by Sherri Sand
“The corral?” Ross had called it that when he showed them the barn.
Emory started to follow him. “I’ll get his bridle.”
“No, Em!” His mom looked freaked out again, like the day they got Chance.
It was so stupid to have a horse you couldn’t even ride. He found the light switch on the wall inside the barn. Cobwebs hung from the bare bulbs and wooden beams. It was like a cool haunted house.
Braden followed the stained concrete around to the small room where Ross said the grain would be. The lid was hard to pry off, but he got it. The grain smelled good. Sweet. He carefully scooped the seeds into a dented tin bucket and started for the two big doors that separated the barn from the corral. The wooden doors hung on rusty hinges way above him and didn’t look like they’d been closed in a long time. He walked through them and back into the sunlight, swinging the bucket.
His mom still looked nervous and had one hand on top of the chipped green gate and the other holding Trevor, who wanted to climb between the metal bars. “Honey, you’re spilling the grain.”
He wanted to roll his eyes, but he was afraid she’d make them leave if he did. He stopped swinging it and started around toward the back of the barn, banging the bucket with an old spoon he’d found near the tack room.
“Stop when you see him!” his mom called out.
He didn’t look back. There was another farm with horses on the other side of the fence. He didn’t think Chance could have jumped the fence. But you never knew. He carefully looked at each horse, but none of them was gray.
His mom hollered, “Is he coming?”
Braden stepped back around the barn. “I don’t see him.”
She let go of Trevor who scrambled through the bottom rungs of the gate. His mom climbed the gate and dropped to the dirt. Emory right behind her. She looked funny, kinda hunched over, looking at each corner of the corral, as if Chance might come tearing around the barn and she’d have to run for the fence. He tried not to laugh.
Finally, she moved over to the gate that led out to the field. It took her a long time, but she got the latch open.
He waited behind her. “Come on, Mom.”
She stared across the field. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
Emory put an arm around Mom, but she sounded worried. “Dad said you’d sell him. He said you’re scared of horses and couldn’t believe you got Chance. Are you going to sell him, Mom?”
His mom looked like she wanted to say yes, but couldn’t. “No, honey, we’re not going to sell him.”
Braden dropped the bucket to the ground, but only a little spilled out. “We might as well. It’s no fun having a horse we can’t do anything with.”
She looked at him a long time. “You’re right, Braden.” She was trying to be brave. Her smile didn’t look very brave, though. “Okay, let’s go see if we can find him.” But she still didn’t move toward the gate.
He reached around her and pushed it open. “Okay, then let’s go.”
Sierra wavered. All she wanted to do was dump the bucket and herd the kids back to the car. Her brain apparently hadn’t communicated the horrible memories to her hand, because quicker than she could think, her fingers were reaching for the pail. “He’s probably hiding behind those apple trees down there.”
Braden frowned toward the trees. “Wouldn’t we see his legs?”
She squinted, trying to decipher between brush and long gray legs. “I don’t know.” She rattled the pail again and started for the far pasture. “Chaaaaaance!” The kids chimed in, then broke into a run. The tall grass separated into three distinct paths behind them.
The pail wobbled as she tried to bang the spoon against it and jog over the rutted ground to keep up. No way were the children going to get to a thousand pounds of horseflesh without her.
Braden reached the trees first. He put his hands up and turned, arms dropping. “He’s not down here, Mom.”
Where could a horse hide? Sierra scanned beyond the borders of the fence, toward the neighboring pasture and its herd of horses. Brown and black horses grazed peacefully from what she could see, but no dappled gray gelding with white socks milled among them. But then, who knew what was behind the other barn or down in that dip where the brush grew thick?
“Um, let’s try the other end of the field, past the barn.” She couldn’t believe she was in the same field with a horse—and actually searching for him. Elise would call this progress.
Braden ran beside her. “What’ll we do if he’s not there?”
“I don’t know, honey.” Sierra took a panting breath. How in the world do people on those commercials jog and talk at the same time? “We’ll have to ask Ross if he’s seen him today.”
