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“Did you talk to Justy?” Vic asked, sitting up in his chair.
“I did. I’m going to ask Maggie if I can come by with some of Emily’s riding clothes. Are you okay with that?”
“I love the idea,” he said. “Do you want me to take you?”
“No, I should do this alone. Maybe she’ll talk to me for a change.”
“Hasn’t she been talking to you?”
“Not really. It’s been more me talking at her and her getting defensive. Maybe Emily’s clothes will be a peace offering.”
“I’m sure Emily would be thrilled to know her future daughter-in-law wore her things, especially while she was on the back of Dale.” Dale was Emily Chastain’s gelding that Maggie had adopted.
“Okay, I’ll head out now. It will be good to get behind the wheel of my old Honda.”
Vic laughed.
“Help me load up, please.” It would take a while to get the clothing into garment bags.
“I remember some of these things,” he said, grinning. “Are you sure I can’t ride along?”
“Not this time, Vic. I’m looking forward to the adventure.”
“Okay, but when you come back, I’m going to get you up on the back of the horse so we can take a ride together.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “I haven’t been on a horse since I was sixteen, but if I can get up into a saddle, I’ll do it.”
They loaded up the trunk of her car, and then she sent a text.
Vic asked me to go through Emily’s closet and I have all of her beautiful riding clothes packed in the car for you. Is now a good time?
Maggie was out in the barn with Tina and Rhonda, waxing the saddles she’d washed and oiled the day before, when the text came through.
Maggie frowned while she looked at the text. Her mother had annoyed her recently. It wasn’t just the old wives’ tales and incredibly thoughtless remarks she’d made, but her disinterest in her granddaughter hurt the most. Here was Rose offering to come to the cottage despite it being one of her least favorite places to be. That was an olive branch of sorts. She texted back.
Sure, Mom, come. We can take a walk.
Baby Tina loved to go on hikes with Maggie. At just over a year, she had more energy for her size than they could have imagined. And when it got to be too much for her and she kept tripping, she gladly crawled into the papoose carrier Dave had devised for his son and his brother’s daughter. It was easier on the body than a commercial baby carrier, although after an hour, the shoulders had usually had enough.
“I have to go inside and straighten up a bit,” she told Rhonda. “If you want to bring her in to nap, that’s fine. My mother is coming. We might take a walk, and Tina can come with me if we do.”
“Oh. Maybe a little nap beforehand is a good thing, then.” She swept Tina up into her arms and headed for the staircase.
Maggie cleaned her computer mess off the kitchen table. Putting the kettle on to replenish their iced tea stash, she also made a pot of coffee. Then, taking a peek in the mirror in the powder room, Maggie wondered what derogatory remarks Rose would have about her appearance. Learning to respond as an adult was a process. Every time she got around her mother, she became a child again and would take responsibility for it so Tina could have a normal relationship with her grandmother.
She returned to the barn to finish up the saddle waxing and wait for Rose. Everything about the barn appealed to Maggie’s senses: new, clean stalls with the perfectly symmetrical stacked bales of hay, the smell of alfalfa and horse manure, the whirl of the ceiling fans that kept the air moving in the bayou heat, and the whinny of horses acknowledging her presence. Even the texture of the saddle wax as she polished the leather pleased her.
A car horn beep interrupted her reverie, and she went to the app on her phone that would open the gate for Rose.
As the familiar old Honda pulled through the gate and came down the long drive to the cottage, Maggie had a moment of melancholy; her mother had left the comfort of Doc Chastain’s house and ventured down that daunting dirt road, just to bring her daughter the old clothes of her boyfriend’s dead wife. Shaking her head, she snickered at the thought.
“Hey, Mom,” she called, walking out to the car.
“You look good,” Rose said, always making that first comment about her appearance. “Rested.”
“That’s good,” she said, wanting to reply, how can the mother of a one-year-old look rested?, but knowing that was passive aggressive, inviting a comment about the nanny and working at home and the big divorce settlement and the wealthy vet for a boyfriend, all topics Maggie longed to avoid. “What did you bring? I’m so excited.”
“When I saw these things, I immediately thought of you because of your height. Emily was tall, too. You’re curvier than she was, but that’s because you just had a baby.”
