Chapter 10
Liz
The barn reeks of tension. The mare is lying on her side, her flanks slick with sweat, snorting with every contraction. Alba is kneeling in the straw, wearing shoulder-length exam gloves, her arms smeared with blood and lubricant.
“The foal's coming breech,” she announces without looking up. “It's stuck. This will be very hard. I've sedated the mother, but I need you to keep her still while I try to turn it.”
I kneel by the mare’s head and stroke her, trying to calm her. Camila stays in the doorway, white as a sheet.
“Hey, you,” Alba jerks her chin at her. “Get over here, now.”
“No, no. I don't... I don't know anything about this,” she protests.
“It doesn't matter. Do exactly what I tell you.”
An assistant holds the tail, bandaged and tied off to one side. Alba adds more lube, focused, and slides her hands in almost to the elbow to try to turn the foal.
“I need you to run the obstetrical ropes over the legs,” she orders, guiding Camila’s hands, which are shaking with tension. “Slowly, don't lose the knot.”
The next few minutes feel endless.
“I can see the legs now,” the vet announces at last. “When I say now, help me—pull on the ropes. Liz, you guide Camila; you're more used to this kind of thing.”
The foal slides out and, for a terrible instant, doesn't move.
“No, no. Fuck, no,” I mutter through my teeth.
Alba dives on him, clears his airway quickly, rubs his chest. Nothing.
“Come on, little one, breathe,” she growls.
Just as Camila runs out to throw up, the foal coughs. It's only a fragile sound, but air fills his lungs, and we all let out a sigh of relief.
“Damn, we did it,” Alba announces, dropping onto her back in the straw, not caring that it’s dirty.
The mare stretches her neck to sniff her baby, maternal instinct kicking in in a split second. The foal is black like his mother, with a white star on his forehead.
“He's beautiful,” Camila whispers as she swipes away a tear rolling down her cheek with the back of her hand.
“She—not he. She's a filly,” I correct under my breath.
“What are you going to name her?”
“Hope,” I sigh, smiling at Camila. “Her name will be Hope.”
***
“Did you two have a fight or something?” Alba asks when we head back to the house so she can shower and put on clean clothes.
“I don't know why you're saying that,” I grumble.
“You're a terrible liar, Liz. You always have been. What happened? Yesterday you looked ridiculously happy when you two kissed. Did you take her to bed and it didn't work, or what?” she presses.
I look away. I look anywhere but at her. I watch the cat sleep by the window for a few seconds, snoring in the sun while I search for a way out. I think about lying, about changing the subject, but it's useless.
“Did you panic?” she asks suddenly. “Holy cow, Liz, did you panic?”
“Quit talking bullshit. She hinted we could sleep together, but it doesn't make any sense. She’ll be back in Chicago in a few weeks. I’ll be here—hell, I’ll be lucky if I even keep my job. Besides...”
“Right, besides, you still haven't gotten over what she did a long time ago. How old were you, Liz? Eighteen, nineteen?”
“Do I need to remind you what happened?”
“I know what happened—you’ve told me a million times. And you're right. It was shitty: she slept with you and pretended she barely knew you. But she’s changed. Now you’re two grown women. What exactly are you trying to do?”
“I just want...” I trail off, unable to finish.
“She's confused. I think she’s getting more comfortable on the ranch. Make it easy for her. This isn't about beating city life or making her pay for the hurt she caused you years ago. Help her a little. Build bridges,” she adds, placing a hand on my shoulder and squeezing hard. “Now I’m going to check on Relámpago—he was always my favorite horse, and I don’t like how those lungs sound. Think about what I said.”
At dusk, the light fades, but the heat lingers. I peel off my sweat-soaked shirt to toss it in the wash, rinse off with the hose, and step out onto the porch in a sports bra with a beer. My bare feet relish the feel of the boards.
The door creaks open, and Camila comes out onto the porch too, her hair still damp from the shower. She hesitates when she sees me and then sits in her grandmother’s old rocking chair. For a good long while, we don’t say anything.
It’s easier in the half-light. Easier to let my eyes linger a little too long on her features or on the curve of her breasts. Easier to notice the way beads of water cling to the ends of her hair, to watch how she rubs her fingers when she’s nervous.
She looks everywhere but at me: the barn, the hills, the lone coyote trotting along the fence.
“Rough day, huh?” I ask, just to break the silence.
“Brutal. I never imagined... I never imagined what it was like to help a mare give birth. I puked up months’ worth of meals, but when the filly breathed, it was beautiful.”
“It was,” I admit with a long sigh.
“Listen, that filly, Hope. I don’t want you to sell her. I’d like to keep her. Tell me how much she costs, and I’ll put the money into the ranch account,” she says, almost shyly.
I raise my eyebrows, surprised.
“You going to start her yourself when she’s three?”
“You could teach me how,” she offers.
“Does that mean you’re not going to sell the ranch?”
“It means I’m not sure, but I’m starting to think I might want to keep it. I’ve been thinking. You know how to care for the stock. You can fix a tractor blindfolded, Diego says the horses understand you when you talk to them, the cowboys respect you. But me...”
“You?”
“I know how to make this last. Not just year to year, but forever. Legal stuff, contracts. Negotiations. Grants. The things you can’t see because you’re too caught up fighting the day-to-day.”
I grab a stick I usually use to shoo the chickens when they try to come onto the porch and drag it across the floor to sketch a rough map of the ranch.
“This area here, we don’t use it for anything,” I say. “You could put your solar panels there.”
She leans toward me and takes my hand, drawing some wavy lines on my sketch.
“This part has plenty of rocks—don’t think I haven’t inspected almost the whole ranch—but if we build a platform, it could work.”
“Do you know why everyone adored your grandmother? Rosa didn’t leave anyone behind. There was room for everyone on this ranch; there were opportunities even for people who couldn’t find anything else in Alamogordo. She took care of the community.”
“I know. You coming to the porch swing?” she asks, jerking her chin.
“The last time we sat there together, we were eighteen,” I remind her.
“Luckily, back then you didn’t come out on the porch in a sports bra,” she jokes.
We talk for hours as we rock at a lazy pace.
About nothing and everything: the price of hay, how beautiful the New Mexico sky is compared to Chicago.
We talk about what comes next, when the two months are up and Camila inherits the ranch.
About how it could work, and about all the things that scare us.
I take her hand, and she laces her fingers with mine, and in that moment I think I picked the perfect name for the newborn filly.