by Julia London
Macy squealed with delight. “José! How is he? What is he doing? Is he okay?”
Finn laughed. He reached across Milo and squeezed her shoulder. “He damn near had a heart attack when he saw me, but he’s okay now. And he’s coming back to work with me as soon as I am on my feet.”
“That’s fantastic! I can’t wait to see him. But Finn…just like that, without telling anyone, you decided to go up to Dallas-Fort Worth?”
“I guess a little like that,” he admitted, and told Macy about his abrupt departure. He told her about his uncertainty when he didn’t hear from her, which made her flinch. He told her about the argument with Brodie, about taking off with no real purpose but then deciding to find his horses. He told her about finding José, and teared up a little when he related how the old man had fallen to his knees with a prayer of thanks to the Virgin Mary for the miracle of Finn’s survival.
Finn did not tell Macy about the night he left the Gaines ranch and stayed in a Motel 8 on the highway, or the dream of a missile blowing Nasir to bits. He didn’t tell her about drinking well past the point of coherence, or how he woke up sick with José leaning over him, scolding him in Spanish. He didn’t tell her how shamed he’d been, or how frightened he was because he didn’t remember much of anything or even recognize himself anymore.
He didn’t tell her that the next day he’d pulled the mangled piece of paper Brodie had given him from his pocket and called the number scribbled on it. He’d come back to Austin and met with Dr. Rock, and after just one meeting, Finn had felt a little bit of hope.
He was also making new plans about where to go from here. But he wanted Macy with him. He wanted Macy’s partnership, her love, her smile to start his day, and he didn’t know how to get that across but to show her.
Macy listened with rapt attention as he talked, pushing Milo’s snout from her face from time to time when the dog was feeling affectionate. “Wow,” she said when he’d told her all that he would. She shook her head and looked out the window a moment. “I’m so sorry,” she said, so low that he almost didn’t hear her. “God, Finn, I wish I could go back. I wish I could take back the decisions I made after you supposedly died.”
Finn hoped she meant Wyatt, but it was a pointless hope. “I guess Granddaddy was right,” he said. “No such thing as a single wish, because once you wish it, another one is born. Every wish is really two wishes.”
“I guess,” she said, and hid her face in Milo’s neck. A moment later she looked up and forced a smile. “Where are we going?”
“Almost there,” he said.
Finn pulled into a drive that wound around some live oak trees and ended in the parking lot of a very large and very brown corrugated-metal building. Two glass doors marked the entrance and a sign above them read LOCKHART VETERINARY AND ANIMAL HOSPITAL. Macy had heard Luke had moved south to be closer to rural areas that needed veterinary services for large animals. Luke specialized in ranch animals.
Finn got out of the truck; Milo leapt out after him and went racing around the corner. “What’s going on?” Macy asked as she stepped out. “Are you going to work with Luke?”
“Nope.” He smiled, took her by the elbow, steered her to the entrance, and ushered her into ice-cold refrigerated air. At the counter, a woman in scrubs patterned with playful cartoon dogs took them back to the pens where Luke was working. The clinic was one wide central corridor lined with livestock pens.
They walked past two pigs, which stuck their snouts between the rungs of the gate and sniffed at them. There was a cow, chewing her cud, which hardly seemed to notice them at all. One pen held what looked and sounded like an entire herd of bleating goats. The other pens held horses. The woman pointed to Luke, who was in the last stall with a horse.
A teenager working with Luke held the horse’s halter. The horse snorted and tried to jerk his head free of the young man’s hold, but Luke quickly injected something into the horse’s flank from an enormous syringe. “Steady, now,” he said to the horse. “Steady.” When he finished, he rubbed the area he’d injected.
The horse, and a smaller horse in an adjacent stall, looked emaciated to Macy. Their ribs were visible, their coats dull, and patches of bare skin could be seen on the smaller one. Finn reached through the gate and stroked the nose of the smaller one.
“Hey!” Luke said, noticing them as he stood up. “You made it.” He walked out of the stall and paused to kiss Macy’s cheek like he used to do before Finn had gone away, just like nothing had changed.
