The Stable Affair

by Jessica Andersen

  “You’ll get no arguments on that from me, I think she’s terrific.”

  “Yeah, and she hardly remembers her father. He left them when Ellie was a baby. I guess he just wasn’t ready to do the fatherhood thing, but I say good riddance.” Dante had been on assignment when John had left his wife and child, or else he would’ve made the lying, adultering, thieving bastard eat a tripod on his way out the door.

  Sarah saw the firmly controlled violence in Dante and wholeheartedly approved. Her own parents’ selfishness had left her with the firm belief that every child deserved the full attention and love of its parents. “Well then she’s lucky to have her Uncle Danny. I was pretty much raised by Bob and Tilda and I can say from personal experience that it’s not the blood relation between a parent and child that matters—it’s the love. Ellie obviously loves you very much and you two are making yourselves a great family.” She tried not to think of how well a woman would fit in the picture. Maybe little Ellie’s pony trainer, perhaps?

  Dante grimaced. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, but it still tears me apart when she cries for her mommy at night. That’s one role I can’t fill. Only S… my sister can do that.”

  His voice was so sad in that moment that Sarah could barely stand it. She went to him and bent down to lay her cheek against his, sliding one arm around his warm chest in a half-hug. “Trust me,” she said softly. “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love in a way and a time you never expected. I know how much you want to blame yourself, blame somebody else, blame fate itself, and how much you want to undo what was done. But believe me that all you can do is keep living, knowing that the person who is gone would’ve wanted you to have the best life you can. I’m sure your sister is relieved to know that you and Ellie are taking such good care of each other.”

  Dante closed his eyes and reached up to press her closer in their partial embrace as her words flowed through him. One part of him was soothed by what she said, by the knowledge that he was doing right by Susan’s daughter. But a larger part of him wondered what his sister would think of what he had done to Sarah Taylor.

  “Uncle Danny!” Thundering feet heralded Ellie’s arrival scant moments before she slammed through the screen door of the kitchen. She scrambled to a halt when she saw Dante sitting at the kitchen table with Sarah crouched over him. “Are you guys okay? Should I go get Tilda?”

  “No, no. We’re fine, Sweetie.” Sarah straightened and surreptitiously swiped at her eyes. That was just what she needed, Ellie running to tell Tilda that she and Dante were necking in the kitchen. Sarah’s aunt would not be amused. Or would she? “We were just talking. Are you ready to get on Finnegan now?”

  Ellie beamed. “Yep. He’s all tacked, and I did most of it myself. Tilda says you should come watch now, okay?”

  “Okay.” Dante pushed himself away from the table while Ellie shot back out the door. He held a hand out to Sarah. “Shall we go?”

  In the half-light of the early summer afternoon, Dante’s lean form was outlined with the fairy dust radiance of the setting sun. As Sarah placed her hand in his, she felt as if she were the enchanted princess being led out to dance by her prince, not just a riding instructor headed out to watch a small child jounce around on a fat white pony.

  Catching the mood of the moment, Dante held the screen door aside and bowed Sarah through with a flourish and a leg before reclaiming her hand and tucking it through his elbow so they could walk down to the practice ring side by side.

  Sarah grinned and resisted the urge to skip. She was starting to love her new life.

  Late that night, when the horses were bedded down safe and the farm was quiet, a cry sounded from the small room at the top of the stairs as Sarah thrashed, caught fast in the grasping claws of a familiar dream.

  All her sins paraded past her dream eye: Jay, Susan, Noble, her parents—everyone she had ever failed to save. But the pace was different this night and the images flickered faster and faster across her wildly tracking retinas. She jerked in the bed, trying to run, to save them all, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t help.

  There was a roaring sound, like the noise of a waterfall only more consuming. She saw Noble lying bleeding in the crippled trailer, his eyes begging her to make the pain stop. But now there was a new terror—flames licked at the shattered floorboards and tongued at her horse’s aluminum-shod feet while he kicked and screamed in horror.

  Sarah screamed too, in dream and in reality, and she could smell the smoke that rose from Noble’s scorched hide as the fire began to eat at him. He cried just as Jay had just before they hit the guardrail, “Oh God! Help me—please, NO!”

