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“Maybe so.” He propped a boot on the bottom rail. “But it brings me a lot of pleasure to help a child.”
Tex ambled up from behind the barn, his head down and tail wagging. He slipped under the bottom rail and followed alongside the horse for a couple of minutes before Theron saw him. The boy stopped in his tracks. Buttercup did the same thing and waited patiently.
Lucas held his breath until Theron dropped to his knees in the dirt and held out a hand. Tex stretched out on his belly beside the Theron and wagged his tail so hard that dust flew up around the child.
“I like you, too,” Theron said as he stroked the dog’s head. “Buttercup told me you wouldn’t bite me. She’s real smart.”
“Talk about a miracle,” Vada whispered. “If I wasn’t seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it.” She rounded her vehicle, opened the trunk, and took out a couple of folding chairs. “How long can we stay?”
Lucas popped both open and waited for her to sit in one before he eased down in the other one. “As long as it takes. Theron will decide when he’s ready to leave, not us. I should’ve remembered to bring chairs, but I didn’t expect this much progress in one day.”
“I keep chairs in the trunk and snacks in the back seat just in case he wants to stay longer when I can talk him into going to the park,” she said.
“With other kids there?” Lucas asked.
“Oh, no, usually late in the evening, and then he doesn’t play on the equipment,” she answered. “He sits in the chair and looks at the stars. Sometimes, he’ll have a bag of chips and a travel mug of hot tea. He’s partial to herbal peach, and, forgive me, I talk too much when I’m nervous.”
“No problem.” Lucas could have listened to her read the dictionary and asked for her to read it again when she finished. “I usually clam up when I’m nervous. That’s why I get along with the animals better than people for the most part.”
“I remember you being shy in high school,” Vada said.
“Not shy so much as I just liked to watch people and try to figure out what made them the way they were. I don’t imagine any of y’all would have liked to have known what I thought.” He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t lost his ability to speak around Vada. Maybe it was the fact that Theron was doing so well, or that he needed someone to talk to as much as she did.
“Probably not. We might not have liked what you saw in us.” She smiled. “Am I keeping you from other appointments or jobs?”
“This is my job for today or any day that Theron needs to come out here,” Lucas said. “Someday when he’s comfortable with me, I can show him the ranching business, and he can meet the family, but only in small doses at first.”
“Do you really think that day will ever come?” Vada asked.
“That’s the end game. He might never be comfortable with a room full of people or with strangers, but I’d like to introduce him to one person at a time later on down the road,” Lucas explained. “Again, that’s all just future goals and will be done on his time schedule. My dad, Sonny, already has dibs on being the first one to meet Theron. He’s good with kids and he’s patient. He had to be to raise three wild boys.”
Theron draped an arm around Tex and sat there with him until the dog got tired of being still and ran out of the corral toward the side of the barn where the alpacas were and turned around to bark at Theron.
“I think Tex is asking Theron to follow him, so Tex can introduce him to the alpacas,” Lucas chuckled.
“Looks like a horse and a dog might be enough for one day.” Vada nodded toward the corral, where Theron stood up, dusted off the seat of his jeans, picked up the rope, and began leading Buttercup around the corral again.
Lucas could see the child’s mouth moving as he whispered to the horse. He wondered if he should say something to Vada or not, but he was so comfortable sitting there beside her that he didn’t want to break the spell.
After another half hour, Theron brought Buttercup to the fence, whipped his hood back up over his head, and crawled between the railings. He went straight to the car and got inside without saying a word to anyone.
“Is that usual for him?” Lucas asked.
“Usually he’d not even get out of the car. On a rare day, it might mean that he would stare at the horse and the dog for a few minutes and then tell me to take him home. There he would go into his room to either play his games, do his online schoolwork, or research something. He loves to learn and is constantly looking up something. The past couple of days he’s been all into horse therapy,” Vada explained as she stood up and folded her chair.
Lucas did the same and took her chair from her hands. “I’ll put these away. How does he do on his schoolwork?”
“If he went to public school, he would be in fifth grade, but he’s doing advanced studies in eleventh-grade work right now. I expect he will graduate in another year and begin working on his first online college degree.” Vada followed him to the back of the car.
“That’s genius level.” Lucas couldn’t hide the shock in his voice.
“He loves to learn about all kinds of things. By his next visit he’ll be able to tell you things about horses that even you probably don’t know.”
“What are his favorite subjects?” Lucas asked.
“Science and math,” Vada answered.
“If he keeps going at this pace, he’ll have a degree before he can drive,” Lucas told her as he closed the truck lid. “I bet he would be an asset on a ranch like this one.”
