Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Summer almost walked back out the other side.
She recognized Gilbert McBride, the father of her favorite therapy children.
He’d lost his wife the previous Christmas, and she had felt so bad for him almost losing his business.
She could totally relate to that since she was on the verge of losing her farm.
That was one of the reasons she had not charged him for the therapy she had been giving his children for the last twelve months.
Talk about irony. She tried not to be bitter, but it just didn’t seem fair that she had been working with his children, not charging him, while he had been building his business and had apparently been successful at it, since now he wanted to buy her farm, which she couldn’t afford to keep.
No one could tell her that God didn’t have a sense of humor.
“How many horses do you have?” he asked.
She blinked. She hadn’t been expecting any prospective buyers to want to ask her anything.
After all, that was why she hired a real estate agent, so they could sell the property.
She’d answered all their questions, but…
she supposed it made sense that he might have a few things he wanted to know.
While she was answering, she wondered if he realized that he was talking to the person who gave his kids therapy.
He’d never dropped them off or picked them up, and she doubted he recognized her.
Although, his family might have told him that the farm was hers and her role in their lives.
Did they tell him that she hadn’t been charging him?
“I have five. I just lost one over the summer.”
“And you give horseback riding therapy with those five horses?”
“I use three of them for my therapy. This one, and its buddy, are the ones I use for parades and for shows, and I hire them out at times as well.” That was another angle where she was trying to make some money.
That wasn’t the only expense she had on the farm, putting the money into the horses.
Of course, Princess had died and not only cost her all the money that she had put into her but left behind a huge vet bill as well.
It was over and done with, and not something she could fix, so there was no point in getting upset about it.
“My children take therapy from you.”
“I know. I recognized you from seeing you last fall. I believe it was in town just before your wife passed away. I’m sorry.” She’d seen him with his children at the grocery store. From what she understood, one of the rare times they’d been out together.
She did feel bad for him. From what she had heard, he had been completely devastated.
At first, she had believed that other people had been bringing his children to therapy because he had been unable to function, but then word around town was that he had been rebuilding his business, which he almost lost because of neglect and embezzlement.
“You must have good eyes, if you remember me from that long ago.”
“I do have a tendency to remember a face,” she said. And a horse. She had that tendency too.
“Is there anything I should know about the place before I put an offer in?”
“I can’t think of anything. Everything works just fine.
I’m not selling because there is a huge list of repairs that need to be done.
Of course, there are a few places in the fence that could be taken care of, but that’s pretty much the way it always is.
Animals scratch their necks or butts on it and bend it over and knock it down, and you’re constantly repairing it unless you electrify it. Which I haven’t done.”
“I see. Everything’s in pasture?”
He hadn’t laughed at her statement about the animals with their necks and butts, and although she hadn’t exactly meant it to be funny, because it was true, she said it with a smile. His face remained serious.
She kind of got the feeling that he might be a jerk. She wasn’t sure what was giving her that vibe, but no doubt the guy did not seem to be overly friendly or nice, although he did keep asking her questions.
“Yes. I don’t have any crops planted at all.
Although I did get some hay off of ten acres twice this year.
With only having five horses, they didn’t eat all the grass.
We had a good bit of rain this year. If it had been a dry year, I would have needed every bit of those twenty acres for them to eat, and then I would have bought hay this winter. ”
“So how many horses do you think this place could sustain comfortably?”
“In a wet year, it can easily handle the five horses that I have. In a dry year, you most likely couldn’t have one, depending on how dry it was of course.”
He nodded and then turned to his agent. “I think we can go.” He looked back at Summer. “You’ll be hearing from me. I love the place, and I’ll be putting in an offer as soon as Jane can get it written up.”
“All right. Sounds good,” she said, feeling neither happiness nor animosity toward him.
She didn’t feel grateful either, although she supposed she probably should.
His offer, if it was the full asking price, and it should be considering the place hadn’t even been on the market for twenty-four hours, would enable her to be out of debt and no longer have the chains of debt wrapped around her.
She’d lived with it for so long she’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be free.
“Mr. McBride, you haven’t seen the apartment that’s above the stables. Would you like to look at that?” The real estate agent looked up from the papers she carried.
“Sure,” he said, sounding surprised.
There wasn’t much to see up there. Just two rooms, a kitchen and dining room and living room combo along with a bedroom, and a small bath with a standup shower.
It had originally been built for a stable manager to stay, or if someone was on foal watch, they could hang out there too.
The kitchen was tiny, although it did have a stove and a fridge, and the bathroom was serviceable, but it certainly was nothing compared to the house.
She wouldn’t rent it out to anyone. It just wasn’t nice enough for someone to want to pay to stay there or to even turn it into a rental for a little bit of extra income.
It would need to have some money poured into it first.
That was only her opinion though, and maybe she was wrong. She’d been wrong about a lot of things in her life, and that could be another one.
She glanced at her phone. She had a little bit of time.
She would use that to give her horses baths before she needed to get them loaded to take in for the parade.
She loved working with her Pasa Finos, not just because of their beauty and elegance, but because they had such sweet personalities.
Of course, she was partial to any horse.
She’d been horse crazy from the time she was little, and she was doing her dream job, living in her dream house, on her dream farm.
Which was her family farm, the one that had been in her family for generations.
But sometimes people lived their dreams for a little while and then had to move on.
Apparently that was what God was going to do with her, and she just had to accept it.
There was no point in getting sad and falling into a deep depression because she wasn’t getting what she wanted.
After all, she needed to lift up her eyes and look for the door that God was going to open.
She had convinced herself, almost anyway, that what God had planned for her was better than what she had.
She just had to go through this rough patch first in order to get there.
Part of her didn’t believe that, part of her wanted to think that God was actually out to get her and wanted to make her life as miserable as He possibly could. But most of her thought that she was right, that God was good, and in just a little while, she would see how very, very good He was.