“Okay.”
But there was more. “You know I work at White Pines. And you know about the accident. There were two little girls left behind.”
Ginny nodded. “Yes, I heard.”
“Their aunt, Candace Lancaster, has flown in from London, and she’s not exactly a good match. For the children or the property. It’s all kind of a mess.”
Oh, she knew. She was about to tell him she’d just met Candace that very same afternoon, but something in Wendell’s expression stopped her. He went on, “I don’t like to mix business with my personal life. In fact, I don’t really have much of a personal life anymore.”
An uncomfortable feeling fell between them. Years ago, she had been part of that personal life. “I know,” she said, averting her gaze.
“Candace has made a lot of changes since she arrived. She’s selling the place and moving the kids to London. It’s been hard to watch, let alone difficult to work with. But the other day, I couldn’t stay out of it anymore.”
Intrigued, Ginny met his gaze. “What happened?”
“I got personally involved.”
With that, Wendell slid the barn door ajar and stepped to the side. Ginny hesitated in the doorway. Dust motes rose up around them, reflecting in the sunlight. Hesitantly, she stepped inside the barn. There, in the corner, was a horse.
She spun around to look at Wendell. “You have a horse?”
He shrugged sheepishly.
Ginny shook her head. “You have a horse.” The horse nickered at them, and she went to pat it. “Hey, girl.”
“Boy,” Wendell said. “His name is Radcliffe.”
“Radcliffe,” Ginny repeated, running her palm down his silky forehead. None of this made sense. But the horse was beautiful, a deep red chestnut with a broad white blaze down his forehead. His coat was shiny with good health and his body muscled from training. Someone loved him. Ginny saw a bale of hay on the floor, and she pulled out a handful and fed it to the horse. Radcliffe snatched it gently from her fingers and bobbed his head as if begging for more. She laughed and turned to Wendell. “You have a lot of explaining to do.”
They barbecued steaks on the back patio, where they had a view of Radcliffe in the small makeshift pen Wendell had erected with electric wire. He explained the whole story to her, from the factthat the horse had been a gift from Julia’s now deceased parents to how she’d collapsed against him in the driveway and then turned on him for not stopping the aunt.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Ginny allowed. “But now what? You can’t keep him in that forever,” she said, nodding toward the small enclosure that the horse stood in.
“It’s just temporary.”
“And then?” She’d never had a horse of her own, but she’d ached for one as a child and knew enough about them, having grown up in Saybrook.
Wendell flipped the steaks and shrugged. “Then I’ll enlarge the area and build a proper fence for him.”
“What about Julia? If you tell her that he’s here, I imagine she’ll want him back. And in the meantime, you’re stuck with a horse.”
“I don’t know what I was thinking or what to do now. All I know is that Alan gave her that horse,” Wendell said. “And seeing her watch the trailer pull away… I had to do something.”
Ginny sighed. Wendell Combs was still the Wendell she’d always known, even if he’d tried to put up walls. “I understand.”
He pulled the steaks off the grill and looked at her. “I hope it’s okay I called you. As nice as it was to bump into you the other day, I had no plan to reach out to you again afterward. But then this happened. And there was no way around it: you were the first person I thought to talk to.”
Ginny was touched. And more. If she were honest, she was secretly elated to hear those words come out of his mouth. Even with all the years apart and the terrible way he’d pulled away from her after Wesley died and he came back from Afghanistan, here they were. “I’m glad you called,” she said, taking the plate of steaks. “Come on, let’s eat.”
They took their old places on the front porch, in the same rocking chairs, and held their plates on their laps as the sun set. Atfirst it felt so easy and so good. Ginny’s senses flooded. From the rosy hues of the skyline to the cold beer in the bottle at her feet. Wendell’s knee, adjacent to hers, brushing each time either one of them moved.
“Are these zucchini from the garden?” she asked, spearing a forkful.
Wendell nodded. “You remember.”
What she thought was:No matter how hard I tried to forget.Instead, she popped the squash in her mouth and said, “Delicious.”
When dinner was done, they sat quietly and watched the sun go down. But each passing moment filled her with questions: old questions that wound their way to the surface despite the years she’d hoped would cover them up. Why had he pushed her away back then? Did he regret it?
