Chapter 15
The chestnut loaded fine on Monday.
She walked up the ramp, stepped into the trailer, and stood there while Curtis latched the bar behind her. No fuss. No hesitation. Wyatt watched from the corral fence, arms folded, and let himself think the word progress for the first time in two weeks.
Tuesday, she refused to get on the trailer at all.
Curtis had backed it into the same spot, at the same angle, at the same time of morning.
Nothing was different. The ramp was down.
The interior was swept. The hay net was hanging where it always hung.
But the chestnut planted her front feet at the base of the ramp and would not move.
Curtis pulled the lead. Not hard. Just enough pressure to suggest forward. The mare braced. Her neck went rigid. Her hindquarters dropped, and for one alarming second, Wyatt thought she might sit down entirely.
“Let her go,” he said.
Curtis loosened the lead. The chestnut backed up three steps, head high, breathing fast. She wasn’t panicked. Wyatt had seen panicked, and this wasn’t it. This was refusal. Something between yesterday morning and this one had reset her, and whatever trust she’d built around the trailer was gone.
Curtis looked at Wyatt. “She did this fine yesterday.”
“I know.”
“Should I try again?”
“No.”
Wyatt walked to the chestnut and took the lead from Curtis.
The mare’s eyes were wide but not wild. She watched him, waiting to see what he would do with the rope in his hand.
Whether he would pull. Whether he would push.
Whether he’d be the kind of person who made her get on the trailer or the kind who let her decide.
He unclipped the lead. The mare stood there for a second, surprised. Then she turned and walked back to the corral on her own, her stride loosening with every step away from the ramp.
“That’s it?” Curtis asked.
“That’s it for today.”
“The parade’s in two weeks.”
“I know when the parade is.”
Curtis looked at the trailer, then at the corral, where the chestnut was already at the water trough, calm as a house cat. He opened his mouth, closed it, and walked to his truck.
Wyatt stood at the ramp. The trailer sat open and empty, the hay net swinging slightly in a breeze that hadn’t been there a minute ago. He could still feel the tension from the mare’s lead in his hand—the brace, the resistance, the rigid line of her neck as she planted her feet and said no.
Something had spooked her. Could have been anything. A bad dream, if horses had those. A noise in the night. The memory of some other trailer that hadn’t ended well. There was no way to know. And knowing wouldn’t have changed the approach.
You didn’t argue a horse out of being afraid. You showed up the next day and started over.
He closed the ramp, latched it, and walked to the corral fence. Pop would have done the same thing. Not because it was a technique or a philosophy. Because it was the only thing that worked.
He’d told Wyatt once about a stallion in the seventies—a big Thoroughbred off the track, terrified of everything—who refused to let anyone touch his front feet for six months.
Pop drove out twice a week, sat on the fence, and waited.
Didn’t touch the horse. Didn’t approach him.
Just drank coffee and let the animal get used to the idea that a human could be nearby without wanting something.
On month seven, the stallion walked up and put his nose on Pop’s shoulder. Pop reached down and picked up the front left hoof. The horse let him.
“Did you ever figure out what he was afraid of?” Wyatt had asked.
“Didn’t matter,” Pop said. “He wasn’t afraid of me. That was enough.”
Footsteps on the gravel behind him. Wyatt didn’t turn around. He knew the sound.
Meghan stopped beside him at the fence. She set her coffee on the top rail and looked at the chestnut. “I saw,” she said.
“All of it?”
“Most of it. I got here when Curtis was trying to lead her on.”
Wyatt nodded.
The chestnut had finished drinking and now stood in the middle of the corral, one hip cocked, her head low. She looked like a horse who had never once in her life refused to do anything.
That was the maddening thing about setbacks. The animal on the other side of them looked exactly the same as the animal who’d been making progress the day before.
“What happened?” Meghan asked.
“I don’t know. She was fine yesterday. Something changed overnight. Could be anything.”
“What do you do now?”
“Start over.”
Meghan looked at him. “From the beginning?”
“From wherever she is. If that’s the beginning, then yes.”
She was quiet for a moment. The chestnut shifted her weight and swished her tail at a fly. A truck passed on the road behind the church, and the mare’s ears tracked the sound, but her body didn’t tense. The road was fine. The trash can was fine. The trailer was the problem today.
“You don’t give up on them,” Meghan said.
She said it simply. Not admiration, not a question.
“They’re not trying to be difficult,” Wyatt said. “They’re scared.”
The words hung in the air between them. He’d said them about the horse. Meant them about the horse. But the sentence sat there on the fence rail next to her coffee cup and turned into something wider. Neither of them pretended it hadn’t.
Meghan picked up her coffee. Took a sip. Set it back down.
“My 4:30 canceled,” she said. “If you need help with anything out here this afternoon, I’m free.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t.”
He looked at her. She was watching the chestnut again, her face calm, her hands on the coffee cup she’d just set down and picked back up.
She did that when she was holding something in. Reached for the nearest object and held on. He had seen it with the spray bottle at the salon. The broom. The mug at his kitchen counter. She gave her hands something to do so the rest of her could stay still.
“I could use a second person for ground work,” he said. “If she’ll come out of the corral.”
“And if she won’t?”
“Then we sit on the fence and wait.”
Meghan almost smiled. He caught the beginning of it—the smallest shift at the corner of her mouth—before she looked down at her cup.
“I can do that,” she said.
They stood at the fence for a while. The morning settled around them—the deputies working their horses in the far lot, the distant hum of Main Street traffic, a bird in the tree line repeating the same three notes.
The chestnut stood in the corral and breathed. Meghan stood at the fence and breathed. Wyatt stood beside her and tried not to think about the fact that this—the quiet, the waiting, the woman next to him who didn’t need the silence filled—was becoming the best part of his day.
He failed at not thinking about it.
He thought about it all afternoon.