Back in the Saddle (Diamond Firetail Farm)

Chapter 16

16

Taylor

I ran my hand through my hair as I stared at the computer. This shit was hard. Ciaron dealt with as many competing priorities as me. He never seemed bothered by it, and everything flowed smoothly.

I’d forgotten that he’d taken on as much extra work as I had. How did he manage it all and keep on top of all our family responsibilities? Maybe because he didn’t hide behind it all like me. Dread spread through my body. My muscles were so heavy it was an effort to move. I’d done that. I’d hidden behind work. I didn’t want to admit that everything was out of control, so I controlled work to the nth degree.

I was in the middle of checking an order for first-aid materials and thinking about the list of jobs Ciaron had left me, including checking the birthing aids, when I heard a call on the two-way about an injured horse. The stud hand asked for Ciaron. She must have forgotten he was away.

I picked up the two-way. “This is Taylor. Ciaron is on leave today. Lorraine or I can help.”

“I have an injured horse in the Bottom Road Paddock.”

“OK. Be there soon.”

I made my way down to the paddock and turned onto the road after Mum, sitting back a little as the dust flew up from the dry road. We really should have decided which one of us would go. Too late now. We got out of our cars and headed over to the horse and the two stud hands.

“I was showing Sofia the different paddocks, and we noticed Mermaid limping,” Cleo said.

I was a few metres away from Mermaid and I could already tell a vet was needed. The skin on her shoulder was torn away. A flap about the size of a hand hung down. She’d be in a considerable amount of pain.

“Can you get the truck, Mum? We need to get her to the hospital barn.”

She nodded and left the paddock.

I turned to the two stud hands. “Can you please check the fences and look for any low-lying branches that could have caused this?”

They headed off. Of course, Mermaid could have been kicked by another horse as well. But if there was a problem out there in the paddock, we needed to fix it so another horse wasn’t injured.

Mermaid stood beside me quietly as I called the vet. I patted her neck. Then I watched the stud hands while I waited for the truck. I should have told them they’d done a good job spotting the injury. Ciaron would have done that almost straight away, and he would have thanked them. Now, they were too far away.

I examined the injury closer. It wasn’t very deep, thankfully. It was fresh too. The skin wasn’t drying out yet, which meant stitching would be viable. I handed the horse off to Mum when she arrived. “Call me when the vet arrives, please.”

I headed out to the two stud hands who were walking the fence line. “Have you found anything?”

“No, nothing.”

“OK. Thanks. Good job on spotting the injury.”

Cleo smiled. “It was weird that she wasn’t with the herd.”

It was noticing small things like that that made a good stud hand.

“Finish the fence line and if you can’t find anything, head back to work. Let me know either way, please.”

“OK.”

I grabbed my phone out to call Mermaid’s owners. I needed to let them know about her injury and that she required vet treatment. I hated this part of the job. It was another thing Ciaron was good at. He had a great rapport with our clients. It was something I had been more involved in before Mum had retired. I needed to get back into it; our clients were important, as were their horses.

Ciaron did so much that I didn’t give him credit for. And all of it made my job as general manager easier. I’d forgotten we were a team.

I headed back to the office to continue the paperwork. My fingers were brown from patting Mermaid and there was dirt under my nails. No rain meant no natural baths for the horses. When Mum called, I made my way to the hospital barn.

Dan, the vet, looked up and grinned as I walked in, his grey hair shining in the light. “Oooh, we have the big boss today.”

“Aren’t you lucky?”

“Where’s Ciaron? Did you let him off the ball and chain?”

“I decided he’d earnt a day of freedom.”

Mum laughed. “Only a day.”

Dan examined the wound. He uncurled his wiry, tall body. He was still spritely for a sixty-something year old. “It looks pretty clean. No real tissue damage. It will just need a flush and a lot of stitches.”

“Good.”

He started cleaning the wound. “Is Isabelle looking forward to her work experience with us next month?”

“Sure is.”

I hoped I sounded convincing. I didn’t even know she had work experience coming up.

“She will get to come on rounds with me and watch some surgeries as well.”

“Excellent.”

“Ciaron told me if she got stuck doing generic shit, he’d make sure I was called to flush the mares out.”

Mum laughed. “That man has a way of convincing people.”

Dan chuckled. “He convinced Taylor to marry him in less than twenty-four hours.”

“In my defence, I thought he was joking.” For the first few hours, that is. After that first night, I knew he was serious.

“And then he followed you all the way here,” Mum said.

Gosh, I’d missed him while I waited for him to get here. It had been like I was an eventing horse with no obstacles to jump. “I couldn’t deny him after that, could I?”

“Hell no,” Dan said. “Dedication like that should be rewarded.”

Up until our split, I thought we’d been dedicated to each other, but my dedication had strayed. I thought saving the farm was important for my family, but what they really wanted was me. I’d had it all wrong in my head. I wasn’t going to give up on the farm. It had survived many natural disasters. But if I had to choose, I’d choose Ciaron and my children.

Dan stood straight. “All done.”

I looked at the wound. It was a neat stitch job.

“Thanks.”

“Give her oral antibiotics twice a day for a week. Keep her in a yard to restrict her ability to run.”

“OK.”

“Back to the subject of dedication.” He faced Mum. “Are you ready to go on a date with me yet?”

My head whipped in Mum’s direction. He’d been dedicated to asking her out for the last twenty years. They had a great rapport and joked with each other all the time. I knew they liked each other because they’d often speak or ask about the other. I never understood why she kept saying no.

