Malachi
Pay did get sick but not too bad. The next morning I asked him if he wanted me to stay home with him or if he wanted to go to chill with Mrs. Jenn. He chose to go to the main house.
Normally, we’d walk over there, but this time I lifted him into the truck and we drove over.
“We’ll be just fine. If anything changes, I’ll let you know, but as you might assume, I’ve done this a couple of times in my life….” Her expression was all understanding mom, and yeah.
Pay went inside, wrapped in his “starry blanket”—actual constellations, not cartoon stars—and Mr. Raven tucked under his arm.
“Can I leave you my mom’s number?” I asked Jenn hesitantly. “It’s just that when he’s ill, he used to hang out with her during the days and he still likes to talk to her if he’s feeling under the weather.”
“Of course! Let me get my phone.” She popped back inside and emerged with her phone in hand. “Will you give her a heads up?”
I read her Mom’s number. “Yeah, I’ll text her next.”
“Excellent!” she said brightly, then patted my arm. “We’re going to be fine.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Yeah. Okay. But if it’s too m—”
“I will let you know.” She smiled, so damn gently this time. “But it won’t be.” With that, she turned and went inside.
Right.Time to go to work.
It took Pay exactly one and a half days to feel better. Kids bounced back something fierce sometimes.
Meanwhile, he’d called his Nana from Jenn’s phone and somehow I’d forgotten that grandmas tended to flock together. Just like that, Mom was invited to the ranch and she and Jenn were fast friends.
Things went back to normal, but somehow, every time I got lost in the rhythm of mucking the stalls or doing something else repetitive that didn’t require concentration, my brain chose to remind me of how kind Crew had been when Pay was ill.
I wasn’t used to anyone but my parents caring. Even that talk we’d had about my dad not having been “weird,” it wasn’t completely true. It was easy to see how much the recent past had colored my view of the man. He’d be my hero once, well, most of my life. He’d been Pay’s Grandpa.
The last nine months or so, since his death, had pushed him firmly off that pedestal he’d been in my mind. Kids looked upto their parents. But then when that pedestal crumbled to dust, what were you supposed to do?
I could only hope and do my best to not ever make that happen with Pay’s view of me. I wasn’t perfect, hell, I could be far from that, but I would never betray him like that.
“Hey, Mal?” Wy called from her office.
“Yeah?” I was just finishing up the last stalls, so I walked over.
“Once you’re done with mucking, Hawk needs some help.”
“Oh, okay.” I shrugged. “I’ll head there in a few.”
“Good man,” she murmured, already squinting at her laptop screen again.
Barn 4, or the training barn, was Hawk’s domain. Well, his and Gemma’s. They did vastly different things, though.
Gemma trained the rescues when the time came in their recovery to do that. She also handled the less time-consuming project horses they got.
Hawk, on the other hand, handled specialty cases, like making horses bomb proof and training the yearlings. He also took on horses with behavioral issues and worked his magic, much like he was doing when I stepped up to the inner gate between the barn and the attached arena.
Gemma came to stand with me, and we quietly watched as her brother plopped down to sit in the middle of the arena, his back to the… probably a quarter horse or a mix that seemed to be—annoyed at him?
“She’s pushy. So he’s been telling her to get away every time she’s approached him in that way. Now he’s showing her hedoesn’t care about where she is at all. It’s pissing her off,” Gemma explained quietly.
“Makes sense. He’s making himself small. That’s smart. She knows he’s not intimidated in the least.”
The mare huffed and started to approach Hawk in a loose arc. When he didn’t move, just sat there cross legged and relaxed, she stopped right behind him. She went to nudge him, but his soft “ah-ah” made her pull her head back.
