“Excuse me?” a voice says from behind me.
Icy fear floods my veins. I thought the brown hair would be enough. I thought the jeans and the sweatshirt and the hat would do the trick.
“Yes?” I say, only turning halfway around. Inside, Mrs. Manners is screaming at me to look them in the eye and give them my best smile—a smile so bright and charming it could have only come from someone named Winsome. But I resist.
“You dropped this,” the woman says. She holds a tube of lip gloss out to me, which must have fallen out of my pocket.
“Oh, thank you.” Relief washes through me. She has no idea who I am. Or if she does, she doesn’t recognize me in my disguise.
I give her a small smile and then she leaves, none the wiser.
I know I’m being paranoid. And that I potentially have an overinflated sense of self. After all, it’s not like I’m the president. Why should anyone know who I am? I’m just a pageant queen.
But my faceisplastered all over the internet and every social media website, and even if that woman doesn’t know me from Adam, I bet the teenage girls standing by the fast food counter do. I make a quick exit and get back on the road.
By the time the sun starts to go down, I’m pulling into the parking lot of a crappy motel. One that my parents would never think to call and see if I was staying at. They’ll call every Hiltonbetween here and Canada, sure, but not the Sunny Day Motel. And even if they do call, I gave the receptionist a fake ID that I’ve had since college, which has the name Winifred Holmes on it instead of Winsome Grant, and I paid in cash. I’m untraceable.
Plus, I’m betting that Star Mountain won’t be on their radar right away either. Whenever I talked about Candice they hardly took an interest in who she is or what she does. They know she lives near Bozeman and they know she works with horses, but that’s it—they have no clue that she’s a horse trainer who works in horse rehab and rescue. Never mind that she’s my oldest friend and that we met when we were twelve and got assigned each other as pen pals in a school program. I’m not even sure they’ll remember her name.
As I fall asleep that evening, tucked into a musty bed with a lumpy mattress, I realize that it actually might work out in my favor that my parents are such an awful combination of self-absorbed and controlling.
They’ll desperately want to get me back but have no idea how to find me.
2
JONAH
Workingwith the horses at Star Mountain Horse Rescue is probably my favorite part of my job as a farrier. Don’t get me wrong, I love shoeing the stock horses at the local ranches, and I have a definite soft spot for the barrel racers and bucking horses I care for. But there’s just something about the rescues that makes my day a bit brighter—a bit more hopeful—every time I see them.
Maybe it’s the fact that in order to smoothly trim and treat their hooves, and then shoe them, I have to get them to trust me. And earning the trust of an animal that has been abused or injured is no small thing. It takes consistent work. You have to keep trying, keep showing up, until they finally realize that you’re safe.
I pat the horse I’m currently working with, Brown Sugar, on the neck and then run my hand along the back of her leg. She’s a retired barrel racer with a playful personality, and more than a bit of anxiety. But she’s gotten to know me pretty well over the last few weeks, so she obediently picks her foot up for me.
“That’s a good girl,” I murmur, examining her hoof. “Things are looking pretty good. I’ll give you a nice trim and polish, some new shoes, and that will be the end of it. Easy as pie.”
I get to work on her, taking off the old shoes first, then cleaning and trimming each hoof. Then, using the forge set up by my truck nearby, I heat up a steel horseshoe, bring it over to the anvil, and pound it into shape, using tongs and a hammer. The repetitive pounding of the metal helps me feel centered and calm, something I’m in short supply of lately. Maybe it’s time I made some more horse shoes from scratch—it takes a lot more work to do than this does, and it comes with more time at the anvil and more concentration. It’s the type of work I could get lost in.
I give the shoe a few more taps, and when I’m satisfied that it’s the right size for Brown Sugar, I bring it over and fit it to her hoof, all the while talking to her to help her stay calm. The smoke that billows up as the hot metal touches her hoof looks more dramatic than it actually is. Hot shoeing doesn’t hurt horses at all, but it does allow me to give them a better fit.
I do the rest of her hooves one by one, and by the time I’m done, all lingering anxiety has drained from her. She happily accepts the treat I offer her, and the scratch I give her on her withers.
After I finish up at the rescue, I head to my parents’ for dinner. They live in a small ranch house not far from mine, and I’m there more evenings than not. Every moment with my mom feels precious, and like I almost can’t believe it’s happening.
It wasn’t so long ago that I thought we might be counting our last moments together—that I was thinking about what her last words to me might be. So while other twenty-eight year olds might want to spend Friday night out at one of Star Mountain’s few bars, I’m more than happy to spend it with my parents playing scrabble.
My mom is in the kitchen cooking, and I take off my worn boots and trusty wool work coat before heading over to help her.I lean in and give her a quick hug as she stirs the sauce on the stove.
“What can I do?” I ask, rolling up my sleeves.
“Chop things for the salad. And then make a dressing so that your father will actually enjoy it.”
The cancer has my mom on a health kick, so they’ve been eating salads every day with lunch and dinner, much to my dad’s distaste. He’s a steak and potatoes guy all the way, but he’ll never actually complain out loud, especially not if it’s my mom who’s cooking.
I get started on the salad, and my mom and I cook in companionable silence, the radio on faintly in the background. Like my mother, I’m not a huge talker, and I know we enjoy being around one another for that reason. It’s a relief to know you can just exist around another person comfortably, without them demanding anything from you.
My dad is the big personality in the family, always full of laughter and jokes. It hit him really hard when my mom got sick. There wasn’t anything he could say or do to make her better. He tried, though, and I know that he did his best to keep her laughing throughout her treatment, no matter how awful she felt. He even managed to make her smile when her hair fell out. He told her he’d never seen a more beautiful woman, and he actually meant it.
As if she can hear the direction of my thoughts, my mom says, “We got another bill today. From the hospital.”