  Sarah sat up in bed, heart thumping and legs aching to run anywhere, but the horror did not end with her return to consciousness.

  The sound of horses kicking and screaming didn’t stop, and the waterfall’s roar of fire wafted through Sarah’s partly open window bringing with it the smell of smoke and death as Pruitt Farm burned.

  “Fire!” Sarah leapt out of bed yelling for Tilda as she yanked on clothes and boots while running downstairs—later she would wonder how she got out of the house without breaking her neck.

  Lights were just beginning to come on in Bob’s quarters when Sarah pelted across the yard toward the burning buildings. The paddocks and hot walker were lit with hellishly weird light from flames that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  It was all too much, too fast, and for a moment Sarah didn’t know what to do. She stood frozen, listening to horses screaming in fear and watching the horror bloom on Bob’s face as he too stood motionless in the midst of total destruction.

  Then she heard a familiar cry; not Jay’s voice this time but Noble’s cry of terror. It broke her from her shocked lethargy.

  The shed row was fully involved, fire racing overhead to chase Sarah as she dashed inside and started yanking doors open, hoping that a few of the terrified horses would brave the flames and break for freedom. She yelled at Marshmallow and grabbed a hot dressage whip. She beat the sweet old pony with the whip’s rubber handle until he bolted from his home and galloped out of the barn to safety. There was no time for gentle persuasion.

  She repeated the process again and again until her arms began to ache and her lungs and eyes burned with smoke. There was a terrible groaning noise, as if a giant had come to life and was protesting his first movements, and the ceiling bulged and rippled like a live thing.

  Sarah finally reached Noble’s stall. They were the last ones left in shed row.

  The metal latch of the door singed the flesh of Sarah’s palm and she cried out in pain, inhaling more smoke as she did so. She doubled over coughing and grabbed onto Noble to keep herself upright. His hide was hot with the radiant heat of the fire.

  There was another hollow noise and the ceiling sagged lower and lower, threatening to cut off their only avenue of escape. Sarah knew she did not have the strength to drag her horse from his stall. She could barely lift her arms. She had saved Noble’s life once, wouldn’t it be ironic if she had rescued him then only for them both to die more horribly less than two years later? She swayed in defeat, knowing they wouldn’t make it out when the walls pressed closer and the heat grew so unbearable that it began to seem cool against her scalded flesh.

  She heard a scream that wasn’t hers and she found herself thrown violently against the doorframe, gasping when her bad shoulder crunched against the superheated wood and metal.

  Noble bashed her again with his head and pawed at her with a hoof, and through her burning eyes, she could see him swing his rear end toward her. With the last of her strength, she pulled herself onto his beloved back and wrapped her arms around his neck before she passed out.

  “Sarah? Sarah, come on honey, wake up now.” Her aunt’s voice penetrated the smoke that clouded Sarah’s brain, pulling her back to consciousness. She batted away the oxygen mask that kept waving in her face and struggled against the helping hands until they allowed her to sit up.
<
br />   “I’m fine, get the hell off me.” Her voice was rough from the smoke and it hurt to breathe, but she was alive.

  Unless this was hell, that is, which seemed quite possible as Sarah looked around. The fires were out but the scene was still lit by flickering redness coming from the fire trucks, ambulances, and various other pieces of rescue equipment that were scattered around the farm as if cast there by an angry toddler.

  Fat hoses snaked across the ground, crushing the cheerful flowerbeds and cutting swaths through the neatly trimmed hedges that edged the barns. The stone paths that had been raked to perfection the night before were now muddy swamps of clay and rock churned up by the rescuers’ tires and boots.

  Sarah shook her head dumbly as she took in the carnage and the dejected droop of the men and women who continued to work at soaking what was left of the shed row and one side of the broodmare barn. She could hear the hiss and crackle of pockets of fire that refused to die and she could smell the destruction.

  A flurry of hoof beats off to one side and a man’s cry of, “Get back over here, Figgie,” told her that not all of the survivors had been caught yet.

