“Great,” I agreed. “So, start.”
“What was the trespassing about?”
I froze, replaying the question a few times. “Sorry? What?”
“The trespassing on your record?”
“What does that have to do with this?” I gestured to the mud.
“It has to do with lying.”
“It wasn’t a lie; I’d forgotten about it.” I threw up my hands. “Sorry, I don’t actively think about a thing that happened over a decade ago during the worst patch of my life.”
Rae’s mouth parted, but nothing came out. I laughed under my breath and forced myself to continue.
“It…” I poked my tongue into the inside of my cheek, thinking about how ridiculous this was, confessing my old sins to a woman holding a ghost-detection tool. “It was my boyfriend at the time’s idea. He wanted to film what it was like to sneak into an antique shop after hours. The guy was interested in becoming a director and needed content for his backers on a fundraising website. And I was silly and in love enough to be convinced to help him. I wanted to be supportive. There. There’s the big secret that’s got some ghosts upset with me.”
Rae stared at me for a beat before letting out a small laugh.
I frowned. “This is what I get for following your rules? Being laughed at?”
“No, no.” She looked away for a second, waving her hand back and forth. “It’s not…I’m sorry…I wasn’t expecting that. You just…you don’t seem like someone who could be convinced to do much of anything, let alone break into an antique shop to get B-roll.”
“It was A-roll, I think.”
She laughed some more.
“He didn’t have much money after he spent it on a scam artist’s course that said they’d turn him into a blockbuster director in one summer, so…”
“Thank you for sharing.” Rae’s laughter faded. “It’s nice to hear you’re such a devout partner.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have many other skills to offer outside of devotion.” I eyed the mud pit again. “Do you really think I have something to do with this?”
Rae was completely somber now. “I don’t know. Sometimes we don’t know our impact until the results flash themselves in our faces.”
I winced. I’d lost my parents after ignoring their calls for weeks. Wilson got into a car accident on the weekend I’d been supposed to visit but had put it off foryet another time. And every single person I’d hired sustained an injury under my watch.
The common denominator was clear.
SIX
Once Rae hada new pair of shoes and gave Jonah a new order to go to a “sweep” of the house, we continued the tour to the stable. I tugged the wooden bar off the two-door entry and pushed the doors open. “Careful where you step.”
Esther and I did a decent job of keeping the stable clean. But things inevitably slipped through the cracks. The smell of manure and horses greeted us.
Kat immediately popped her head over her stable door, blowing out a breath as if she was pissed we’d taken so long to drop in and say hi. Her gray coat was patchy with spots of white, the colors like the mix of the storm and the calm morning after. She acted as such, too.
Frog backed into his stable, turning around so all that greeted us was his dark brown ass and thick, swaying black tail.
“Who is this?” Rae smiled and went right up to Kat, stopping for a second before touching her. “Are they alright with petting?”
“Go for it.” I nodded and went over to our storage binswhere we kept extra snacks. “They’re both as docile as they come. But Kat’s more energetic. She’s the younger one. Six years old. Her companion’s Frog. He’s fifteen and wary of strangers.”
Rae ran her hand up and down Kat’s neck. Esther had brushed her until she shone and braided a few parts of her mane.
“Hey there,” Rae whispered as if it were just her and Kat in the stable. “I’m Rae Mary Jones, and you’re absolutely stunning.”
I smiled, amused at Rae’s full-name introduction. She continued gently petting the horse, her fingers catching in the mane a few times. The wide smile on her face was reminiscent of the one I wore when I met my first horse. I’d fallen in love with them the year my mom got a job working as an accountant for stables. The owners were generous enough to offer me discounted riding lessons. These large and sometimes dangerous creatures offered the patience my peers never considered giving me.
