Radcliffe stood very still, as if he understood, until she let go. “I’m sorry, boy. I don’t have any treats.” He lifted his muzzle to her forehead and sniffed, the soft whiffle of his breath warm and sweet against her skin. Despite herself, she laughed. “Thank God for you,” she told him.
Outside, the moon rose over the horizon line. She sank in the corner of Raddy’s stall and closed her eyes. Images danced behind her lids: the sad expression on Chloe’s face. The text Sam had sent earlier, “How did it go?” The look on Pippa’s face when their aunt ferried her upstairs, as if Julia were the problem.
She pulled out her phone.
Sam picked up on the first ring. “So?”
“So, nothing. It was a bust.”
“All of them?”
Julia tried to keep her voice even. “Every one.”
“Damn.” He paused. “I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I was doing some research. Just in case.”
“What kind of research?”
“Remember we talked about kids who emancipate themselves?”
She didn’t want to get her hopes up again. “I’d still need a guardian, Sam.”
“Not necessarily. I mean, I don’t know for sure. But it turns out there is someone here who would know.”
“In Saybrook?”
“Yeah. Her name is Roberta Blythe. Wanna know what the weird thing is? She lives on your road.”
SeventeenWendell
Ginny Feldman had been heavy on his mind. Ever since he’d run into her in the café, Wendell tried to shake off the memories that threatened to flood—if he let them. He could not say how long she’d been gone from Saybrook, because that would mean thinking of Ginny. And thinking of Ginny was a dangerous thing. But it had been a long time. After Wesley died. After he’d told her she deserved better and should move on. For a while she’d stayed at Saybrook after Wesley’s funeral. Each day that passed was unbearable, and one of the few times Wendell had prayed in his life, he’d asked God to give him the strength to wait her out, to convince her to go. When she finally did, he’d prayed to survive it. He’d heard from her only one time since, and that was when his father died, just six months after Wesley. By then Ginny had gone, out to Chicago, he’d heard. She sent a condolence card. When he’d opened the mailbox and seen her scroll handwriting, his chest had tightened. He still had that card, tucked in his top dresser drawer.
Seeing her the other day had rattled him. It was like seeing a ghost from his past, and his past was already littered with them. He’d lost his mother to cancer. Then Wesley to war, and then his father to what he was pretty sure was grief, despite the official causeof death as stroke. A man’s heart could stand only so much. And though Wendell had done everything in his power to shut his own off, he was no different.
But he could not allow himself to go back. He would focus on work and try to push Ginny from his mind. She was here temporarily. He’d done it before.
So far, the morning was already a sticky one, shrouded in a heavy layer of fog. It was as if the estate had heard the news and was rebelling with a saplike humidity that slowed everything on the property to a near standstill. The apple blossoms had wilted and fallen. Oversize peonies, done blooming, turned brown, slumping on their stems as their once magnificent fragrance soured. Even the birdsong was muted, and Wendell spied the tall gray egrets still in the lake, as though their appetites had been diminished by the sun. He himself was slow-moving today, despite the long list of tasks Candace had assigned him.
Unlike Alan, who had taken joy in meeting him at the big barn after sunrise, Candace left handwritten lists on yellow legal-pad pages affixed to the barn door with a single tack. The sparseness of the arrangement, coupled with the precise angles of her handwriting, provided a start to his day that left no space for sentiment. Today’s list of chores was nothing more than preparing the areas immediately surrounding the house that potential buyers would tromp across and inspect. Plumping the annual beds, weeding perennials, shearing hedges, applying a fresh layer of dark mulch atop that already bleached by the sun. To him, it was nothing more than fluffing pillows in a guest room.
Wendell was working up in the gardens around the main house when he heard a scream. He spun around, searching for the source. It seemed to have come from down below, by the barn. A bolt offear ran through him. Wendell dropped his shovel and started downhill toward the barn quickly.
When he’d arrived, he hadn’t seen any sign of the family. But now, as he crested the rise and scanned the view below, a very different scene was unfolding. A large silver livestock trailer was pulled up outside the barn. Outside the truck’s cab stood a man wearing a baseball hat. In the barn doorway were two figures, and immediately, Wendell recognized Julia and Candace facing each other in some kind of standoff. Julia gestured urgently, her voice shrill, but Wendell could not make out what she was saying.
The truck driver turned, and seeing Wendell approach, shook his head.
“What’s going on?” Wendell asked.
“All I know is we’re here to pick up a horse. Didn’t expect a scene like this.” He nodded over his shoulder. There, behind the trailer, a woman held Radcliffe on a lead rope. Raddy’s legs were wrapped for travel, a light fly sheet draped over him, just as if he were shipping off to a horse show. The woman seemed to be waiting uncertainly for Candace and Julia.
“You can’t take him,” Julia pleaded, hanging on to Candace’s arm. “He’smyhorse.”
Confusion enveloped the group in the barnyard, but Candace stood in the midst of it like a flagpole in a storm. “Julia, please.” She freed her arm and turned her attention to the woman. “As I was saying, it’s best if you load him up now. I’ll give you his paperwork, and we can talk later today by phone. I apologize for this display.”
Wendell hurried around the truck to where they stood. “What’s going on?”
Candace turned. “Oh, good, Mr. Combs. We could use your help.” She began to make introductions, but Wendell had eyes only for Julia.
“Tell her!” she cried, rushing up to him. “Raddy is a gift frommy dad. She can’t just sell him.” Her eyes were like a frightened animal, and Wendell felt something rise inside him akin to the panic that so often found him in the night. He blinked, forcing himself to exhale.