“When will he be home, because—Mom! There’s Chance!” Braden jerked to a halt and pointed.
Sierra looked.
Nothing but grass between them and the wire fence Braden was pointing to. She looked again at Braden’s outstretched arm and followed it to the border of the field. “Where, honey?”
“There!”
A movement beyond the fence caught her eye. A dark head swiveled, sending strands of a gray stringy mane to swaying like an out-of-sync pendulum. Chance stared straight at them.
From Ross’s perfectly manicured backyard. Oh, crud.
Emory jumped and squealed while Trevor laughed that free-spirited laugh that only four-year-olds possessed, as the kids ran for the fence. Along the wire fence line, strands of pallid field grass mingled with the sculpted rich green lawn that surrounded Ross’s white farmhouse.
Chance stood in the midst of the garden paradise next to a bronze statue of a boy holding a kite. A hint of fragrance drifted in the breeze toward them.
“Wait, guys!” Sierra called out. “We don’t want to frighten him.” She sped up and grabbed Trevor by the back of the shirt. “Hold on, buddy.” Her imagination had her youngest on his back, eyes closed, face white as death with a red hoof print on his forehead. She shuddered. “Emory, Braden! Wait for me!”
Braden was in high gear. One foot barely on the brake, while the other revved the engine. He edged through the gate that separated Ross’s home from the field. “Mom, I can get him.”
“Hold on, I said!” Sierra eyed the gate—one length of wire mesh fencing hung between three boards and a post, with a swivel latch at the top. “Was this open?”
Braden shrugged, his right hand curled over the rough wood at the top of the gate, his body halfway through the enclosure. “Yeah. Can I get him now?”
She gave him a look with raised brows that negated the need for words.
He shoved back from the gate. “Oh, man!”
“Ross must have left it open.” Then she had another thought. “Braden, did you open this gate when you and Trevor were playing in Ross’s koi pond the other day?”
Guilt shadowed his face along with frustration that said he couldn’t believe she was asking him the question. “I shut it, Mom.”
Uncertainty grabbed her. Should she go with disbelief and hope the guilt would induce him to tell the truth? Or give him the benefit of the doubt? She went with disbelief. She tilted her head slightly and crossed her arms.
“I shut it!” Sullenness pressed his lids into narrow, angry slits.
Wrong approach. These were the moments that left her wishing for a do-over. “Honey, I don’t know who else would have left it open.”
“Well, I didn’t!” He shoved through the gate. Her lips pressed forcefully to call him back. But a tiny spark of fear stopped her. What if he wouldn’t come? The concern lay banked in dull embers that glowed with bits of orange and red every time Braden became surly. She was afraid one day they’d ignite, and her fears would become reality. His pain and anger over the divorce would drive him from developing into the man he held promise of becoming.
Emory vacillated, eager to follow her brother, but worry clouded her features.
Sierra knew that look. She wanted to go but didn’t want to ge
t in trouble. Sierra found herself nodding. “Don’t scare him.”
Braden walked up slowly and stopped a good thirty feet from Chance. Emory crept quietly behind him. All that fight to keep him from getting hurt and he wasn’t even within a tail’s flicker away. Trevor danced and dragged against her arm, finally standing relatively still when they reached his siblings.
The four of them stared. Chance stared right back, then dipped his head and lifted fat, velvety lips to daintily bite the last quarter inch of whatever had been growing in the soft dirt.
Sierra looked at the lush flower beds. The plants were a variety of sizes but spaced evenly except for the gap where Chance stood. Whatever it was, he had razed it. Not even a nibbled leaf lay on the bare dirt.
Chance moved on to a perfectly trimmed white-veined bush next on the buffet line. Sierra took a step forward and stopped. “Didn’t Chance have on one of those halter-things before?”
Braden looked away and a warning flashed in her mind.
She looked at her elder son more closely. “Braden, do you know where his halter is?”
He scuffed the grass. “When Trevor was throwing rocks at the fish, I gave Chance another carrot and took it off.”
