Whiskey River Rescue by Justine Davis

Author:Justine Davis [Davis, Justine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tule Publishing
Published: 2017-03-09T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Kelsey watched him feed the horse, one slow handful at a time. She wasn’t sure which made her happier. She’d suspected from the time they’d ridden Granite that horses might be the way in. It wasn’t that she was trying to worm her way into his life, just trying to lure him out into a life of his own that went beyond the walls of his self-named fortress. And why she cared about that, she wasn’t sure.

She wanted to ask why he’d come, what he was doing over here, but was afraid to interrupt what was happening, for both their sakes. The horse stopped on his own about two-thirds of the way through the flake of hay, his shrunken stomach apparently full. She was glad they’d gone slow, although she’d have Dr. Barrett check his teeth to make sure there wasn’t an issue.

“Full already, huh?” she heard Declan murmur to the animal. “That’ll change.”

She saw him reach out and rub under the horse’s jaw, in that spot every horse she’d ever had loved to be rubbed. The horse nickered and lifted his head as if to make it easier. So he hadn’t always been neglected.

“When did she die?” Declan asked without looking at her.

“Six months ago.”

She saw him glance down at the overgrown hooves. “Looks about right.”

Not for the first time, she wondered where he’d grown up, if that was where he’d learned about horses. But she didn’t want to derail this tentative communication, so she said only, “I think she took good care of him. That will make it easier.”

“He’s not shy. Not skittish, just cautious.”

“No. I don’t think he was mistreated, just. . . ignored. They didn’t even know his name, he was just their mother’s horse. You’d think they’d take care of him just for that reason, but they couldn’t care less.”

“Blood is no guarantee.”

He said it so flatly it was worse than if he’d been angry, or bitter. Instead, it was as if he was observing that the sky was blue or Texas was big, merely a fact.

She reached out to stroke the horse’s neck. “He’s not broken, his heart’s just broken.”

His mouth twisted. “‘Just’ his heart?”

“The heart is resilient, if you let it be.”

He made a sound she couldn’t describe, somewhere between a snort and a laugh. A very harsh laugh. A laugh that told her he thought her naïve, or worse.

“I said resilient, not that it couldn’t be hurt, and carry scars. Sometimes forever. There are times when I still rage at the world for letting my father die.”

He looked at her then, his expression unreadable. “Do you?”

“Yes. Most of the time it’s just a sadness that’s always there, under the surface. How deep it is depends on how long it’s been since something’s reminded me. But sometimes it just bubbles up and overflows.”

“And what do you do, those times?”

She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I allow myself the meltdown, as soon as I can. Then I go on. As he would want me to.

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