Chapter 1
Six Years Ago
Near Claremore, OK
Gray
The chestnut gelding huffs as Doc Lawrence slides his hand over its ribs.
General has been lethargic the past couple of weeks and in the past few days he wasn’t interested in his food.
For a fourteen-year-old horse, he is still beautiful with his coal black tail and mane, he was born with black socks halfway up each leg, but as he got older a layer of snow-white formed around his hooves.
My brother, Mason, raised him, they used to be inseparable, but after Mason was forced to join the military for defending our sister when they were eighteen, he hadn’t been around much for the past eight years.
We all know General misses him, our sister, Marley, insists that he misses him every day.
Marley is standing at his front, scratching the white star on his forehead as I stand back and watch the vet. My gut has been telling me that something is wrong, but my hope is that maybe he just has a bug, and I’ll get a prescription.
General rears his head and moves to the side a step when Doc Lawrence’s hand moves over his flank toward his under region.
That’s not a good sign, Marley shushes him and presses her forehead to his.
We’ve both seen this before and when I look at Marley, her eyes are closed, and she is giving General all the affection she would give a horse that is getting a death sentence.
Knowing that General can sense our emotions, I try to be as comfortable and casual as possible.
Marley has always had a connection with horses, I swear she can communicate with them.
But General is Mason’s horse, and Mason is her twin.
Marley and Mason have always been two sides of the same coin, and she knows it will kill him that he can’t be here.
She also knows Mason was sent away because he was protecting her, she has carried that guilt for the past eight years. If it weren’t for that night, he would be here.
Movement in my peripheral pulls my attention to the main house up the hill, my youngest sister Breanna is running to the barn and yelling my name. The bus from school just dropped her off about thirty minutes ago and I’m wondering what could have happened between now and then.
Dad hears the panic in her voice and walks out of the tack room that’s also his office, and stands next to me, we both watch her running down the hill.
Her long brown curls are blowing around her and her big, blue eyes look panicked, she keeps yelling my name and we both start to quickly walk toward her.
“Gray! Gray!” The closer she gets the higher pitched her voice becomes and I start to run to her.
Her small body crashes into me and I grab her arms, “Breanna, what is it, what’s wrong?”
She’s breathing so hard that she can’t talk, and her fingers are digging into the skin on my forearms. She starts to pant, “Sarah, Sarah.”
Sarah is my wife who is in town taking our three-year-old daughter, Lainey Rai, to her well-baby visit, and my heart jumps in my chest. “What, Breanna?”
As she is trying to breathe, her eyes are filling with tears, “Sarah! She was in an accident!”
It’s taking everything in me to not match Breanna’s panic as my mind starts to spin, “Breanna, calm down and tell me what’s happened.”
Through sobs, she tells me about the call from a police officer in Owasso who asked us to meet them at the hospital.
He wouldn’t give her any information but asked us to get there quickly.
As she is relaying the message, I realize that I left my phone in my jacket in General’s stall so they called the house phone.
I turn and look at my dad with matching panic on my face, surely he can tell me that everything is okay and we just have to go get them because her SUV is not drivable.
Instead, he looks at Breanna and in his gravelly voice says, “Go tell Doc Lawrence what you just told us so he knows why we left and stay here with Marley, I’ll call as soon as we can. ”
Dad grabs my arm and we run to my truck. I don’t remember much about the drive to the hospital, all I could think about was Sarah’s smile as she carried Lainey Rai on her hip before she left. She gave me a kiss and said she would be back in a couple of hours.
Lainey Rai gave me a kiss on my cheek and in her three-year-old voice said, “Uv Ya.” Her way of saying ‘luv ya’.
My thoughts go to the conversation about Lainey Rai’s pronunciation, and I wonder why we were making such a big deal about whether she was pronouncing her L’s or not.
Are they okay?
I don’t know how many traffic laws I’ve broken on the drive, but when we get to the hospital all I can think about is getting to my wife and daughter. Dad keeps up with me the whole way as I run from the parking lot to the emergency room desk.
The woman behind the desk looks at me like I’m just another person, but doesn’t she know that my wife and daughter are back there somewhere? She even has the audacity to tell me to calm down. I’ve never wanted to hit a woman like I wanted to hit her in that moment.
The far-away rumble of my dad’s voice gets my attention, “Gray, we have to stay calm, they’re getting the doctor.”
