AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Is he still diving into his online courses like a hungry coyote?” Stevie asked.
“Yes, and as soon as he finishes one, he’s ready for me to pay for another one. Right now, he is conquering online chess in addition to his studies, but it’s been weeks since he’s gone outside. Sometimes hewillcome out of his room for dinner, but he hasn’t now for several days,” Vada said. “I’m at my wit’s end, Stevie. Thank God I’ve got a job I can do from home.”
“That’s one of the reasons I came by today,” Stevie said between bites. “You remember Lucas? He’s Jesse and Cody’s younger brother, and he graduated from high school a year behind us. He’s been training cutting horses since he left Honey Grove, but a few years ago he got into horse therapy for kids. He was working on a ranch, and the foreman’s son was super intelligent like Theron, but his social skills weren’t the best. The foreman was paying for the boy to get therapy with horses, and Lucas got into it. He’s taken a few online psychology classes since then and is ready to put in his own business when he gets back to Texas.”
“Sure, I remember him. A quiet kid who always seemed to be in the shadows of his older brothers,” Vada answered. “What’s he got to do with anything?”
“He’s on his way back here to stay,” Stevie told her. “He left Tennessee this morning and is coming back to Honey Grove with two horses that he’s trained as therapy animals. He’ll be working on the ranch with his brothers, but he wants to build up a practice to help kids like Theron.”
“With horses?” Vada could hear the disbelief in her own ears and caught just a brief glimpse of a motion in her peripheral vision. When she glanced that way, there was nothing there, so she chalked it up to the sunshine coming through the windows and making patterns on the wall.
“It’s not a new thing,” Stevie said. “I understand that folks have been using animals to bring children with all kinds of disabilities out of their shells for a while. I thought maybe you might bring Theron out to the ranch on Monday morning and see what Lucas can do.”
“Honey, I would try anything at this point, up to and including standing on my head in hot ashes, but what makes you think a horse can help when every therapist I could take him to, or pay to come to the house, from here to Dallas, hasn’t done much good?” Vada asked.
Stevie shrugged. “Never know until you give it a try. If it works, you might have a Christmas miracle. If it doesn’t, at least you’ve gotten Theron to go for a ride in the country. Lucas will be here around suppertime today. Can I tell him that you’ll bring Theron out to the ranch on Monday morning? Say around ten o’clock?”
“Like I said, I’ll try anything,” Vada answered. “I can’t see where a horse could do what trained therapist can’t, but anything is worth a shot.”
Stevie pushed back her chair, crossed the room, and brought the coffeepot to the table. She topped off Vada’s mug and refilled hers. “Lucas has a lot of patience, and kids are drawn to him. He was awesome with Addy and Jesse’s twins the last time he came home.”
“But they’re just over a year old. Theron is ten,” Vada said.
“And Mia is almost twenty, and she still adores her uncle Lucas,” Stevie argued.
Vada chuckled and touched her mug with Stevie’s. “Here’s to Lucas being right. I bet Pearl is excited that all her boys will be home for good and just in time for Christmas. And how is Sonny?”
Stevie picked up a bear claw and tore it in half. She handed off the part in her right hand to Vada and answered, “Sonny’s meds are working very well. His MS isn’t any better, but it hasn’t gotten worse in the past few months. Pearl is ecstatic about Lucas coming back to the ranch permanently and has been cooking for days. You’ve been to the ranch, haven’t you?”
Vada shook her head. “Nope. I was too busy with Travis in high school, and by the time I came back home to Honey Grove, my old friends hardly even remembered my name. You can’t know how glad I am that our paths crossed that day in the grocery store.”
“Me, too. I love my Ryan family, but I sure appreciate our friendship,” Stevie said and then frowned. “I never asked, but what caused the problem between you and Travis? If that’s too personal or painful then just say so.”
Vada wasn’t sure she wanted to get into those details, but after a moment’s hesitation, she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It makes more sense to me to talk to you than to talk to a horse, I guess,” she said with a smile.
Stevie chuckled. “Thanks for that, but you might find talking to an animal is a help. Sometimes, I go out to the barn and tell Dixie, my alpaca, all about my frustrations. She’s a danged fine listener.”
“I bet she is,” Vada said. “Okay, here goes. Travis and I wrote down our plans for our whole life when we graduated from high school. I mean we really wrote them on paper, and we followed them to the letter. We would get married when we finished college and had good jobs. We would start our family when we had been married four years, and then we’d have another child two years later.”
She paused and took time to eat a couple of bites of the bear claw. “Everything went just like we planned. We had Theron, a beautiful baby boy, but looking back, I could see that something wasn’t quite right from the beginning. I started working from home because he was so difficult, and we couldn’t keep a nanny. I thought maybe he was on the autism spectrum, but when I had him tested, we found out that his IQ was off the charts. He was three when Travis said he couldn’t take the stress of having a kid who was more interested in books than playing with toys. He had already packed up his personal things, and everything he wanted from our apartment was in his truck. I was thirty years old and had a three-year-old child who required most of my attention…” she paused, “and didn’t know what I was going to do. I called my grandmother, and she said that I should move back to Honey Grove and told me I could live in her rental house. My company didn’t care where I lived just so long as I got my work done. Been here ever since.”
Stevie finished off her coffee, went to the cabinet, and brought back the pot to refill Vada’s cup and her own. “What happened next?”
“I moved here and took him to the four-year-old program at the school. He was already reading on fifth-grade level by then, so he was bored out of his mind, and I guess the word is that he retreated into himself. The teachers didn’t know what to do with him. He didn’t want to play with the other kids, which I understood. Why would a kid with fifth-grade intelligence want to even talk to kids who couldn’t read or do math problems? I took him home after the first two months and let him learn at his own speed. That fed his antisocial behavior, and now he’s even looking into ways to help ‘kids like him.’” She air quoted the last three words. “He doesn’t like to come out of his room because everything in there is put in its place. His OCD is almost as bad as his intelligence is good, if that makes sense.”
“Well, at least he realizes he’s got a problem, and that’s the first step toward getting any kind of help,” Stevie said, “Thank you for trusting me enough to share that story. I’ve always wondered if Theron might be autistic; now I just realize that he’s probably the person who will grow up and design the rocket that puts a man on Mars.”
“Just telling it to someone other than my grandmother is kind of cathartic, so I appreciate you for listening,” Vada said. “Maybe horse therapy will work for Theron if talking to an animal makes him feel better.”
“I bet you miss your grandmother as much as I miss my mother, and the therapy might work since he’s evidently looking for ways to help himself and others,” Stevie said.
“Yes, I do,”—Vada nodded—“but I’m sure glad that you and I are friends.”
Stevie stood up, then bent and gave Vada a hug. “Me, too, and like I’ve told you a million times, you are welcome to come out to the ranch anytime—with or without Theron.”
“And like I’ve told you a million times,” Vada said, smiling, “it’s tough enough to get Theron to go outside. Being around that many people would send him swirling into a dark hole.”
“I’ll be sure to tell everyone on Monday to let Lucas be the only new person Theron meets,” Stevie said.
