AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She twists her hands, picking her thumbnail. “My mother was from Sweden. She died right after I was born and that’s all I have left.”
I turn the wooden horse in my fingers. It’s about four inches tall and the craftsmanship is impressive. Every ripple of muscle or knob of bone is visible. The body is painted with chestnut red and white markings. It reminds me a lot of Angel.
“You hide it from me,” I say. “Why?”
Her finger digs harder. “It’s a child’s toy,” she says, glancing up. “Clint said it was stupid that I carried it with me.”
My brow rises. “Grief isn’t stupid, redbird. The way you grieve doesn’t have to make sense to anyone else.”
She swallows and her eyes are wet again. “Thank you,” she whispers.
I take her wrist, flipping her hand, and put the painted mare into her palm. “It looks like it was repainted. Did your father do that?”
She nods, a little smile gracing her lips. “He did it before he died.”
“You must have loved him a lot,” I say.
She never volunteers information about her past. I don’t pry because I know so much about it already. Everyone she’s ever trusted was bought for a blank check. Doctors, lawyers, judges—they gave up her secrets easily.
The only ones who didn’t spill are dead.
“He was amazing, but he was pretty sick,” she says quietly. “That’s all I remember…this weight on my mind that he didn’t have a lot of time. He got really ill near the end, that’s why we sold our cattle and equipment. I wish…I wish I’d focused more on him and less on thinking about how he was going to die. I feel like his life is just…a blur in my memory.”
A tear slips down her cheek.
“But you remember him,” I say. “And the land he loved, that’s still yours.”
She blinks hard, wiping her face. “No, it’s yours.”
“Whatever happens, Stowe Farms will stay in the family,” I say. “Break my heart, redbird, and I'll still give you what you’re owed.”
She sniffs and meets my gaze shyly. “Really?”
“I know what it feels like,” I say simply.
She’s quiet, turning the painted mare over and over in her fingers. Then she sets it aside and pats the bed.
“Have breakfast with me,” she says.
I sit beside her and she tells me about her girlhood. Her words are colorful, filling my head with images of bluebells, sunsets, evenings by the fire while the winter wind tore at the farmhouse. She tells me how her father taught her to ride and shoot and rope cattle. How he always brought her candy or a book from South Platte when he went on errands.
She tells me about the little fragments her mother left behind. The Swedish dessert she baked from an old recipe. The burning wreath her father wove and put on her head for St. Lucy’s Dayand told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world. The book of fairy tales she read so often it fell apart in her hands.
She’s lived her life in the shadow of death.
Maybe we’re not so different, my redbird and I.
We sleep for a few hours in the afternoon. I wake before her, disoriented. It’s been decades since I took a nap during the day. She’s still sleeping soundly when I go to put the venison roast into the oven.
Then I go out to the back porch because I found a cigar that’s still good and I want to have a fucking smoke. I never get a chance to unwind, so I’m taking it while I can.
The ground is dusted with snow. The entire world is silent.
I lean on the railing, the earthy tobacco taste on my tongue.
When I first met her, it was an instant attraction. A scorching hot lust that nothing could satisfy but her body. But now, what I feel for her is so much softer and deeper than anything I’ve felt before. I thought I loved Mariana, but now that I know Keira, I’m not sure I’ve ever been in love before now.
I’m never coming back from this obsession.
