The house was quiet. No one was home to hear or judge.
I went upstairs to my little back bedroom, where my guitar sat on the empty twin bed next to mine. Slowly, I opened the case and took out the Hummingbird. There was a chip in the mother-of-pearl inlay from the night Jo threw her shoes across the room, and a scratch on theback from Colt’s belt buckle the first time I let him play the guitar. But otherwise it looked the same as the day Mr. Laurence gave it to me, the year I turned twelve.
My heart thumped loud enough to deafen me. I sat on the bed where I’d taught myself to play. Wiped my damp palms on my jeans. I cradled the Hummingbird, curving my body around its familiar shape, feeling the frets and strings like a blind person reading braille. Chord progressions.Easy.C major. F major. My fingers were stiff and unresponsive on the strings. G major. A minor. Tight, controlled.
I listened for the music, but there was too much static in my head. How many calories were in a teething cracker, anyway?
I opened my notebook. My cramped writing marched across the pages, black on white, like ants at a picnic. I flipped a sheet. My pencil had dug through the paper, obliterating the lines. There wasn’t room for anything else.
My stomach ached.
I picked up my phone. Nothing from Colt.
So I poked around on the Internet. Seventy calories per serving, said the manufacturer’s website. Two biscuits. I’d eaten four.
I felt sick.
I went out to the barn.
An hour later, I was drenched with sweat and shaky with exhaustion. Bits of hay clung to my damp skin as I shoveled out the weaning pen, my face on fire. My hands and feet were cold. I was so out of shape. No stamina, that was my problem. One of my problems.
The ground tilted under me. Everything grayed. Blurred.
I stumbled. Something—someone—gripped my shoulders. I sat abruptly, straw prickling through my jeans.
“Here.” A man’s voice.
A furry bulk pressed against me. I tightened my hold instinctively as it wriggled in my arms. A dog? It butted my face, sharp tiny hooves digging into my thighs.
Not a dog. A goat.
I was sitting on a hay bale outside the barn, a baby goat in my lap.
Dan Harkins crouched in front of me, his gaze on my face. “You okay?”
“I...” I drew a shaky breath. The goat—salsa, said her pink neckband, one of this year’s crop of babies—thrust her head under my jaw. I held her closer, clinging to the present, breathing in her warm animal smell. “Yes. Thanks. How did you...?”
“Always works for me.”
I smiled. “Goat therapy?”
His eyes creased before his expression sobered. “I got PTSD. The animals can sense it. They let me know when I get in too deep. Mostly they keep me from going under.”
“I don’t have PTSD.”
“Panic attacks, then. Whatever you call it.”
I shook my head.
“Took me a long time to learn there’s no shame in a label.” He straightened from his crouch. Glanced down at me. “You ever talk to your dad?”
“No.” My father counseled people who truly needed his help, wounded warriors who had suffered trauma in battle, soldiers who had seen and done and experienced horrible things. “My parents worry about me enough already. I can’t bother them because I have...” The truth stuck in my throat. “I can handle it,” I said.
“Seems to me they’d want to help.”
They would. My entire family had cushioned and shielded and supported me all my life. When I pleaded sick to stay home from school. When I left halfway through my first year of college. But I was finally making something of myself. Of my life. It wasn’t fair to make them disrupt their own lives to pay attention to me. “I don’t want to be a burden.”
“He’s a good listener.”
