Prospect: The Eventing Series - Book 6 by Natalie Keller Reinert

Author:Natalie Keller Reinert [Reinert, Natalie Keller]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Natalie Keller Reinert
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

ON THE LAST weekend of February, the weather turned bitterly cold. We woke up to a white frost, which was as close to a winter wonderland as this farm would ever get—I hoped, I prayed—and pancakes of ice resting on top of the pasture water troughs. Inside the cinder-block barn, the still air was bone-chillingly damp. Steam from the horses’ bodies and breath clung to the walls, making the painted blocks slick and sweaty. I’d never been so envious of the equestrians wintering in West Palm.

Even Lacey, who laughed off a chilly wind when working outside, shivered and pulled on an extra hoodie. “It’s never this damp in Pennsylvania,” she explained, turning up the space heater we kept in the middle of the feed room for days like this. “The cold there is just different.”

At least the sweet feed wasn’t frozen—something she’d dealt with last winter in the icy north. “You have to slam it against the wall to get the molasses to break up enough to dump it into the bins,” she’d grunted, digging out the buckets of feed we’d set up the night before. “So your hands are frozen and your feet are frozen and you’re heaving a frozen fifty-pound bag against the wall.”

“Sounds like a dream,” I said. “A very bad dream.” No wonder she’d come back to Florida and extended her stay when her summer contract ended. Who would return to that?

The horses loved the cold. They went outside with their blankets on and immediately set about destroying their expensive clothes as quickly as possible. I watched Dynamo roll in the damp grass, digging his withers and spine into the ground as hard as he could, presumably in hopes of popping every seam in his rug. Mickey just set about pulling on the leg-straps of Jim Dear’s green plaid blanket, trying to tug them right off. Noodle found a patch of mud and rolled until the corgis on his new blanket disappeared under a layer of filth.

I clapped my hands to make them stop and the entire gelding paddock took off in a welter of kicked-up sod, snorts, and farts.

Lacey and I watched them gallop around the big field for a few moments, a stream of flying horses with the golden sun shining on their manes and tails. They reached the bottom of the slope and turned along the fence-line as a flock of crows burst from the longleaf pines bordering the farm. Their caws joined the thunder of hooves and the occasional squeal from the horses. The entire scene was movie-quality. Oscar-movie-quality.

“Turns out this is a pretty nice morning,” I remarked.

Lacey responded with an elbow to my ribs. I turned to protest and saw what she was pointing at.

Con was standing in his own paddock with his tail and head high, watching the galloping horses with a gaze of pure longing. I felt a stab of sadness. I’d had to shut him up by himself so he wouldn’t hurt anyone, or himself. But maybe it was time to turn him out with the herd.

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