Sierra stared at him, fear pinching her cheeks tight. She imagined him all alone with Chance, wrestling the straps off the giant horse’s head. A wave of nausea passed through her.
“It didn’t look comfortable,” he said.
“Please run to the barn and get it for me. And one of those ropes that hooks to it.” She ran a shaking hand over her face. They would get through this. Please, God! A prayer rose of its own volition.
He nodded, a hint of relief lighting his features. “Sure, Mom.”
It started to drizzle.
She turned back. Like a giant aphid, Chance worked on the white bush. Methodically he labored, his lips pulling and teeth crunching, carving a hole in the listing shrub. Sierra looked again at the indent in the ground where the other plant had been. “I hope Braden hurries, or Ross isn’t going to have any plants left.”
Emory watched Chance. “Can’t Ross plant more?” She grabbed her mom’s hand with an exuberant swing. “I know! We can buy some for him.”
She gave Emory a quick smile before fastening her gaze on Chance again. “That’s a great idea, sweetie.”
“Here, Mom.” Braden puffed as he ran up with the halter and rope.
Sierra took the twisted black nylon with its conglomeration of metal rings and buckles. She turned it three different directions, and finally guessed at the most likely spot to fit Chance’s ears. She walked slowly, so slowly, toward the horse, and exhaled a quavering breath when he ignored her.
She held the halter like a noose and bent—one foot in the flower bed, the other on the lawn—and reached for his lowered head. He swung away, and she jerked up to find that she was now pinched at the edge of the flower bed between the large gray horse and a mammoth hydrangea bush.
Sierra breathed in three short gasps and stared at the gray back that was at eye level and smelled damp and horsey. The heat of its body radiated toward her. Sierra reached out and tentatively pushed against Chance’s giant hip. The horse shifted his weight closer, narrowing the gap. A sparkler-like zap of panic ignited in her chest, sending bursts of light down her nerve endings. He’s only eating. He doesn’t want to hurt you.
She took a couple of hyperventilating breaths. The only exit was around the back end, and no way was she heading in that direction. Since pole vaulting wasn’t an option, the only other exit was over the leggy hydrangea behind her.
“Mom?”
She couldn’t see the kids, but a worrying edge of anxiety filled Emory’s voice.
“It’s okay, honey. I’ll be right there. Don’t move!” She surveyed the shoulder-high bush next to her, heavy with the remnants of faded blue-green flowers. “Braden? Stay there and hold onto Trevor. I’m going to go back over the fence to the pasture and come around.” Sierra’s front teeth dug into her bottom lip.
Munching the delectable ground cover, Chance took another bite and crowded a few inches closer. He took another step, ostensibly to snag a morsel on the far side of the next shrub, but he shifted his posterior toward Sierra, a large hoof missing her right tennis shoe by millimeters. Sierra leaped for the hydrangea. Three difficult steps into the thick-stemmed bush, and she knew she’d made a big mistake.
“What in the blue blazes is that woman doing?” Ross stood frozen at the picture window. The horse was grazing on his favorite begonia and Sierra looked like she was trying to swim through his hydrangea bush. The pair was wrecking all his hard work! Teeth clenched, he stormed out the back door. A pop on the rump encouraged Chance to saunter a few steps away, where he began to nibble the climbing wisteria, giving Ross room to approach Sierra.
He surveyed the mangled plant. “A machete would have been a lot easier.” The hydrangea was one of the few original plants he’d kept from his mother’s yard. It colored many of his childhood memories.
“I’m sorry, okay?” She sounded fearful and annoyed with a third of the bush crushed under her feet and twisted around her thighs. “I thought my safety was a little more important than a plant.”
“You weren’t in any danger. This horse isn’t—”
And then the bare dirt caught his eye. A naked spot where an heirloom honeysuckle used to grow. His mother’s treasured honeysuckle—he laced his fingers on top his head and tilted his chin up. Lord, if You don’t help me, I’m going to strangle someone. Someone being a somewhat attractive—okay, amazingly attractive—woman who obviously didn’t know a darned thing about horses.
