God, how I wish I was free.
Why won’t this nightmare stop?
I just want it to stop.
“Enya, honey?” Her mother’s voice came from the doorway, soft and tentative, as if Enya were a spooked mare who might bolt at any sudden noise. “I brought you some soup. Your daddy said you didn’t touch your breakfast. You have to eat, baby girl.”
Not unless you want me to throw up.
She was so tired of the burning feeling in the back of her throat and the churning queasiness in her stomach. Rather than face her momma’s sorrow, she kept her gaze fixed on the empty branch where the cardinal had been. She could feel the cloud of worry and love that was her mother’s presence behind her, along with the scent of chicken noodle soup. A smell that once meant comfort and care now made her stomach clench. Food was a problem when all she could remember was the cloying sweetness of the granola bars she and Maria had bought in that dusty little store when they’d tried to escape.
Her mother sighed, a sound Enya had come to know intimately over the past three months. It was the sound of defeat. “I’ll just leave it here on your desk, okay? Try to have a few bites, baby.”
The bedroom door clicked shut. The sound was too loud in the silent room, echoing the finality of a lock sliding into place. Her body might be home, but most of her mind was still locked in a shack in the jungle. Knowing she was the reason for the sadness in her mom’s eyes morphed into another round of churning in her stomach. Enya stared out the window, watching the gray clouds drift across the sky, until the soup in the bowl was cold, and she could legitimately say it had gone cold, so she didn’t have to eat it.
I’m a mess.
I know I’m a mess.
But how do I fix it?
How?
I’d have been better off if I hadn’t come home…
Everyone would be better off if Rowan had never found me.
Later, she found herself on the front porch, a thick afghan her grandmother had crocheted draped over her legs. Her eyes drifted to the corral and Rain as he stood with his head drooping low and his legs splayed wide as if he was posting himself out.
I should sell him.
I don’t deserve him.
He doesn’t deserve to be stuck with me.
Rain had a lifetime of achievements. Trophies, plaques, and more wins than she could count under his hooves. There were so many riders who would bite her hands off for a chance to own him.
The screen door creaked open behind her, the hinges groaning softly in the cold. Enya didn’t bother to turn around. She recognized the rhythm of her father’s heavy and deliberate footsteps. She braced herself against the pause that came just inside the threshold, knowing her dad had one boot hovering over the warped porch boards as if he were bracing himself for speaking to her. Bracing his heart against spending time with her.
He’s afraid.Afraid of me. Of what I’ve become.
Without having to look, she could picture his calloused fingers flexing at his sides, his broad shoulders tense beneath his worn flannel, and his breath fogging up the evening air. She’d seenthe pose often enough over the last three months that she didn’t need to look to know it was there.
“Cold out here.” Her dad’s voice was rough as gravel.
We’re all going through the motions.
I should leave.
They’d be happier without me here.
Enya pulled the afghan tighter around her shoulders, her fingers digging into the thick wool. She missed when the woodsmoke and damp earth smell of the blanket meant crackling bonfires after a long day’s ride, or autumn leaves crunching under Rain’s hooves as they cantered through the back fields. Now, it was almost the scent of the ghost of the life she’d left behind, and she hated it. Even so, she tucked her chin deeper into the folds, praying the echo of comfort she’d always found in the stitches her grandmother had looped together years ago could somehow push past the big brick wall in her mind and make everything better like it always had before.
Now you’re just being dumb.
The rocking chair beside hers groaned as her father settled into it. The sound was familiar, and made her chest ache for the quiet nights watching the stars and listening for the fox family who lived in the next field over, hunting in the dark.
Her dad rocked his chair, slow and steady, the way he had when she was small and he’d tell her stories about the fairies, goblins, princes, and they all lived happily-ever-afters.
