10. Georgina #2
“Signora.” He walks toward me, leaving the trailer for the grooms to handle. “He traveled well. Quiet the whole way, ate his hay at every stop.”
“Thank you for bringing him.” I watch the grooms lower the ramp and disappear inside the trailer. “I know it’s a long drive.”
“It was no trouble.” Marco glances back at the trailer, then at me. “Signor Costanzo wanted to make sure he arrived safely. He asked me to tell you the tack is in the storage box, and the feed schedule is with the documents.”
I look toward the tack compartment, remembering how Max used to check the straps himself before we traveled with the horses. I hadn’t expected to picture his hands so clearly here.
“Was there anything else?” I watch Marco’s face as I ask it, looking for something I can’t quite name. “Any message, or…”
Marco shakes his head, his hands settling into his pockets the way they do when he’s finished with the practical work. “Just the tack and the feed schedule, signora. Everything’s in the storage box.”
I nod and thank him, and he turns back to help the grooms with the unloading.
For a moment I stand there wishing for something as small as a note in Max’s handwriting tucked into the paperwork, some familiar scrawl I’d recognize before I read the words. But I asked him not to contact me. I asked him to wait.
What would I even want him to write? I look down at my empty hands. I wanted something from him before I had considered what it might say.
I miss him. That’s what this is. I miss my husband, and I thought having my horse here would make something feel less empty, and instead I’m standing in my own stable yard wanting a letter from a man I’m divorcing.
The grooms lead Sovrano down the ramp, and I watch him step onto the gravel with his ears swiveling toward the unfamiliar sounds. He walks calmly between the handlers, steady the way he’s always been steady, and I find my voice before they can ask where he goes.
“Corner stall on the right.” I point toward the one I chose last week, the one with the window overlooking the paddock. “Leave the top door open so he can see the other horses.”
They nod and lead him inside, and I follow at a distance, watching them settle him into the space I prepared.
Hay in the net, water bucket filled, the grooms moving with quiet efficiency around him.
Sovrano accepts it all with the patience I remember from a thousand mornings, lowering his head to lip at the hay before turning to investigate the walls of his new home.
When the grooms step back, I move to the open upper door and rest my hands on the frame.
Sovrano turns at the sound of me, his ears pricking forward.
He knows me even here, even after weeks apart. He stretches his neck toward the door, searching for the apple slices I used to bring, and his breath is warm against my fingers where they grip the wood.
I lift my hand from the frame, then stop before it reaches him.
A few weeks ago I stood in his stall at the Costanzo estate with my palm against his neck, pleased that I had gone down to see him without needing anyone to come with me.
I was still afraid to mount, but those visits had become something I looked forward to.
I want that familiar relief now. I want to feel his coat beneath my fingers and have it mean what it meant before.
Instead I remember him beside the trailer, untacked and waiting for me to greet him while Deus opened the car door. I couldn’t say goodbye then.
Now there is no car waiting, no reason I have to leave, and still my hand settles back on the wood. Seeing him here makes it harder to pretend I’ve only gone away for a while.
Max and I won’t find each other in his stall tomorrow morning. I arranged for that to be true, and I don’t know how to bear it yet.
Sovrano lowers his nose, searching my other hand. I turn it over to show him the empty palm, and he breathes against it before losing interest.
He has done nothing wrong. I know that as surely as I know where he likes to be scratched, and the thought of him waiting for that small kindness brings an ache into my throat.
The grooms finish checking the water and the hay, and I hear them walk away across the courtyard, leaving me alone with the horse I asked to have brought here.
The afternoon light slants through the stable, catching dust in the air, and Sovrano pulls a mouthful of hay from the net and chews it while I watch.
I loosen my fingers on the frame.
There is room to stay here without making myself prove anything, so I rest my forearms along the top of the lower door and watch him work through his hay.
Across the courtyard, someone closes a tack-room door. The ordinary sound steadies me enough to notice the wet patch where a groom has spilled water beside his bucket, the straw caught in his mane.
I nearly turn to point it out to Max.
He always finds something I have missed when I fuss over Sovrano, then looks unbearably pleased when I go back to fix it. The impulse is so quick that I have already shifted my weight before I remember there is nobody beside me.
I look back into the stall.
Tomorrow I can bring the apple slices myself. I know where they are kept, and I know the path from the kitchen, and I will come down whether I can manage more than this or not.
For now I stay where Sovrano can see me, with my hands on the door and the space beside me empty.