He slid the door open.
The smell hit me first. Hay. Leather. The warm, sweet, unmistakable smell of horses, of breath and body heat and the particular musk that gets into your clothes and your hair and your skin and never fully washes out.
I knew that smell. I’d lived inside that smell for six years.
And then I heard it.
A nicker. Low, familiar, questioning. The sound a horse makes when they see someone they know. Someone they’ve been waiting for.
From the first stall on the left.
I looked.
Cassiopeia was standing at the stall door, her dark head turned toward me, her ears pricked forward. She was wearing a new halter, dark green, not the blue one I’d sent with her, but everything else was the same. The white star on her forehead. The intelligent brown eyes. The way she held her head slightly tilted, like she was evaluating whether you were worth her time.
She nickered again. Louder this time. Insistent.
I know you. Where have you been?
My knees buckled.
Graham caught me. His arm around my waist, holding me up, and I couldn’t see anything because my eyes had filled so completely that the whole barn was underwater.
“How—” The word came out strangled. “How?—”
“Keep walking,” Graham said softly. “There’s more.”
I couldn’t walk. He half-carried me forward, past Cassie’s stall, and the second stall door was open just enough for a massive bay head to thrust itself over the gate.
Brutus.
He looked exactly the same, big, imperious, his expression communicating clearly that he’d been waiting and would like to know what had taken so long. He huffed through his nostrils and stamped one hoof. Not fear, not anxiety, just Brutus being Brutus. Demanding attention the way he demanded everything: loudly and without apology.
I reached out and touched his nose. He pressed into my hand, hard, the way he always did, like gentleness was beneath him. And I felt the sound that came out of me from somewhere so deep I didn’t have a name for it. Not a cry. Not a word. Older than language.
“Graham.” I couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. “Graham, how did you?—”
“Two more,” he said. His voice was rough. “Come on.”
Starlight was in the third stall. She was standing at the back, watching me with her quiet, cautious eyes. Always the observer,always the one who needed a minute to decide if she was safe. I made a sound, her name, maybe, or just a noise, and she walked forward slowly, one careful step at a time, until her nose touched my outstretched fingers.
“Hey, sweet girl,” I managed. “Hey. It’s me. It’s me.”
She sighed. The whole-body exhale of a horse deciding that yes, she was safe. She dropped her head against my chest, and I wrapped my arms around her neck and stood there.
And then Ricky.
The last stall. My nervous, spooky, storm-terrified boy who flinched at shadows and loved peppermints and had taught me more about patience than any human being ever had.
He was pressed against the back wall when I looked in. Ears swiveling, eyes wide, nostrils flared. A new place. New smells. New everything. Of course he was scared.
I unlatched the stall door. Stepped inside. Sat down in the shavings the way I used to during storms at the old ranch. Cross-legged, hands in my lap, making myself small and still and unthreatening.
“Hey, Ricky,” I said. My voice was barely a whisper. “It’s okay. I’m here.”
He watched me. One ear forward, one back. Calculating risk the way he calculated everything.
Then he took one step forward. Another. A third.
