Opportunity sat in the palm of Robyn’s hand.
She’d pulled it from the bowl of small pewter stones that she kept on a low table by her bed. Every morning before she rose, she sifted through the cool stones, each inscribed with a word, mixing them in their shared bowl before selecting one. A second smaller bowl held her choice for contemplation or inspiration throughout her day. She accepted what the bowl gave her.
That wasn’t actually true. She’d grown tired of how often Tears sat in the second bowl and had started avoiding the small stones, shifting her fingers to a second stone if she happened to feel the almost round one between her thumb and forefinger. She wasn’t one to cry and took it as some cosmic suggestion that she might feel better if she did. But she was stubborn, not that there was a stone for that. Promise. Loyalty. Many of the stones reminded her of the commitment she had made to heed their message and inserted themselves into her fingers, bowl and consciousness.
Her decision to lease a horse after more than twenty years away had given her something different to think about each day. Finding another way to invest her energy gave her days new purpose. Instead of reminding her of her failed relationship, they seemed to be pointing Robyn back toward herself.
* * *
Once she arrived at the barn for her morning chores, Robyn ran her hands along the bay mare’s neck before grabbing a brush. She worked her left hand in small circles with the black rubber curry before brushing the dust and hair free with her right, this ritual her meditation. Thinking about this morning’s offering of Opportunity, she wondered if the stones were nudging her to buy this mare she’d been leasing. The barn and the routine that came with it were good for her, an opportunity (there was that word again) to focus her thoughts on the present instead of over-analyzing the past and worrying about her future.
Before these horse chores had pulled her out to the barn, she’d become a hermit, leaving the house only to roam the beaches alone or scour estate and garage sales. She was alongside people but never interacting with them, her eyes keen to find a hidden treasure.
When Barb had first noticed her, talked to her and pulled her out of her shell, she’d felt like it was she who had been pulled from the discards. She had felt valued, polished up and finally seen. Their first years had been full of love, laughter and joy, stones that had once felt wonderful but now mocked her when she saw them in her palm.
She closed her eyes and leaned against Taj’s barrel, feeling her warmth, matching her breathing to the rise and fall beneath her, trying to pinpoint how long things had been cold with Barb. When had they stopped touching? Once, she had always turned to spoon her lover and savor the moments before they separated for the day as she came up to the surface of wakefulness.
But that was back when they had shared Barb’s massive four-poster in the master bedroom that Robyn’s grandparents had shared for sixty-six years. When she and Barb went to bed together, Robyn could convince herself that it was their room. When Barbara started to come to bed hours later, Robyn spent too many nights lying alone comparing the love and respect her grandparents had for each other to her own relationship. She and Barb were such a failure in comparison that she escaped to the loft her papa had built in the attic above the room that was hers each summer. She lay on the simple queen mattress and stared at the stars, telling herself that she didn’t want to disturb Barb’s sleep.
They were barely roommates.
Forgiveness.
The stones were always reminding her that no relationship is perfect. They had eight years together. That was surely worth something.
But it wasn’t Forgiveness, Loyalty or Promise she’d pulled from her dish of stones today. Not Patience, Courage or Worrier.
Opportunity had come to her.