  Survivors. Sarah swung her legs off the bench and grabbed for her aunt’s hand. “Noble? Is he okay?”

  Tilda hugged her hard. “Yes, Bob’s with him now, but he seems fine. Do you remember what happened?”

  Sarah looked around again, the unspeakable horror causing her to make a weak joke. “If I had to guess, I’d say a fire.” At Tilda’s glare Sarah tried again. “Not really. I know I was in the shed row chasing all the school horses out, but I don’t really remember getting myself out of there. Was I able to lead Noble? Is that how he got free?”

  Tilda shook her head. “No. He got you out. Somehow you must’ve gotten aboard and that son of a gun galloped you right out of the barn just before it collapsed. He’s got a small burn on his left haunch where something must’ve hit him, but otherwise he seems fine.”

  Almost Noble may have been fine, but Tilda wasn’t sure she was okay. For the rest of her life she would relive those few moments when they’d all believed Sarah was trapped in the fire. The roof of shed row had begun to sag and fall with a horrible noise and then suddenly there was a horse in the doorway. Noble had to leap the last few feet to safety as the floor began to give way, but he’d made it, an unconscious Sarah clinging to his neck so hard they’d had to pry her fingers loose from his mane. But they’d made it. Tilda clung to that thought as she saw Sarah begin to realize that she’d almost died.

  “Jesus.” She’d think about that tomorrow. “I guess I owe him like five hundred pounds of carrots or something, don’t I?”

  Tilda hugged her niece again, needing the reassurance that Sarah was really alive and in one piece. “Why don’t you stay here for a moment and rest, or go on up to the house if you want. I’m going to take care of a few things here.”

  “Wait.” Sarah held out a hand to stop her aunt. “What happened? What burned? Are any of the horses hurt?”

  “Sarah, Honey. We’re still working on putting all the fires out, it’ll be a bit before we know all that. Just the shed row and the broodmare barn were damaged, and you got all the horses out of the shed row in time. They’re not all caught yet, but the ones I’ve seen running past seem fine. You did a good job, Sarah, and I thank you for it.” Tilda’s eyes flashed and she shook Sarah hard before hugging her again. “But if you ever risk your life again for even one of those animals, I’ll kill you myself, you got that?”

  “Trust me, if I’d stopped to think for a moment, I wouldn’t have gone in. Well, maybe for Noble, but not for the others.” But Sarah knew that was a lie. Those horses depended on humans for their comfort and safety and she would never abandon an innocent creature—not even that evil chestnut pony mare in the second to last stall.

  There was a rumble of shouts over near what was left of the broodmare barn and Sarah peered through the lightening dawn to see Bob and a few of his men clustered around a downed horse.

  Sarah stood on wobbly legs and was surprised to find that she was barefoot. Her boots lay over near the ambulance and when she pulled them on she noted with dull horror that the soles had melted through in places. With a crawling shudder she followed her aunt over to Bob.

  “We only lost the one.” His words were meant to comfort, to imply their luck in having had so few fatalities, but losing just one was horrific enough. Sarah looked down at the motionless form and for the first time since she awoke from her prophetic dream, she began to cry.

  “Who was it?” Sarah tried to identify the horse, but soot and burns marred the once proud hide. The bulging stomach told her it had been a double tragedy: the mare had been close to term with her foal. “Was it an outside mare or one of ours?” As much as she hated the thought of losing one of their broodmares, Sarah dreaded the thought of telling proud owners that the horse they had so confidently sent to Pruitt Farm had perished with its foal.

  “Sarah, I’m sorry. It was Peekaboo.” Tilda lifted tear-drenched eyes to her niece. “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  Sarah bowed her head. Peekaboo had been one of the first horses she had shown after outgrowing her pony and she had spent many quiet hours with the gentle chestnut mare, telling her all about her life and the stress of being a human teenager.

  When Tilda had offered Sarah the chance to breed Peekaboo the previous year, Sarah’s therapist had seen it as something for her to look forward to, something she could focus on in the future rather than keep looking back on the past. So she had done it, choosing a stallion she was partial to and making the arrangements to have Peekaboo bred. If the baby was nice, Sarah had thought she might train it and show it after she retired Noble.