She gave him a sly smile. “You can be my date for Isabelle’s party.”

“Finally.” He grinned and did a happy dance. “It’s only taken twenty years for you to say yes.”

“Persistence pays off,” she said.

Interesting. Why had she said yes after all these years of denying him?

When he left, Mum said, “You didn’t know Isabelle was doing her work experience at the vet surgery?”

I shook my head. “I’m really failing at parenting. Ciaron handled it all. He probably told me.”

“It seems to me that he handles a lot of things.”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “I’ve been taking him for granted.”

“It’s probably easy to do with someone who takes everything on without complaint.”

I nodded. “Can you let Mermaid out? I need to ring her owner.”

“Sure. I’ll see you at dinner.”

I headed to the door.

“Taylor,” Mum said.

I turned around.

“If you need help to pay for the party, it can be my gift to Isabelle. I know money is tight at the moment.”

“Thanks, Mum.”

I headed back to the office, not thinking about the party, but Ciaron.

Ciaron did so much more than most men would. He took on my dreams about the farm and made them his own. He never considered our future as anything else but this. For him, it had always been about us. There wasn’t him as an individual anymore. And he didn’t complain about it. He didn’t complain about anything. All he wanted was more us.

For twenty-two years, his love had never swayed.

He gave us everything and I forgot to give us anything .

I was such a hypocrite. I’d been frustrated with Mary when Ciaron told me how much he’d done while growing up. She let him do everything that she should have been doing. She was the parent, not him. He was a child looking after other children because she was more interested in the next man in her life.

And now, I was no better. The only difference was it wasn’t because of a man.

Ciaron stopped in front of a wooden door of a brown brick building. The building was two-storey, just like the one next to it and the one after that. It was the same all the way down the street. And every door was right on the footpath. There was no yard. I stood behind him, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. He swung the door open and faced me.

“Ready?”

“Yep.” I smiled as much as my nerves would allow.

He stepped through the door. I followed. Shoes were scattered in the small entry. He kicked them out of the way.

“Sorry. It got a bit messy in the three days I’ve been away.”

The three days we’d spent together since we’d met.

Was it his job to tidy up after everyone? Maybe that was one of his responsibilities. At home, Mum cooked, I did the dishes. We shared the cleaning.

A young boy ran into the hallway, followed by an older one. “Give it back to me, you fucking little shit.”

“Will you stop fighting?” a female voice called from further in the house. “I’m sick of hearing it.”

The two boys stopped in front of Ciaron, who held out his hand. The younger one passed over a remote. That’s when he noticed me. Ciaron placed his hand on my back.

“Tommy, Seamus, this is Taylor.”

“Hi,” I said.

“Mam, Ciaron’s home,” the older boy yelled.

Footsteps rushed towards us. “About time. Where have you been?”

I took the time to study her. She was tall and slim with dyed blonde hair. Her cheeks were flushed. She continued to talk as she made her way down the hall. “Tommy needs help with his homework, and Ronan needs to be picked up from practice. I can’t do everything.”

My jaw clenched. It was her job to look after her children, not Ciaron’s. I held my tongue. It was hard.

Ciaron’s hand stiffened. His whole body stiffened. In three days, I’d never seen him so tense, even with my father. I squeezed his hand, and he relaxed.

His mother stopped short when she saw me. A hint of alcohol wafted in the air. She smoothed down her black top and then widened her eyes at Ciaron.

“Mam, this is Taylor. Taylor, my mam, Mary.”

“Nice to meet you, Mary.”

“Is that where you’ve been for three days?” Mary said, staring pointedly at me. “What about work?”

I moved closer to Ciaron. Obviously, Mary didn’t think it was nice to meet me.

“I spoke to work. I had some time owing to me.”

She grunted. “You spoke to work, but you couldn’t manage to speak to me.”

“The phone has been disconnected,” Ciaron said. “I’m not sure why since I gave you money for it last week.”

She scowled “Don’t f ? —.”

“Ciaron wanted me to meet you before I left,” I said, interrupting her. “We’ll be getting married in Australia.”

We hadn’t really spoken about when we were going to get married. I didn’t actually think he was serious until he’d got a tattoo with my name. So we discussed that he was going to apply for a passport and as soon as he got it, he’d be selling his car and buying a one-way plane ticket.

Ciaron smiled down at me.

“Married?” Mary asked.

I moved closer to Ciaron and put my arm around his waist. I wanted to say ‘so he can get away from you’ but instead said, “Yes.”

“That’s cause for celebration, I suppose,” she said. She gazed up at him and stroked his hair, not caring that her arm was in my face. Ciaron’s brothers stared at her before screwing their faces up. As she turned to walk down the hallway, she looked back over her shoulder and gave me a smile. It felt like I’d been slapped in the face with slime.

We followed her into the kitchen/dining room. There was a table squished into the corner. Ciaron directed me to a seat as his mother got some glasses out, poured Guinness into them, and put them on the table. Ciaron went to sit in the seat next to me, but Mary shoved one of the brothers into it. She pulled Ciaron away to the other end of the table to sit next to her. Ciaron’s brothers asked me lots of questions while she sat there tight-lipped and rigid.

I had no doubt that she’d try to convince him to change his mind right until he hopped on that flight. I wondered if his father would be the same. We were going to visit him next.

Mary hadn’t been able to change his mind. He was in Australia working with Mum and me on the farm within two months. He’d moved half a world away to be with me and I should have been more appreciative.

Enough with taking him for granted. Not just for the things he did everyday but for him. For the man he was, the man who loved us, his kindness, his humility. Him.