“Hi, Luke,” Macy said warmly. “What a great clinic!”
“Been open a year,” he said proudly. He glanced over his shoulder at the young man in the stall. “Okay, J.J., I think we got her done. You want to feed those ornery pigs?”
“Do I have to?” the young man asked as he came out of the stall, but he was grinning. He nodded politely at Macy as he walked past.
Luke was wearing knee-high rubber boots and a rubber apron over jeans. He smiled happily. “Good. Okay, Finneus,” he said, looking at his brother. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
“Yep,” Finn said, still stroking the smaller horse’s nose.
“All right, then. These two are doing a lot better than they look, and they could definitely use the exercise.”
What did he mean, they could use the exercise? Macy looked at Finn, then at Luke, but as usual, the two were focused on the horses.
“What’s up with the guy who had them?” Finn asked.
“He’s in jail,” Luke said firmly. “I heard his bail was set at one hundred thousand dollars, so I’m hoping that will keep him there for a while. After that, who knows?”
“What guy?” Macy asked.
“Some jerk from down around Bandera,” Luke explained, indicating the horses with his head. “They were neglected by an ass down there who was starving them to death. He’d put them out to pasture in a field that had been grazed down to dirt. No water, no feed. Probably would have succeeded in killing them if a couple hadn’t gotten lost looking for their daughter’s house and spotted them. I know the sheriff down there, and he brought the horses up here. I’ve had them a couple of weeks now.”
Macy stared at the horses. It was inconceivable to her that someone could deliberately harm an animal. How heartless must one be to starve defenseless horses? “Why?” she asked simply.
“I don’t know,” Luke said. “Ignorance. Cruelty. I wish I knew.” He looked at the horses fondly, clearly attached to them. The larger one put his head over the gate and nudged Luke before leaning down to a bucket. “They’re doing great now,” he said, and held up a pair of apples to the larger horse. “I don’t know if they’d make good cutters, but they’d make someone a good horse.”
“I can see that,” Finn agreed. He took the apple Luke offered and fed it to the smaller horse.
“Don’t laugh, but I call them Fred and Barney,” Luke said. He glanced at Finn. “I’ve got all the tack you need right there,” he added, nodding to a wall in the back where saddles, bridles, bits, reins, and all necessary accoutrements were kept. “Take it easy and don’t run them. They can trot or canter, but it would be best to let them meander. They’ll let you know when they’re tired and ready to head on in.”
“Wait…what are we doing here?” Macy asked, looking at Finn.
Luke winked at Macy. “You have a good afternoon, Macy,” he said. “I’ll see you later.” He walked away.
Macy whirled around to Finn. “What is he talking about? Are you going to ride them somewhere?”
“Not me,” Finn said. “Us.” At that, he started toward the tack wall.
“Oh no,” Macy said. “No, no, no, Finn.”
Finn ignored her. Macy panicked. She wasn’t much of a rider. Granted, Finn had done his best to teach her, and she’d managed to do okay on Fannie and Bosco—but only when Finn was with her. She’d tried to ride Fritter once and he’d thrown her. “He knows you’re quaking in your boots, baby,” Finn had said unhelpfully that
afternoon as he’d helped her up. “Let’s get back up and—”
“No!” Macy had cried. “I won’t go near that beast!”
“Hey, don’t hurt his feelings,” Finn had said and had helped her up, then made her get back on the horse.
Just the memory of it sent her into a panic. “Finn—I can’t ride these horses.”
“Sure you can,” he said with cheerful confidence, and hoisted a saddle onto his shoulder, a saddle pad on top of that. “Piece of cake.”
“No, it’s not a piece of cake, it’s more like…like bad chili,” she pleaded with him as he stepped inside the stall. “I mean, if you want to ride, that’s great! I could do something here. Maybe sweep the stall,” she said, then looked down at the stall and wrinkled her nose. “Luke could use the help, right?”
“He sure could and that is exactly what we’re doing. We’re helping Luke.”
“Ohmigod,” Macy moaned heavenward.
