by Anne Jolin
Wells was used to my brother and his outright dislike for him.
“Grant offered me a job for the summer…”
“Working with violent convicts!” Owen interjected.
I stood up abruptly, my chair legs screeching on the floor. “Everyone deserves a second chance!” I yelled, tears starting to well in my eyes.
“Aurora, baby, you have a big heart.” Wells took my hand.
“Why does everyone always make that sound like it’s such a bad thing?” I demanded.
“We just worry about you.” London’s voice dropped into that motherly tone she usually reserved for Christopher.
“You’re so naïve sometimes,” Owen growled.
Daddy stood from the head of the table. “That’s enough.” His voice boomed through the room. “Ain’t a single one of you at this table, save for maybe sweet Ryley, that ain’t been allowed to make their own mistakes in this life. That’s all part of livin’, and it ain’t gonna be any different for Aurora.”
Owen grunted but the rest of the table remained silent.
“You listen to me now, Aurora Jane.” Daddy fixed his eyes on me. “That Grant Chancey is a good man, but anythin’ happens to you on that farm of his and he’ll meet the business end of my Remington, understood?”
“Yes, Daddy.” I smiled and wiped a tear from my cheek.
“That’s settled then.” He folded back into his chair and nodded toward Rayne. “How ‘bout you pass the old man some of that garlic bread you been slavin’ over, Miss Ray?”
And later that night, after dinner, I called Grant and accepted his offer.
Edmonton, Alberta – Edmonton Remand Center
“PERSONAL BELONGINGS. ONE PAIR OF motorcycle boots, one pair of ripped jeans, one Metallica T-shirt, one pair of aviators.”
I yanked the jeans up over my bare ass and pulled the shirt over my head.
He watched, and I didn’t rush. Let him look. You lose your humility in prison in the first year and after eight, you don’t even remember what it was.
“One wallet, fifty three cents, one lighter, and one leather jacket.”
The guard slid the envelope across the desk as I shoved my feet into the boots. My toes flexed and the arches of my feet ached. It had been nearly a decade since I’d worn real shoes, and the leather felt unforgiving of the time since they’d been abandoned.
I slid the aviators onto the bridge of my nose and tucked the envelope under my left arm.
“Sign here.” He pointed to a line on the clipboard.
The blue ink bled onto the white page as I scrawled my name. It was the first time I’d written with anything that wasn’t pencil since I was a teenager.
Pens are contraband in prison.
We passed through the secure doors; the familiar sound of radio commands followed by the clicking of locks was like a sick lullaby.
The guard turned left into an office where a man with gray hair sat next to the Warden.
“Rhys, this is Grant Chancey.” Warden Marissa Ortega nodded in the direction of the man. “Grant, this is Rhys White.”
Even from across the room, his suit smelt expensive.
I cocked my head to the side.
“You understand that you are being released to the custody of Mr. Chancey as per the terms of your parole?” she asked.
I nodded.
“You understand that any violation or failure to meet the terms of your parole will result in arrest, and you will be required to serve the rest of your sentence in prison?”
I nodded again.
“Very well.” She stood, and the man did, too. He was larger than I expected him to be, and something haunting seemed to pull at the edges of his eyes.
“We are hoping for the best of success with this program, Grant.”
He shook her hand and smiled. “As am I, Marissa. Thank you.”
“Well then, he’s all yours.” The warden looked at me. “Good luck, Rhys.”
Behind the mirrored lens of my aviators, I winced. She had misplaced her faith in me.
“You comin’, son?” the man asked, and I only then realized he’d made his way to the frame of the door beside me. “Unless of course you’d rather stay here, in which case, by all means, keep that cement in your boots.”
I swung the leather jacket over my right shoulder and followed him outside.
The sun felt bright, too bright. Like somehow outside these walls, it was stronger than it had been the last eight years. My soul was scorched; maybe that’s why I’d always preferred the dark.
The man, Chancey, walked to a large, white pickup with an emblem in the center of the door and hauled himself inside, slamming the door behind him.
I stood there, rooted in the gravel parking lot. The emblem was the silhouette of a horse, and the circle surrounding it was made of chain. It was elegant, sure, but it too seemed haunting.
Chancey knocked on the glass window as he turned over the engine, and I rolled my eyes behind my lenses.
Rounding the hood, I yanked open the door and stuffed myself into the passenger seat.
“Never met a man so determined on stayin’ in prison.” He laughed as I buckled in. “You don’t talk much, eh?”
I shrugged.
“Well, that’s fine. Means you ought to be real good at listenin’ then.” He steered the truck out of the parking lot. “So best you listen now.”
Positioning the envelope between my legs, I folded my arms over my chest.
“I’ve read your file. Two counts of assault with a deadly weapon and one count of attempted murder at seventeen years old.” The barbed wire surrounding my heart got tighter, and I rolled my shoulders to ease the pain. “I don’t much care who you were back then, so long as you aren’t still that kid. Got it?”
I ran a hand through my black hair and nodded.
