Chapter 1
Malachi
Istared at my banking app and rubbed a hand across my face, hoping the numbers would change. I was running out of money so damn fast. If I counted every penny, I had about three months left. Maybe four.
Probably not four.
I glanced over where my son Payton was asleep curled up in his beanbag chair. There was a book next to him on the floor, and he was clutching Mr. Raven, a weird stuffed black bird toy he’d latched onto last summer at a craft fair we’d gone to with my mom.
Sighing, I checked my email next. I wished there had been notifications I just hadn’t noticed somehow. Of course there were none.
Since Pay—no, it was Tony this week—would probably snooze for another half an hour, I moved from the small kitchen table tothe couch that was too big for the space, but I’d kept it because one end of it folded out into a bed. That left more room for Tony’s stuff in the studio apartment I’d rented in a panic a few months back.
I settled on the couch and opened Google on my phone. I didn’t even have a working laptop at the moment, so I cherished my phone and treated it as if it was made of glass most of the time. Tony, at the age of four, had understood it was an Important Thing and was super careful around it, too.
The ancient iPad we shared was equally as treasured, even though the battery life was shitty and there was a small crack in the screen.
Jesus. This was not the life I’d wanted or expected.
Before I had time to use the search engine, I got a notification for a new email. Swallowing hard, my heart pounding, I opened my inbox to… another rejection. I was pretty fucking certain I’d applied to every farm or ranch I could find in a reasonable distance. Maybe it was time to be unreasonable?
My mom’s face jump-scared me, and I almost flung the phone across the room.Jesus Christ.
At least I had one bud in my ear. The other was chronically in its case on the counter.
“Hey, Mama. What’s up?” I attempted a casual tone.
“What’s wrong, Malachi?”
Wellfuck.
“Nothing new?” It was a rhetorical question, of course.
She sighed. “Still no job prospects?” she asked quietly.
“No. I’m going to start applying farther, I think. There’s nothing around here.”
“I’m so, so sorry, son.”
“No, Mom. It’s not your fault.” It wasn’t. She could feel guilty all she wanted—which I hated—but it wasn’t her fault. Or mine. It had been my dad’s. “How’s Auntie Win?”
Knowing a way out of a painful conversation when she heard one—we’d become really good at that over the last eight months or so—she took the bait and began to tell me about the craft fair she’d gone to with her sister in the next town over from where she now lived in New Mexico.
I let her words wash over me and closed my eyes.
A moment later the beanbag chair rustled, but when I peered over the back of the couch, Tony had only shifted a little.
Soon after, my aunt’s voice called to Mom in the background, and we said goodbye and promised to call soon.
Even though I was tired and could’ve used the fifteen or so minutes I had left to take a power nap, I went back to Google. This time I searched for any sort of horse-related businesses in the state of Colorado. I was at the very northeast of the state but I wouldn’t mind moving a little more south. Anything would be closer to Mom.
Since there were no job listings, I browsed the businesses and sent an open application to a few. I didn’t expect much, but I was as honest as I could be. I even debated mentioning that I was a single father of one, but in the end, decided it was better to leave it off.
I settled on mentioning recently having lost the family farm where I’d worked with anything and everything horse and cattle related since I could walk. I added that I could do equipment maintenance on anything that had an engine, and that I had helped a neighboring ranch with cattle drives for the past decade.
That had been in Nebraska. Barely across the border, but still. I hadn’t gotten far when I’d left the state. I’d just packed everything I could into a U-Haul and my truck, and found a little apartment near Fort Collins because it was cheaper than going to Denver or Colorado Springs.
Suddenly I came across a ranch in about the middle of the state and browsed their website. Seemed like a family thing. All sorts of horse-related businesses all wrapped in one. Breeding, training, an event venue, and riding instruction. It looked nice as well. There was a tall blue spruce next to what I thought was the main farmhouse.
