“She’s stunning, Mal.”
I was pleased. She was still in excellent condition. Rachel’s people had clearly taken great care of her. I really needed to text her or something.
The clip-clopping of hooves down the aisle interrupted us, and Jaina glanced over, then put her head back down to grab some hay.
“This is a tricky one,” Crew said, but he sounded more amused than anything.
The gelding that was bopping toward the stall next to Jaina’s was clearly a character. With some horses you could just tell.
“What took you so long?” Mike ribbed his son, grinning.
“I took him for a little walk, because he was being a pest. I have a feeling we need to put an extra chain on the stall door,” he spoke as he let the gelding in.
“I’ll go grab one,” Wy said and headed toward the feed room where we had all the bits and pieces we might need.
Mike went to grab more hay for the gelding, and Crew came to peer into Jaina’s stall.
I realized I couldn’t be near him right then. I cleared my throat before he had time to talk. “I’m going to go grab some more bedding for them.” I ducked out, leaving him in Jaina’s doorway.
I made quick work getting their stalls comfy, then went to put the bedding cart back where it belonged.
I was late for getting Pay—it hadn’t escaped me that Crew had smoothly switched my son’s preferred nickname when mentioning him—but I knew he wouldn’t mind too much. Not while he could spend time with Mrs. Jenn, his new favorite person.
I spent a little more time with Jaina, then started to leave her stall when Crew walked up to us.
“I put Jaina’s tack in the tack room,” he said a bit stiffly, as if he wasn’t sure of the reception.
I nodded, not sure what to say to that. “Thank you.” Then I glanced away from him. “I don’t know what to… how to deal with this right now.” I had no actual words to explain the inner turmoil yet and I needed time to think everything through.
“That’s fine.” He gave me a weak grin, clearly equally uncertain. “When you figure it out, you know where to find me.”
“Yeah.”
When I told Pay that Jaina was back, he hugged me extra hard. To my surprise, he asked if he could go see Jaina at the barn one day.
I promised we could do that, but it still floored me when he murmured “I’m so happy you got Jaina back, Daddy. You’ll feel much better now” just as he was falling asleep.
As I tried to do the same in my own bedroom a bit later, I couldn’t really come to any conclusions about how to deal with what Crew had done.
On one hand, he’d given me the one thing that I needed to feel like my life had some semblance of normalcy. He’d given me my heart horse back.
But that was also it. He’dgivenher back. He’d chosen to act behind my back, and he’d used his money to go get her—and Rowdy, who I assumed was an extra expense and thus not my problem. Rachel would’ve taken the adoption fee either Crew or Mike would’ve insisted on paying, even though she would’ve tried to not let them do that at first. That was just who she was as a person.
I knew what the biggest issue was with how I was processing this. It was the fact that I still didn’t believe any of this was real. If all of this fell out from under me, where would that leave Jaina? I wouldn’t have a place to take her. Besides, I hadn’t paid for her, so she wasn’t actually mine again. She belonged to either Crew or Blue Creek.
I tossed and turned, until my exhaustion took over. Too soon after, my alarm rang to let me know it was time to go again.
I got through the morning routines and dropped Pay off like usual. That there was a “usual” was a bit of a mindfuck, really.
I made my way to the broodmare barn to see if Crew had anything specific in mind for me for the day.
He was leaning to the door of one of the mares, looking at something intently.
Unable to help myself, I went to stand next to him. “What are we looking at?”
He grinned. “Watch her belly,” he replied very quietly.
The perfectly round mare, clearly due at any moment, was munching on some hay, never minding the audience. Suddenly her side bounced. Then again.