“You’re under parole contract with me for the next twelve months, with a potential to serve out the rest of your time at Equine for Hearts if you keep your shit together, and I like you.” His voice was deep and authoritative. He didn’t want to braid my hair and be best friends, but he didn’t treat me like I was lower than the dirt on his shoe, either.
“The terms of your parole with Warden Ortega are simple. No drinking. No fighting. No visiting establishments where alcohol is served, and no associating with known felons outside of the facility where, of course, you’ll be livin’ with ‘em.”
I nodded. These terms were included in the briefing I’d gotten at my parole hearing.
“You got curfew at ten thirty every night. If you leave the premises, you are required to let me know where you’re goin’ and to call to check in once every hour if not accompanied by a volunteer or myself.”
Stretching my legs out, I nodded again.
“Starting tomorrow, you work at six in the mornin’ until four in the afternoon. Days off are Wednesday and Sunday. You need to switch days for whatever reason, you put in a formal request with me, and I’ll see what I can do.”
I couldn’t get comfortable in the seat. The leather was too soft, and the air conditioning blasting in my face was making me sweat. My skin crawled with filth that wasn’t there, and my heart rate started to climb.
“You’re our second arrival, so you’ll be trained by Glitch or myself, with the assistance of some volunteers when time permits.”
I nodded but didn’t care for him to elaborate.
Chancey pulled off the highway and down a long, paved driveway framed by two stone pillars that held the same emblem as his truck. I’d been right—his suit was expensive but not as expensive as this place. The fuckin’ lawn looked like it had been manicured to within an inch of its life.
He turned left onto a smaller driveway that was hidden by larger trees and slowed to a stop in front of what I thought was a house.
“This is The Shed,” he said, turning off the engine and opening his door.
Didn’t look like any shed I’d ever seen. In fact, it looked bigger than any house I�
��d ever lived in.
The outside was made of wood paneling and the roof had new-looking shingles. A small porch with two chairs led to the front door, which was currently open save for the screen door, and there was a rock-faced chimney jutting out of the roof.
I grabbed my leather jacket and envelope and followed him inside.
“There are six rooms, so the facility can accommodate up to six parolees at a time, but like I said, you’re only our second to arrive. There are shared living quarters and a phone in the kitchen. The staff keeps the fridge stocked, so if you need somethin’ special, write it down on the list and they’ll dock it from your pay.” Chancey walked to the second door in the hallway and pushed it open. “This is your room, bathrooms are down the hall. There’s a toothbrush and shampoo to get you started.”
It wasn’t anything special. There was a double bed against one wall, a dresser, and a nightstand.
“Laundry is around back, and you’ll have to coordinate times with the rest of the parolees as they arrive. Glitch will show you where the boxes of extra work clothes are. Feel free to help yourself to what’s there. Like I said, you want somethin’ special, you’ll have to work for it.”
The man talked like he commanded an army.
“Go on and get settled. I’ll be back in an hour with Glitch to go over your training schedule.”
I tossed my leather jacket onto the bed.
“One last thing.” He narrowed his eyes at me from the doorway. “I’m a nice guy, Rhys, but if you fuck with the bull, you’ll get the horns. Are we clear?”
I nodded.
WHILE I HAD ACCEPTED GRANT’s job offer, I didn’t start until the first week of June. He needed time to get the program underway before he tackled the task of training me for the summer position. Which meant, for the rest of this month, I’d remain a Sunday volunteer as per usual.
“Morning, Grant.” I leaned a hip against the door to his office.
His chin tipped up to look at me and his glasses fell back to their proper position on his nose, a nose that was buried in a mountain of paperwork. “There’s my girl.” He beamed.
In the seven years I’d be volunteering at Equine for Hearts, Grant had aged considerably. He was the sole founder of the organization, but the cause took a toll on his heart. Grant’s wife had died during childbirth, and his only child, a daughter, died at the young age of fifteen. She was the victim of a drive-by shooting at a local café in Edmonton. The police caught the man who shot her; in fact he wasn’t a man at all. He was barely seventeen at the time. The shooting had been a gang initiation, and Grant’s daughter had been one of three teenagers pronounced dead at the scene.
Since the day of her funeral, Grant made it his life’s work to rehabilitate those under the influence of violence.
He believed in second chances, and I believed in him.
“How’s it going this weekend?” I asked, flicking my eyes to the stacks of paper.
Grabbing the rim of his reading glasses, he tossed them on the desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let’s just say I’ll be looking forward to having a little more help around here.”
I smiled and looked at the clock. It was nearly eight in the morning, and most of the youth and volunteers should have arrived by now.
“I’m happy to start earlier if you need me to,” I offered, but he shook his head.
“That’s all right, Aurora. I’ve got some fine-tuning that needs to be done with the new program before I can even think about explaining all of this”—he gestured to the papers littered across his desk—“to you.”
“Okay, well, I’m around if you need me,” I said. “But I better go find Josh before he decides to spray paint one of the horses.”
I could hear Grant’s laughter behind me as I walked toward the barn.
It wasn’t a short walk.