Finn laughed as he stepped into the stall with the smaller horse. “You’ll be fine,” he said, and stroked the horse’s neck a moment before he put the saddle pad on the horse’s back. “And I’ll be with you.” He gave her a reassuring smile as he ducked under Fred or Barney’s neck and walked around to the other side to straighten out the pad.
“Finn,” she said a little frantically as she hopped up onto the bottom rung of the gate so she could see him. “You know I’m hopeless. On top of that, the last time I was on a horse was a long time ago—”
“Too long.”
“Yes, yes, too long! These poor horses have been abused. I don’t want to make it worse.”
Finn walked around the horse again, pausing at the gate to touch his fingertips to her face and look her square in the eye. “Think of it this way—you’re giving Barney the freedom he wants, and nothing tastes sweeter to man or horse than that. He’ll be easy for you.”
“Wait—how do you know which one is Barney and who decided I get him? I might want Fred. Did you think of that?” she asked petulantly, sensing the argument was a lost cause.
“I don’t know,” Finn said with a bit of a shrug as he picked up the bit and bridle. He glanced up, a mischievous grin on his face. “You seem like a Barney kind of girl to me.”
“I do not!” she cried, pretending to be affronted. They continued to argue whether or not she was a Barney or a Fred girl while Finn saddled up the pair of horses and Macy hung over the top railing of the gate, complaining about her clothing, her footwear, the fact that there was no place to ride around nearby.
She watched Finn as he worked—she’d forgotten just how natural this was for him. Neither horse seemed skittish. He knew how to press back when they questioned him, where to stroke them to soothe them. In only minutes, he had them both ready to ride, and Macy had to admit, both horses looked eager to be out of the stalls and the small adjoining paddock.
Finn led the big one out and tethered him. He then fetched the smaller horse, which he told Macy had to be Barney. “Didn’t you ever watch The Flintstones?” he asked. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.” He returned a few minutes later with a backpack.
“What’s that?” Macy asked.
“I had forgotten how nosy you are.”
“Some people call it nosy, others call it inquisitive.”
Finn grinned, a lovely, warm smile that creased his cheeks. “Come on over here, girl,” he said, and stroked Barney’s neck. “Barney wants out of here before the sun goes down. And I haven’t been on the back of a good horse in a long time—Dad’s old nag doesn’t count. I think I might come out of my skin if I don’t get on one soon.”
The reminder of his captivity trumped Macy’s fear of horses and with a sigh of resignation, she walked to where he stood. Barney turned his head, looking at her with one enormous brown eye, sizing her up. “Man,” she said, defeated. “He knows, Finn. He knows I can’t ride.”
Finn stepped up behind her, put his hands on her waist, and tenderly kissed the back of her neck. “Baby…trust me.”
Finn Lockhart could talk her into anything. She imagined he could talk her into jumping off a cliff if he wanted. Even now, she was the lemming, going along by putting her foot in the stirrup and allowing him to lift her up onto Barney’s back. She landed with a cry of surprise. Finn laughed and patted her thigh before he handed her the reins. “Remember the cardinal rule?”
“No crying.”
“That’s my girl!” he exclaimed and, grinning, walked to the other horse. As Macy watched him fluidly swing himself up, she realized that she’d seen Finn laugh more today than she had in all the time he’d been home. This was his element, the place he belonged. This was what made him happy.
God help her, she would give anything if she hadn’t sold his horses.
Sitting a saddle about as well as any man could do, Finn looked competent and sexy as hell as he whistled for Milo, who came charging around the building. “Let’s ride, boy,” he said to the dog, and the years melted away. Milo ran ahead of them and Finn looked over his shoulder. “Ease up a little, Macy. You don’t want to snap her head off,” he said with a laugh, and spurred Fred to move.
It hardly mattered if Macy gave Barney some slack or not—he wasn’t letting Fred leave him behind, and with a lurch forward, he trotted after the larger horse.
32
The day was beautiful, but hot. Finn liked it that way. His uncle used to say you could tell a native from a transplant because real Texans, he claimed, thrived on heat. Finn had known plenty of native Texans who didn’t like the heat, but he did. It felt good seeping into his bones.
