“We need to leavenow, beforethey get here.”
“Leaving was the wrong thing to do last time.”
“Leavingtoo lateput us, your horse, your cow, your cat and dog, and your neighbors in jeopardy. Let’s bug outearlierthis time so we can lay a trail away from the people and beasts you care about.”
“I know they’re coming. I’ll call my neighbors for reinforcement and make a stand.”
“Why would you risk your life for this farm?”
“Because it’smy farm!”
She really was losing her Christian patience with this man. She should breathe deeply and pray for grace becausegosh darn he was getting on her nerves.
Blaze said, “I want you to think about the farm, Sarah. Your parents left it to you, yes, but they also obligated you to it. It was their dream, and they’re gone. What’syourdream?”
The not-knowing was a gray fog in her head as she scraped dandruff off the horse. “I always dreamed of having the farm.”
“Did you?” His intense blue gaze over Charlie’s back was the harsh light of a third-degree interrogation, even in the sunlit barn. “Whatelsedid you dream of?”
Sarah’s mind searched for answers like stumbling through the Hermitage Museum as a child with her Russian cousins, barely able to understand what they were saying and comprehending absolutely nothing that was written in the curly alphabet on the cards.
Theotherfarm coalesced in her mind, the farm in her dreams where half the corn had been plowed under for paddocks, the farm she’d laid out with corn husks on the fertile soil because she’d never been to a beach to build sandcastles. “Horses?”
“Horses. That’s interesting,” Blaze said, his voice wavering like he was musing about it, which was better than his constant haranguing for her to leave. “When I asked you what you’d change about the farm if you had the money, you wantedhorses.”
She took a flathead screwdriver from her boot, flicked packed manure out of Charlie’s hoof, and inspected his hoof and shoe for cracks or nicks. “Yeah. I like horses.”
“But whyhorses?”he asked.
“Because—”Because the outside of the horse was the best thing for the inside of a person.“Because horses help people.”
“So, it sounds to me, and tell me if I get this wrong, that you want to help people.”
Sarah cleaned Charlie’s hind foot on her side before she dipped under the horse’s neck and elbowed Blaze out of the way to clean his other two. “I don’t know the first thing about helping people.”
“A major university is just a half-hour away. You could take psychology or social work classes if you wanted to.”
“I barely graduated from high school because the farm took so much time that I was half a credit short. My counselor made up some baloney about ‘work experience’ so I could walk with my class.”
“You could start at a community college. There’s several within half an hour.”
“Thelastthing this farm needs is student loan debt. And besides, I probably couldn’t do it. Farming is the only thing I’m good for.”
“You jumped at the idea of helping veterans even though you disguised it by saying it was patriotism. You agreed to it immediately even knowing we didn’t have the money.”
She frowned and pried a pebble from under Charlie’s shoe that would have caused a problem. Charlie’s hooves were on the long side, like noticing you’d probably need to trim your toenails in a few days. The farrier would need to come, yet another bill to add to the red numbers on the spreadsheet. “Maybe it was patriotism.”
“What if I’d said that the people who needed to come out here were refugee children traumatized by war?”
“Of course, I would want to try to help children and war refugees.”
“Or even a distressed mother horse,” he said.
Smart aleck.“Well, that was just one time.”
“I have a feeling that no matter who needed help, you would want to help them.”
Sarah couldn’t figure out what to do with her hands, fluttering in front of her like crows eating the corn. “Well, yeah. Maybe.”
