aiden saw movement at the corner of his eye and looked up to see Elizabeth standing at the corner of the house, watching him. Holding the reins of her pony, who was also watching.
Aiden dropped the rope.
Milo scrambled to get it off his neck, desperate and flailing, as if the rope were a boa constrictor or a thousand spiders. As it landed in the dirt with a whump and a puff of dust, the b
oy ran sobbing into the house.
Aiden stood. Stood almost as though unable to do anything else besides stand. Stood as if rooted to the dry ground as surely as the scrub oaks. He looked up into Elizabeth’s eyes.
“I wasn’t going to hurt him,” he said. “I didn’t want to hurt him.”
The second sentence was absolutely true. The first may have involved some wishful thinking. He certainly had never wanted to. But there was some luck involved in the fact that he hadn’t.
“Is the dog okay?” she asked. Shyly.
For one horrible moment, Aiden assumed she was gone from him. That she would never trust him again. That he now had two potential stepchildren who neither liked nor trusted him. Two wedges where there should have been family forming. Where there could have been love.
“He has some rope burns on his neck,” Aiden said. He looked down to see Buddy crouched at his side. The dog was leaning against Aiden’s leg, and Aiden hadn’t felt him. Not physically. He still felt the dog’s pain and fear, but that was everywhere. Aiden had not been aware of the actual leaning pressure of the dog’s presence. He reached a hand down and placed it on Buddy’s head. Reassuringly, he hoped. “Not too bad. I mean, he’ll be okay. But maybe he’ll only be okay because I got there when I did. I just wanted him to know how that feels. Milo, I mean. I didn’t want to hurt him. I just wanted him to see what it feels like to be that afraid.”
“He knows,” Elizabeth said.
And it was true. Aiden had seen it in the boy’s eyes. But how could someone do that, if they knew? He wanted to ask, but he had no right relying on Elizabeth to explain the world to him. And besides, his adrenaline had drained away and his words failed him.
“I’m sorry,” he said, forcing himself to speak.
Yes, he would have to go inside and say it to Milo. But first he said it to Milo’s sister.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said. “I know how he makes people feel. And you didn’t pull it tight or anything. It’s not like you hurt him.”
“But I was right there. I was right on the edge of it. I could have done it.”
“But you didn’t,” Elizabeth said.
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