If it hadn’t been for Dr. Rock, Finn believed he wouldn’t be where he was. He was lucky that Dr. Rock had had a last minute cancellation and could fit him in when he’d called. He’d only known the doctor an hour before Dr. Rock suggested Finn attend a group he’d started. All of them were veterans, Dr. Rock had said, all of them having the same sort of troubles Finn had described.
“What—they were presumed dead and came home to find their wives remarried?” Finn had scoffed.
“No—that would be a coincidence of huge proportions,” Dr. Rock said with a wry smile. “All of them are having trouble settling back into their old lives. As it happens, they are meeting at four today.” He’d said that at a quarter past two on Friday.
Finn didn’t want to go to any damn group. Sharing his grief and his confusion with Dr. Rock had been difficult enough, but to share it with a bunch of vets would be tantamount to admitting he was weak, and he had declined.
“Suit yourself,” Dr. Rock had said. “You’re a man. You can choose to drink yourself to death, and if you find some doctor who will prescribe pills, add that to the mix. It’s sure to kill you eventually. And while you’re killing yourself, you can alienate everyone who ever cared for you and possibly end up on some street corner begging for coins with a sign that says hungry veteran on it. Or maybe you’ll take it out on your family, a bitter vet with a big axe to grind. Or, you can take steps to put your life on track. They may be hard steps, but they will get you to where you want to be.”
“I’ll handle it,” Finn had said, and stood to go. “I just wanted something to help me sleep.”
“Fine,” Dr. Rock had answered congenially. “You’ll have to get that someplace else. In the meantime, you might consider if you are any use to Macy right now. Or maybe a better question is, would Macy have any use for you like this? Is she going to take the hard step of coming back to a soldier who has to get his drink on to sleep? Who has some lingering issues from the war and from his return, and blames her for part of it?”
“I don’t blame her—”
“Are you sure?” Dr. Rock had asked. “Because you kind of sound like you do.”
The conversation had stopped Finn in his tracks. He’d stood there, his back to the doctor, a battle waging inside of him.
In the end, he didn’t know what it was that had made him agree to go to the group session, exactly, but he’d known that if he didn
’t go, he’d end up drinking instead, because he had to fill that emptiness inside him before it grew too big.
When he’d walked into the church where the session was held and had seen the other men sitting around, he’d felt like a fool, like a weak, stupid fool. These guys were soldiers. They’d suffered through months of combat, had watched friends and comrades die. Finn had sat chained to a wall in Afghanistan, rolling a ball back and forth between a boy and a dog. He was a fraud.
When it came time for him to talk, Finn held up his hands. “Sorry for wasting everyone’s time,” he said. “I don’t think I belong here.”
“Why not?” asked one of the bigger guys, whose name, Finn would learn later, was Deon. “You think you’re better than us?”
“No,” Finn said. “Just the opposite. I didn’t do a long combat tour. My first months in Afghanistan were mostly securing supply lines. We had some sporadic engagement, but it was a lot of wait and see. I had it pretty easy compared to what you guys probably saw.”
“You’ve probably read about Finn in the paper,” Dr. Rock said casually. “He survived three years of captivity among the Taliban in Afghanistan.”
All eyes turned to him. “It sounds worse than it was,” Finn said.
But Deon gaped at him. “You are that guy?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Let me shake your hand,” Deon said, getting up and lumbering across the circle to shake his hand. “Dude, you got some grit.”
Finn didn’t think he had so much grit as luck, and said so. Another guy—Jamie—asked how it had happened. It was odd, looking back on that group session now. Strangers asking those questions made Finn uneasy. But he’d wanted to tell those guys his story, and he did.
Finn looked at Macy now. She was holding the reins too tight like she always did, chattering about a rug or something she was making of the Lockhart plaid. He thought about what that group had said to him about Macy. They’d told him to go for it, to let Macy know exactly what he wanted, how much he loved her. And then they’d told him if she couldn’t give him a straight-up answer, to take a straight-up hint and go on with his life.