He took a deep breath and prodded the dirt with the tip of his boot. He could never replace that plant. His mother was going to be devastated.
Sierra attempted to step back, but the thick stalks had twisted around her shoe. She swayed, trying to pull her foot clear. He reached to catch her, but she regained her balance, though she wasn’t any closer to getting free.
“Do you need help?”
She kept her head bent to the task. “No, I think I got it.” But her foot remained trapped under a crisscross of greenery.
“Here, give me your hand.” He stepped toward her, the green stems crushing under his boots.
Her hand slid into his, warm and strong, and the extra stability helped her get one foot free, but her other remained stuck.
“Grab on and I’ll pull you out,” he said.
She looked uncertain but put a tentative hand on his shoulders. He wrapped an arm around her waist and hauled her free. He immediately let go and she hopped, one hand clutching his upper arm.
“My shoe.”
He looked down at her foot encased only in a white sock. She gave him a tiny grin, and despite his irritation he felt his own lips curve. He shook his head.
“I gotcha, Mom.” Braden grabbed her other hand and she leaned in to her son while Ross retrieved the buried shoe.
Sierra took the shoe. Ross’s face was still dark, but less so. Like the patches of gray and light after a heavy thunderstorm.
She nodded at the bare patch of dirt. “What was it?”
“Lonicera fragrantissima.” Undercurrents of annoyance remained. “A honeysuckle my mother dug up from her grandparents’ homestead in Kansas and has worried over and babied for the last thirty years.”
Oh, crud! Then the next thought blurted before she could stop it. “If it was so important why didn’t she take it with her when she moved?”
He stared at her, as if trying to comprehend the stupidity of her words. “Why didn’t she—?” He blew out a breath and looked around, as if he wasn’t sure if he should laugh or order her off his place.
Trevor had clung close to her since Ross made his dramatic entrance. He whispered. “Pick me up, Mommy.” She leaned down to hoist him to her hip, wishing she could reel back her words.
Ross waved an annoyed hand at the bare spot. “She did! But it started dying, so I took a cutting from it and
moved it from my greenhouse to here last month.”
“Oh.” She swallowed hard. “Can you get another cutting?”
“Her plant died. We were going to transplant this one back to her place when we were certain it was hardy enough.” He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned at the horse. “I guess we should have taken our chances.”
Braden whispered near her elbow. “Chances. Get it, Mom?”
“Mmmhmm.” Sierra wondered about the consequences of Chance having eaten an entire bush. A thirty-year-old one at that. She couldn’t afford a sick horse. “Is it poisonous?”
His lips curved in the barest of smiles, and he slid her a look. “It’d solve one of your problems, wouldn’t it?”
“Not the way I’d like.” She felt a blush take over her cheeks and looked away from the hint of intimacy in the secret joke.
He shrugged. “I don’t think it’ll make him sick. You’ll know in a couple of hours.” He nodded toward her arm. “Can I have that?”
She looked at her arm where she’d looped the halter. “Oh. Certainly.” Relief that she wouldn’t have to put it on Chance coursed through her. She handed it to him, quickly plucking a few trailing leaves before he strode off to capture their horse.
Emory and Trevor hung close to her, but Braden shadowed Ross as he led Chance back across the yard.
Ross turned to ask over his shoulder, “How’d he get out?”
“Braden left the gate open.” The words were out before she could contain them.
Ross nodded once, but her son glared at her, then looked away, his body stiff.
Remorse washed through her. Great job building her son up.
Two days later, Sierra woke and stretched, a luxurious, joyful stretch, then laid there with a grin. She had a job interview today! At McMillan’s Brake Shop. She pulled her robe on and sauntered into the kitchen.
“Morning, guys!”
Emory smiled and waved her fork. “Morning, Mom.”
Trevor gave her a cheesy grin, a piece of toast jutting out of his mouth.
Braden barely looked up from his plate of eggs. “Are we going to Dad’s tomorrow?”
Sierra hesitated pulling the peanut butter and jelly out of the cupboard. “No, honey. He said it won’t work this weekend.”
