Chapter 31
The field behind the high school was already filling up when Wyatt parked his truck at the far edge.
He’d spent the afternoon breaking down the staging area. Trailers loaded, corral panels stacked, the lot behind the Baptist church swept clean of hay and the remnants of a month’s worth of parade prep.
Curtis had taken the chestnut home. Dan had loaded the Percheron. The deputies had trailered their horses back to the department barn. By four o’clock, the lot looked like nothing had ever happened in it.
Wyatt had driven home, fed the horses, showered, and changed into a clean shirt.
Then he’d driven back to town and parked at the edge of the fireworks field, where the grass was tall enough to brush the truck’s running boards and the view of the launch site was partially blocked by a stand of oaks.
He didn’t mind the obstructed view. He wasn’t here for the fireworks.
The field was filling with blankets and lawn chairs and coolers and families staking out their spots for the show.
Kids ran through the open space between setups, chasing each other with sparklers that left bright trails in the fading light.
The smell of charcoal drifted from a grill someone had set up near the bleachers.
A speaker on a post played country music at a volume that suggested Richard had been involved in the audio decisions.
Wyatt sat on the tailgate and waited.
The day had been long. Good, but long. His shoulders ached from walking the parade route beside the Percheron, one hand on the bridle for the full length of Main Street and back.
His boots were dusty. His arms were sunburned from the hours of staging and loading and standing in the July sun.
He was tired in the way he was tired after a good day of shoeing—the deep, physical fatigue that came from using his body for something that mattered.
The parade had gone well. Better than well.
The horses had been perfect. All twelve of them.
Even the chestnut, who’d walked the route without a single spook.
Cal had survived the grand marshal’s carriage with his dignity mostly intact.
The crowd had cheered. Richard had waved from his convertible.
The marching band had been slightly out of tune, and nobody had cared.
Pop would have loved it.
Wyatt let that thought settle. It wasn’t heavy tonight. Not the way it sometimes was, when the missing turned sharp and sudden. Tonight, it was warm. The satisfied feeling of a job done well, and the quiet wish that the man who had taught him how to do it could have been there to see it.
“Hey.”
Meghan was walking toward him across the grass. She’d changed since the parade—different shirt, hair down, a blanket folded over one arm.
She looked tired too. The good kind. The kind that came from a day that had asked a lot and gotten it.
She set the blanket on the tailgate beside him and leaned against the truck. Close, her shoulder almost touching his arm. The evening air was warm and smelled like cut grass and charcoal.
“You did it,” she said.
“We did it.”
“Twelve horses. Not a single problem.”
“The chestnut sneezed on Curtis’s hat.”
“That’s not a problem. That’s an improvement.”
He smiled. She saw it. Didn’t comment on it. But the corner of her mouth moved in response—that private almost-smile he liked better than the real one because it felt like it was just for him.
They sat for a few minutes.
The field grew louder as more families arrived. A group of teenagers started a football game in the open space near the bleachers. The sun had dropped behind the mountains, and the sky was turning the color of grilled peaches—soft and gold at the edges.
“The parade was beautiful,” Meghan said. “The whole thing. The horses, the carriage, Cal pretending he wasn’t having a good time. But especially the horses.”
“They did the work.”
“You did the work. For a month. Every morning.”
Wyatt looked out at the field. A little girl ran through the grass with a sparkler in each hand, her father ten steps behind her, arms out, ready to catch. The sparklers left trails in the air that faded before her next step landed.
“Pop would have loved it,” he said.
“He would have been proud of you.”
The sentence made its way into his heart. He’d done things Pop would have been proud of before. Finished the certification. Taken over the practice. Kept the clients. Maintained the tools, the truck, the route. But those were continuations. Keeping Pop’s work alive, keeping the wheel turning.
Today had been something else. Today had been Wyatt’s. His month. His horses. His preparation. A parade Pop never planned, for a town Pop loved, run by a man who had learned everything from him and then done something new with it.
He would have been proud of you. Not the work. He would have been proud of his grandson.
“I still reach for the phone sometimes,” Wyatt said.
He hadn’t told anyone that. Not his mother, who called on Sundays.
Not Curtis, who was the closest thing he had to a friend in town.
Not anyone. It was the kind of admission that sounded small, but felt enormous—the confession that two years after his grandfather’s death, the reflex was still there.
A question about a hoof angle. A horse with an unusual gait. A sunset that looked like something Pop would have described better than Wyatt ever could.
His hand would move toward his pocket. His thumb would find the phone. For half a second, the number would be right there, ready to dial. Then the half second would pass. The number would still be there. And it wouldn’t matter, because the man on the other end was gone.
Wyatt spoke again. “Every time I see something he would have liked—a good horse or a view from the ridge—I pick up the phone and get halfway through before I remember.”
Meghan didn’t say anything. She didn’t say that’s normal or it’ll get easier or he’s watching from somewhere.
She didn’t fill the space with comfort or advice or any of the things people said when they wanted to help and didn’t know how.
She reached over and took his hand. Her fingers laced through his. Her palm was warm against his. She held on—not tight, not loose, just steady—and let the silence do what silence did when you trusted it.
She held his hand with the quiet attention of a woman who understood that some things didn’t need fixing. They just needed holding.
They sat on the tailgate with their hands linked between them. The sky darkened. Sparklers multiplied across the field. The music from the speaker shifted to something slower, and the crowd settled into the patient, expectant hum of people waiting for the show to start.
“Thank you,” Wyatt said.
“For what?”
“For not telling me it gets easier.”
She squeezed his hand—one quick squeeze. Then her grip settled back to steady.
“Does it?” she asked.
“No.” He watched the field, the families, the sparks appearing and disappearing in the dusk. “It gets different. The sharp part goes away. But the reaching doesn’t.”
Meghan was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “I think that’s the part that means you loved him.”
He looked at her. She was staring at the field, at the families and the sparklers and the darkening sky. Her profile was soft in the fading light. Her hand was in his.
She’d said the truest thing anyone had said to him about Pop in two years, and she’d said it like it was obvious. Like it was just a fact she had noticed.
The first firework went up. A single streak of light rose from the launch site beyond the oaks, climbing into the dark sky. It hung at the top of its arc—a bright point, suspended, waiting—and then broke open. Red and white, spreading across the sky.
The sound arrived a second after the light. The crowd cheered. Kids screamed. A dog barked somewhere in the parking lot. Wyatt held Meghan’s hand and watched the sky.
He didn’t reach for his phone.