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“Maybe,” Daddy said.
“There’s someone good enough for Gerty,” Mom said. “Come on, Boone. You need a lot of sugar right now.”
“I won’t talk you out of the doughnuts next time,” he said.
Mom gave her a grin over his shoulder as they walked toward the back door, and Gerty smiled her way after them. She definitely thought Mike was good enough for her; the real question was whether she was good enough for him.
* * *
A few days later,the weekend arrived and that meant so did Gerty’s first day back at Pony Power. She drove over to the farm in her own truck, her younger brother in the front seat and her younger sister in the back.
“…and then they’ll get to go home with their forever families,” Amy said. She hadn’t stopped talking about the puppies for longer than it took to breathe in the past fifteen minutes.
“That’s great,” Gerty said. “You didn’t talk Daddy into taking one?” She smiled at her little sister in the rearview mirror.
“No.” Amy pouted. “He says we can’t have a dog, because we’re never home, but I justknowhe could bring it out here to the farm.”
“Maybe,” Gerty said. She glanced over to Walter, who’d been fairly quiet. He didn’t usually try to interrupt Amy, but he’d add to her stories too, and he’d not said more than five words since they’d left the house.
“Hey,” she said to him. “You okay?”
He looked up from his phone, his face instantly turning the color of a terrible sunburn. “Yeah.” He shoved his phone under his leg. “Fine.”
“Who are you texting?”
“No one,” he said. He turned away from her completely then, and Gerty recognized a lie when she heard it. Was this how her father felt, raising her? She’d started dating Mikey the summer she’d turned fourteen.
“What do you want for your birthday?” Amy asked, not even realizing that Walter had obviously been texting someone he didn’t want anyone to know about.
“A huge birthday cake,” Gerty said. “Chocolate on the inside and sprinkles on the outside.”
Amy cheered in the back seat, and Walter gave her a scathing look. “It’s too loud, Amy,” he said.
She didn’t care about his eardrums at all, and Gerty smiled at them both. “Are you going to do your stunts today?” she asked her brother.
“Yeah,” he said. “The kids like them. I always—”
“Have you met the new Pony Power therapy dog?” Amy asked. “You have to, Gerty. She is so cute.”
“Baby, you cut off Walt.” She looked over to him. “You always what?”
“Nothing. I just always do the stunts for this event.”
Gerty nodded as she made the final turn to go down the dirt lane to the farm and Pony Power. They were arriving early so they could help get set up for the event, and soon enough, the place would be full of cars, parents, and kids for this annual event. She’d been gone long enough not to know if their classes were full or not, but she’d also been hired to run horseback riding lessons this summer, and she imagined Molly would have sign-ups for those.
“When’s your next competition?”
“End of July,” he said. “It’s down in Colorado Springs. You’ll come, right?”
“Sure,” Gerty said. “Of course I will.” She smiled at Walter and pulled into the employee lot, which hadn’t been there when she’d lived on the farm as a teen. She parked, and Amy jumped from the truck almost before it had stopped moving.
“Hey,” Gerty said after her, but the girl was gone. She figured she couldn’t get into too much trouble, as Daddy and Mom were already here. She shook her head and turned off the ignition.
“So,” she said to Walter. “What’s her name? The girl you’ve been texting.”
Walt instantly turned into a tomato again. Gerty giggled and said, “Walt, it’s fine to like a girl.” She held out her hand. “Let me see.”
He made no move to hand her the phone. “No way.”
