13. Georgina #2
I turn to leave, then stop at the doorway. The bridle is still spread across his lap, the leather gleaming softly in the fading light.
“Leave that on the bench when it’s dry.” I nod toward the bridle. “I’ll carry it to the house myself. I’ll find room for it beside his coat.”
“I’ll leave it ready.” Max turns the bridle over his knee to reach the underside of the browband. I make myself leave while his attention is on the leather.
I cross the courtyard with my notebook pressed against my ribs. Behind me, the cloth moves over leather again; he hasn’t followed me to ask whether this means anything more. By the time I reach the kitchen door, I’m already thinking about eleven o’clock, and that is exactly what I was afraid of.
***
I can’t sleep.
The house is quiet around me, Rosa in her room, Deus in the guest wing. The moon casts pale light through my window, and I’ve been staring at the ceiling for what feels like hours, replaying the conversation in the tack room.
I’ve given him somewhere to be tomorrow. It is a small thing, an ordinary piece of work I would have managed without him, yet I keep returning to the moment he agreed. I used to make plans with my husband without lying awake afterward, wondering how much I had let myself expect.
The bridle hangs beside my father’s coat now.
I carried it inside before dinner, and when I passed the study on my way to bed, I stopped to look at it again. Max has always been capable of care. That was what made leaving so hard, and I can’t let three days here make me forget all the mornings when I needed more than he gave me.
Eventually I put on my robe and shoes. I want to see Sovrano, and at this hour I should be able to stand with him without making conversation or deciding what a look from Max means.
I went down the evening Max arrived, after he had climbed up to the loft, and stayed until the house windows went dark. Tonight I would like that quiet again.
The night air is cool as I cross the courtyard. A lamp is burning low near the stable entrance, casting enough light to see by without disturbing the horses. I slip through the door and pause, letting my eyes adjust to the dimness.
Then I hear his voice. It’s coming from the far end of the aisle, from Sovrano’s stall. Low and rough, the way people talk when they think no one is listening.
I press myself against the wall near the entrance, half-hidden behind the partition that separates the tack area from the main aisle.
From here, I can see the glow of the lamp reflecting off the stall doors, can make out Max’s silhouette where he’s standing inside Sovrano’s box.
His back is to me. He doesn’t know I’m here.
“I owe you an apology.” Max rubs his palm down Sovrano’s neck. “I put her sister on you and expected you to get on with it. You did, too. Good as gold. I should never have asked that of you without talking to her.”
Sovrano shifts, bringing his head farther over the door. Max moves with him, one shoulder visible in the low light.
“She used to talk to you before every ride.” Max rests his forearm along the open half-door. “I’d watch her sometimes, when she didn’t know I was looking. She’d stand at your door and tell you what she wanted to work on, like you were going to have opinions about it.”
I press my hand over my mouth, holding in the sound that wants to escape.
“She never let me get away with much, did she?” Max moves his hand to the horse’s withers. “Always had an opinion about what I was doing. Usually a better one.” His head lowers for a moment. “She still does. I stopped asking.”
Max falls quiet. From where I stand, I can see him pick a strand of hay out of Sovrano’s mane and let it fall.
I used to do that while telling Max about my day, long after the grooming was finished, just to keep us there a little longer.
Remembering it now makes my fingers curl into the belt of my robe.
“I could have asked her to walk down here with me.” Max lowers his head, rubbing at a spot above Sovrano’s eye.
“Even when she couldn’t ride. I could have asked her to come watch, to tell me what she noticed, to be part of it somehow.
Instead, I assumed she’d rather stay away.
I decided for her, like I decided everything else. ”
I remember wanting exactly that, an invitation I wouldn’t have had to turn into a plea.
There were mornings when I might only have managed the walk down and a few minutes by the fence.
Others when I could have stayed. I never got to find out with him, because resting upstairs had become the answer before either of us knew what I could bear.
“I’m sorry, boy.” He stops rubbing Sovrano’s forehead, leaving his hand there. “I took you both for granted.”
Sovrano noses at his sleeve. Max lets him investigate the empty cuff, then smooths the hair that the bridle would usually lie against.
“All this time, boy.” Max draws his hand down to Sovrano’s cheek and leaves it there. “I kept thinking we had time to get things back. All those mornings she didn’t get to have with you, and I just went on having mine.”
I back away from the partition, moving as quietly as I can toward the door. My heart is pounding so hard I’m afraid he’ll hear it, but he doesn’t turn, doesn’t notice the shadow slipping out into the moonlit courtyard.
I want to go back. I want to walk down that aisle and tell him I heard everything, that I miss those mornings too. For a moment I can almost feel the shape of his shoulder under my cheek, the place I would put my face if I let myself go to him.
I keep one hand against the courtyard wall until the urge settles enough for me to move.
I still want the man who hurt me. I’ve known that every day since I left, but hearing him speak of those mornings makes me want something harder to allow myself: a morning with him that doesn’t end in another disappointment.
I return to the house and close the door carefully behind me.
Tomorrow he will be in the yard, and I will have to look at him without telling him that I stood listening tonight.
He hasn’t asked me to make his regret easier.
I don’t have to go back there and hold him through it, however much part of me wants to.
Upstairs, I stop beside the window. The stable lamp is still on, and I think of his hand resting against Sovrano’s cheek, his head lowered as he counted the mornings I couldn’t get back.
For once, I hadn’t needed to find the words that would make him understand. He’d found them while I wasn’t there.
I’m afraid of how badly I want him to mean them.