My dad is well versed in hospitals. My mom died almost eighteen years ago after giving birth to Breanna, the infection she developed after they went home with my youngest sister was quiet as it poisoned her body and by the time they got her back to the hospital it was too late.
Dad stepped in and became mom and dad that day, and even though he has never been an affectionate man, preferring tough love over hugs, all his children felt his love every day.
The world flips on its side when the doctor comes out and tells me that the woman who has been the love of my life since we were sixteen ‘succumbed’ to her injuries.
The woman who gave me my daughter and filled every dark space in my life with light ‘succumbed’ to being t-boned by someone who had been day drinking.
As I fall to my knees, I hear my dad asking about Lainey Rai. There are mumbled bits and pieces about a broken leg, but how am I supposed to be a good father without my Sarah? She’s my everything, how can she be gone?
The next week is a blur of arrangements and taking care of a three-year-old who is in pain and wants her mama.
Marley, my other sister, Kinley, and Breanna try to calm Lainey Rai as much as they can.
My dad even tries to calm her, but the only thing that stops the crying is when I sit and hold her or lie in her bed with her.
The nightmares are the worst, she wakes up screaming and crying for her mama, so we cry together until we go back to sleep.
Mason was given a week’s leave from the Army to come back for the funeral.
I’ve always been closer to Mason than to my youngest brother, Tucker, who was given leave from the Air Force.
When Mason steps into the house and drops his bag at the front door, he lets me cling to him as I cry for the now missing future that I took for granted.
“What am I going to do, Mason? How do I raise my little girl without her mama?”
We both sit in the family room facing each other in the giant leather chairs next to the fireplace, me reclining back like I don’t have the energy to sit up and him leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
“Lainey Rai is going to be fine; she has a whole family here that is going to make sure she is taken care of, and you have a support system in all of us. You’re going to be fine, too, it’s just going to take time.” His blue eyes that are the same color as Dad’s, are locked on mine.
Running my hand down my face, I wipe the moisture that has collected in my beard and mustache, I know I look a mess. “I usually take them to the well-baby visits; I stayed home to meet the vet.” I let my head fall back onto the cushion of the chair, “It should’ve been me.”
Mason’s face becomes hard, “No. You’re wrong, brother, wishing for things that are never going to happen is not going to help Lainey Rai. Everything happens for a reason, and you’re supposed to be here.”
I lift my head and lean on the arm of the chair, cupping my chin in my hand. “What reason could there be for a young mother to be taken from her family? Her family who loves her more than life itself?”
“And she loved you more than life itself, but I know that she would hate for you to be questioning the order of things and blaming yourself.” He reaches over and grabs my knee, “I know that Sarah would want you to remember the good times and never forget to help Lainey Rai to remember them, too.”
My eyes slide over to the fireplace, and I try to control my emotions as I say the next thing that is constantly on my mind, “They asked me if I wanted an open or closed casket because the damage to her face from the glass was so bad.” I swallow down the sob that is working its way up my throat, “She sat in that car in pain with our daughter screaming in the back seat, Mason, unable to help herself or Lainey Rai. Her last hour on this earth was horrible and I wasn’t there to help her go. She died alone.”
When I look back at Mason, his fist is tight in front of his mouth and his eyes are glassy and red.
He takes a minute before he responds, “But she knew, for a fact, Gray, that you would have moved heaven and earth to be there if you had known. She knew you loved her and would have taken on all her pain if you could. You have to hang onto that love between the two of you and not let it be tarnished with guilt and what ifs.”
***
Some of our friends from high school stand in the crowd of family and friends gathered around the grave. I opted for a closed casket because I don’t want everyone to see the damage to her face, Sarah never liked to leave the house without a fresh face and fixed hair.
She had the prettiest long, dark brown hair.
Against my in-law’s wishes, I left Lainey Rai at home with our housekeeper, Opal, there’s no reason to expose her to any of this. As I watch my wife being lowered into the ground, I feel my father’s hand on my shoulder and my sister Marley takes my hand.
Sarah wouldn’t want Lainey Rai to get less than what our daughter deserves.
As the casket with the shell of my wife disappears into the ground, I make her a promise, I will not let grief steal any love or affection that our daughter deserves.
I will make it my purpose to give her the love and security that she would get from both of us.