  But not now. Now they were both dead—mother and baby. Or were they? Out of the corner of one burning eye, Sarah saw the mare’s ribs heave and quiver once, twice, and again. “Bob!”

  “Yeah, I saw it. Everybody stand back!” He yanked his utility knife out of its sheath. “Help me straighten her out.”

  “What is it? What are you doing?” Tilda hadn’t been paying attention to the mare. She’d been looking around the sloppy mess that had been a painfully neat farm the day before.

  “Help me hold Peekaboo’s legs away, the baby may still be alive in there.”

  Bob took a deep breath and muttered a short prayer before setting to work. He held his thumb and forefinger on the blade of the knife so that only a short point was available to cut. Sarah knew that he would have to be careful to slice through Peekaboo quickly enough to save the baby, but not so deeply that he hurt the foal.

  The furry hide over the mare’s belly was tough, matted with the last of her winter coat and the mud and soot of the fire. Bob sawed through that, and through the thin layer of rubbery muscle, membrane, and fat that protected her internal organs.

  Sarah clamped her jaw when bile rose in her throat from the fetid smell that arose from Peekaboo’s abdominal cavity. Bob carefully pushed away the eager loops of intestine. When they wouldn’t stay gone, he muttered a curse and pulled them out of the mare, gagging at the slimy feel of the cooling ropes.

  It wasn’t hard to identify the mare’s uterus. Bulging with a foal only a week away from term, it took up most of the space available inside the dead horse. Bob grabbed what looked like a little foot and gently, very gently, set to work freeing the little horse from its mother.

  He grinned when the foot yanked away. “It’s still alive. Can somebody get more light in here?” Several hands had already fetched the bright halogen lamps used to light nighttime foalings, and Sarah tipped one to shine on Bob’s work.

  “Where is Doc? Is he on his way?”

  “I paged him, he should be here any minute.”

  The crowd surrounding Bob and the dead mare grew quiet and still as he carefully worked the foal free of its mother. Sarah became aware of someone standing at her shoulder and turned to acknowledge the person.

  But it wasn’t a person. It was one o
f the loose horses. A ripple of wonder skittered through the humans as they realized that all of the horses that had been loosed in the chaos of the fire were quietly gathered near Peekaboo, watching her child be brought into the world.

  When it was done, the horses all allowed themselves to be caught and led back to their own stalls or to temporary stabling that would be used until the shed row could be rebuilt.

  Peekaboo’s baby, a little pinto filly with the color of her sire and the gentle eye of her dead mother, stood alone on wobbly legs while Doc examined her in the feeble light of early morning.

  She would be given frozen colostrum, then they would find a wet nurse for her, but the little filly had little chance for survival. She’d missed that first critical nursing—the one that contained all the antibodies and immunities the baby would need to stay infection-free until her own immune system kicked in.

  Sarah turned away, knowing that her work had just begun, both with the little horse and with the shattered farm. “When you’re done with the baby, put her in with Marshmallow for company. Pat Logan is shipping the wet nurse mare in at ten, the filly should be okay until then as long as we keep her warm and give her the frozen stuff. I’ll put Philippe on that.”

  She caught up with Tilda and the fire marshal near the remains of the shed row.

  Marshal Dodds was apparently apologizing to Tilda for not being more supportive of the horse-handling clinic she had held for local firefighters. “Well, I guess that training paid off after all. I thought it was pretty stupid at the time, but it helped that my people knew how to halter your horses and to put them out in the paddocks far away from the burning buildings. Maybe we’ll have to make an annual event of it.”

  Tilda just grunted. “What happened? Can you tell yet? Why didn’t the alarms go off?”

  “Well, we’re not exactly sure what happened yet, but the fires seemed to have originated in two places: in a small room at the center of your shed row building, and upstairs in the attic of that other, bigger barn. Most everything in the shed row was pretty burned up but we found some rags and a kerosene jug out behind the other one. Is there any reason you’d have kerosene in the barns?”