The yearling stands calm, shifting her weight occasionally but never pulling away.
Animals read people—they know when the hands on them are competent, when the person underneath them is steady.
This filly trusts Bex already.
Took me two weeks to get her to that point.
Took Bex five minutes.
I don’t know what to do with that.
When she finishes, she walks the yearling for Grace—straight line, turns, circles.
The gait is already improved.
The flared hoof wall is trimmed back to a more natural angle, the breakover reset.
It’s good work. It’s better than good.
It’s the kind of work that tells me Earl taught her well and she took it further than he ever could.
“Let me see the paint with the thrush next,” Bex says. “Then I want to look at the bay Grace mentioned.”
“The bay’s in quarantine,” I say. My first full sentence to her since she arrived. My voice comes out flat, professional, stripped of everything except information. “He’s not ready for handling. We’re still in the trust-building phase.”
Bex looks at me. Direct. Steady. Those dark eyes that see too much.
“I’d still like to get a visual,” she says. “I won’t enter the stall. I just want to see what we’re dealing with so I can plan a treatment approach for when he’s ready.”
Reasonable. Competent. Professional.
Everything I should be and am failing at because every word she says carries the specific weight of a voice that isn’t Rose’s but exists in the same register—the same Texas warmth underneath the roughness, the same cadence learned in the same town from the same people.
“Fine,” I say. “Don’t push him.”
“I know how to read a horse, Lee.”
The way she says my name.
Like it belongs to her.
Like she’s been saying it for twenty years and isn’t about to stop now just because I can’t handle the sound of it in her mouth.
I lead her to the quarantine stall.
The bay is in his corner, pressed against the wall, watching us approach with both eyes.
His ears pin back—not aggressive, just wary.
The default setting of a horse who’s learned that humans mean pain.
Bex stops at the stall door.
Doesn’t try to enter.
Doesn’t reach over the door or make any move toward the horse.
She just looks.