The property was almost twice the size of Willow Bay Stables and twice as swanky. Grant had spared no expense in having his family estate renovated to accommodate Equine for Hearts. While the main house and gardens were situated on the right side of the acreage, the barn and subsequent buildings for the program were situated on the left. This included a larger-than-average office, which was attached to the volunteer room. It sounded more important than it was. In all reality, it held a small kitchen that stored our lunches and a place to sit and eat if the weather outside was too hot or too cold.
Beside that was essentially two barns joined together by an enclosed walkway that took up a considerable amount of space and led out to the circular driveway and staff parking. Behind the barn were two riding arenas, a lunging arena, feed storage, and The Shed.
The Shed had been one of Grant’s newer projects (he had a fondness for projects), and I’d yet to get a chance to see the completed renovations. Originally, it had been a small house designed for the stable hands to live in back in the day, but Grant had it remodelled to accommodate the changes to the program.
I waved at a few of the volunteers as I passed them in the barn. Volunteers were easy to notice, as we were required to wear white shirts (there were also sweaters and jackets, weather permitting) with the Equine for Hearts emblem over the left breast and VOLUNTEER written in black on the back across our shoulders.
Each volunteer was properly vetted and usually assigned a youth to work with until their completion of the program. This helped the youth be able to bond with their volunteer instead of being bounced around. It was important to Grant that the youth were given the best possible chance to succeed here at Equine for Hearts, and he felt that building connections was a large part of the recipe for that success.
Scanning the barn, I found my assigned youth sulking behind a wheelbarrow. This was not uncommon.
In the last month, I’d spent most of my Sundays working with Josh Farina. His case was a special one in the sense that it differed from the normal court-ordered youth cases we saw here on a regular basis.
Josh had been caught spray-painting and vandalizing a building in the city. It just so happened that the owner of the building was Grant. Instead of pressing charges, Grant offered Josh’s parents community service at Equine for Hearts. Josh would come every Sunday for six months in exchange for essentially working off the damage he’d done.
Josh’s parents were thrilled, Josh, however, was less than.
The boy was thirteen going on thirty and an absolute brat on the best of days.
“Hey, Josh.” I moved the wheelbarrow to the side and grinned at him. “Ready to get started?”
He reached a hand up and yanked his massive headphones off his ears. “No.”
“Great,” I chirped.
Josh grunted, sliding the pencil and paper he’d been doodling on into his backpack. I looked at his hands that were almost always covered in some kind of paint or chalk and watched as he wiped them across his clean shirt.
His poor mother, I thought to myself. My momma would have tanned Owen’s hide if he’d done something like that. Though in Owen’s case, it would have been dirt.
“We’re going to muck out the back paddock and when that’s done, I’ll take you for your riding lesson. Sound good?”
“No,” he bit off.
His sarcasm practically bounced off of me, as did most people’s. Momma always said you get more bees with honey than with vinegar, and Josh needed all the sweet he could get.
“This is yours.” I tossed him a pitchfork, and the way his face twisted up you would have thought there was horse crap all the way up the handle.
He slung his backpack over his shoulder and grabbed the edges of the wheelbarrow, pouting as he stalked down the aisle way.
I didn’t bother asking him to put his backpack in the youth lockers; he wouldn’t do it, no matter how many times we asked him to. The boy treated whatever he kept in that bag like it was made of gold, but I assumed it was his current art project and an array of contraband spray-paint cans. As long as he didn’t use them to paint the horses, as I’d mentioned before, then I
was okay with him hauling it around every Sunday.
Mucking the paddocks took longer than it should have, but that was how it always was with Josh. He moved at a glacial pace even on a good day. He strived hard toward the illusion of a tortured artist. That made me his torturer, I gathered.
“Can you pass me the next bag of feed?” I asked Josh from where he sat perched in the shade as I wiped the sweat from my brow with the back of my hand.
It was unusually hot for May.
He looked up at me, pausing only slightly before turning the volume up on his headphones and looking back down at his sketch.
Pursing my lips, I adjusted the gloves on my sweaty hands and jumped down from the truck. Technically, it was still his lunch break, but it wouldn’t hurt the kid to give a lady a hand.
Bending over, I squatted low to the ground and wrapped my arms around a large bag of grain that probably weighed as much as Josh did.
“Ooph,” I grunted as I heaved it into the air.
“You need some help with that, baby girl?”
Dropping the bag onto the tailgate, I looked over the bed of my truck to see a gangly-looking boy, or was he a man, walking toward me. His brown, shaggy hair stood nearly straight up on his head. He wore some kind of basketball sneakers, and his pants looked to be two sizes too big.
My head titled to the side as I watched him yank up his pants a little more, and I bit back a grin. He looked like a pint-sized thug. A knock-off version of the real thing—not that I’d ever actually seen the real thing—and it was kind of adorable in a weird way.
It was like he’d walked off the set of The Godfather.
“Sure.” I gave a half-smile and watched as he reached in to grab the bag.
He lifted, then he stumbled backwards a few paces.
“Are you okay?” I asked, my eyebrows pulling together in concern.
The boy-man didn’t look like he’d lifted much of anything in his lifetime, let alone a heavy bag of feed.
Sweat trickled from his brow, and he flashed me a set of teeth that included one gold-cap incisor. “I got it, baby girl.”
