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Repairs take time and money, both of which are limited resources. Having horses that are fed and sheltered and exercised is the highest standard I can strive for. Attending community college rather than the highly ranked one Gramps wants me to allows me to meet that low bar.
We pass the start of the east pasture, and I look for Dusty in her usual spot under the massive oak.
She’s not there.
A chill that has nothing to do with the air conditioning blasting from the car vents spreads across my skin.
Caleb feels me tense. “What’s wrong?”
“Dusty’s not under the tree.”
To most people—to anyone except him—that sentence would make absolutely no sense. I catch Colt’s puzzled look in the rearview mirror.
Caleb realizes what I’m saying immediately. He’s helped me turn the horses out. He knows Dusty should have been let out in the east pasture along with the rest of the mares several hours ago, and the fact that she isn’t there is strange.
We keep driving along.
Neither of the stallions are in the west pasture, either.
Caleb’s hand tightens on my knee.
We round the final bend in the driveway, and there’s my worst nightmare, spread out before me like a pop-up book. There’s an ambulance, a police car, and a pickup truck I recognize as belonging to Mike Foreman, one of Gramps’s old racing buddies who often stops by. But there’s no sign of my grandfather. And, suddenly, I justknow.
I know that I’ve lost the only living family I had left.
I don’t remember how I found out my mother had passed. I only remember Gramps holding me when I got home from school that day, telling me everything was going to be okay.
I do recall how two Landry police officers came to our door one July morning to tell us my father’s body had been found at the racetrack. I also recall how Gramps told me I still had him—how I would always have him.
Colt slams on the brakes. It jars me back to the present tragedy.
Horror is appearing on Caleb’s face as he absorbs the scene before us.
I slide out of the opposite side of the car and walk straight up to Bob Everett, Landry’s chief of police. He fiddles with his belt buckle as I approach, dread filling the lines of his weathered face. This is a small town. He knows how many losses I’ve already faced. Knows this one will be the hardest to recover from.
Grief isn’t something you become accustomed to.
Each time, it hits differently.
“He’s gone?”
Chief Everett nods, slowly. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Lennon. Is there anyone we can call?”
“No.” I laugh, but nothing about this moment is the least bit funny. “No. There’s no one.”
He nods again, already having known the answer to the question he was obligated to ask.
I’m barely cognizant of anything happening around me as I sink down onto the bottom step of the front porch stairs and rest my forehead on my knees. Voices swim around me in a distant din of noise. The fire truck departs. Two paramedics talk quietly as they walk about our overgrown front yard.
I’ve thought about this moment.
Gramps’s health has been bad for years. There were days he barely dragged himself out of bed. I imagined him falling on the stairs one morning or calling out to me in the middle of the night. Pictured having to rush him to the local hospital for an emergency procedure. Decided who I’d call to help with the horses while I sat in the waiting room.
But this outcome never occurred to me. I never thought I would leave and return to find him gone.
If Gramps had any choice in the matter, I know this is the way he would have wanted to go, though, and that’s just about the only thing holding me together right now.
Someone takes a seat beside me. I know that it’s Caleb before he even speaks. “They’re ready to go. Do you want to see him?”
