Two weeks later, Myra hoisted a sixty-pound bag of grain over her shoulder and carried it toward the feed room. The first four bags had been relatively easy to carry, but she was sagging under the weight of this one and they still had a dozen left before the truck was empty. She shifted to find a more comfortable position, and her muscles protested the extra movement. The summer day was mild, typical of an Oregon June, and she was dressed lightly in jeans and a red cotton tank, but she already felt a trickle of sweat between her breasts and down her spine.
Myra had spent most of her free time riding and working at barns, and she always reminded herself that the bright side of hauling bales of hay, bags of feed, and heavy wooden jumps meant she didn’t need to waste any time at the gym. Her hobby gave her plenty of exercise and kept her body in great shape. She felt her biceps flex as she repositioned the shifting bag. More muscle than your average woman, perhaps, but Myra liked the confidence her strength gave her. Today, however, with the stress of teaching harried teenagers during the last weeks of high school and working with her military students here at the barn, Myra felt depleted. She needed to find some way to energize herself again, before the three soldiers arrived for their lesson. Last week’s lesson had rushed by, as usual for the first time her students got to mount their horses. By the time they’d learned how to mount, had gotten their stirrups adjusted, and had been instructed in the basics of stop-go-steer, the lesson had been nearly over. Myra had been happy when the two hours rushed by with little time for any personal interaction. Now when she passed Kate—who was on a return trip to the full pickup truck—in the doorway, they playfully jostled each other as each tried to get through the door first.
“Ouch! My shoulder!” Myra winced when Kate was about to push past her, and then sped through the opening as Kate hesitated with a look of concern on her face. “Ha! You are too easy.”
“I’ll get you next time,” Kate said, sprinting toward the truck.
Myra hurried to drop the bag of grain on the ground next to the feed bin and jog back to the door. She had deliberately provoked Kate’s competitive side, and she wanted to keep her split-second time advantage. Turning the unloading process into a game would make it more strenuous, but also more fun. Myra would be even happier if she beat Kate through the door every time.
She saw Kate’s shadow and rushed to cross the threshold first. She braced her hands on either side of the door to keep from propelling herself into a collision with Kate. “I win again,” she said. Her laughter ended with a sharp exhale when she realized she was face-to-face with Ainslee instead of Kate. Ainslee, visibly startled by Myra’s sudden appearance, stepped back too quickly onto her right foot and lost her balance. Myra reflexively reached out and steadied her.
“Sorry about that. Are you hurt?” Myra felt as if a current passed between her and Ainslee where their skin was in contact, vibrations of the unreadable emotions behind the frown on Ainslee’s face. Myra wanted to let go, to regain her own equilibrium after the simple, yet intimate connection, but she kept her hand around Ainslee’s upper arm until she was certain she wasn’t going to fall. She still seemed uncertain on her prosthesis, even when walking a straight line, let alone during such an abrupt change of direction.
“I’m fine.” Ainslee shrugged away from Myra’s touch. “I saw you come in here and I…you said I should use a different saddle this week.”
“Right.” Myra motioned for Ainslee to follow her. She went into the adjoining tack room, walking slowly for Ainslee’s benefit.
“You don’t need to crawl.”
“This is my normal—” Myra turned and saw a scowl on Ainslee’s face. The same expression she had used during the entire lesson last week when the students rode for the first time. Ainslee had just witnessed her rapid exit from the feed room, so Myra’s false protests were meaningless. If she were in Ainslee’s position, she’d want to be treated as a capable adult, not a baby. “You have good mobility and don’t need to be coddled. I apologize.”
“Well. Okay, then,” Ainslee said. She seemed flustered by Myra’s words, as if she’d been hoping for a fight and hadn’t been expecting Myra to yield. She seemed more irritated by Myra’s acquiescence than she had been by her condescendingly slow walk.
Myra stepped back when she felt a sudden urge to hold Ainslee, to ease the raw emotions she saw on Ainslee’s face. She resisted the desire, partly because she needed to keep her distance, but mostly because she knew Ainslee would reject any sign of compassion or pity. Myra guessed that Ainslee’s family and friends had tried to comfort her the same way Myra wanted to, but the gesture was one they needed, not what was best for Ainslee.
What she and Ainslee both needed was distance and detachment. Myra walked quickly over to one of the tack lockers and slid a heavy black saddle off the rack.
“This is my dressage saddle. It has a deep seat, but it still allows you to feel contact with your horse. I think it will fit you better than the Western one you used last week.”
Myra brushed her hand over the saddle, rubbing away a thin film of dust that had settled on the well-oiled, soft leather. She tried—unsuccessfully—not to picture Ainslee’s crotch and thighs in contact with the saddle. She shifted the stirrups forward and wiped off the long flaps, and her hand tingled with the imagined caress of Ainslee’s thighs.
She decided against her original plan of carrying the saddle into the barn for Ainslee. She didn’t need a groom toting things around for her—better to let her do the work herself. Besides, Myra needed some time to yank her mind out of its delusional fantasies about Ainslee’s body and get her focus back onto the business at hand today. Maybe flinging a few more bags of grain around the feed room would help her exorcise the pressure building in her own body. She draped the saddle over Ainslee’s forearm, careful to keep touch to a minimum.
“I’ll be out in a few minutes,” she said, holding the tack room door open as Ainslee limped through it. “Chris is in the barn if you need help with anything.”
Ainslee only nodded, not making eye contact. Myra stood still for a moment and watched Ainslee walk away from her. She moved slowly, awkwardly, but something seemed to tremble through the air around her. A need to run? To find some sort of release from the restrictions of her new physique?
Myra wasn’t sure how to help, and she needed to allay her own physical tension before the lesson. She jogged to the truck and grabbed one of the few remaining feed sacks. Kate had put a big dent in the load of grain, and Myra hurried to make up for the time she’d missed.
She finished the last trip and slammed the tailgate shut just as Blake’s car pulled into the parking lot. She waited for him near the barn entrance.
“Hey, Myra,” he said, offering a more genuine smile than she’d seen from him so far.
“Hi, Blake. How are you feeling after last week’s lesson?”
He grimaced and then laughed, pushing blond bangs out of his eyes as they walked together down the barn aisle. “I didn’t believe you when you said we might be sore after only a few minutes on a horse. I guess I hadn’t realized how inactive I’ve been since…lately.”
Myra grinned. Trying new things, challenging their bodies and minds. The program was already beginning to fulfill its purpose. “Just wait until I start teaching you the posting trot. You’ll discover muscles you never knew you had.”
“I can’t wait.” Blake gave an exaggerated sigh. He stopped and faced her. “Seriously, though, I want to thank you for asking me to join this program. You know I’ve been separated from my family while I work some things out?”
Myra nodded. The details from her students’ applications and the letters from their therapists and doctors were so familiar to her they seemed part of her now.
“Well, visits have been strained, to say the least. All I wanted to do was apologize, and all Tracy seemed able to do was cry. We’d ask about each other’s lives, the same awkward conversations over and over.”
He paused and looked over her shoulder for a long moment. Myra sensed some of the frustration he must have felt during those meetings, while everyone walked on eggshells.
He looked at her again. “For the past two weeks, though, we’ve had something different to talk about. Heidi, my daughter, can’t get enough horse talk, and somehow we all seemed more at ease when she became her normal chatty self again. She’ll call tonight, wanting to hear every detail of my lesson. It feels good.”
Myra stayed in place, but she was jumping up and down like an excited child inside her head. She was familiar with small achievements like these after working with Kate’s program for so long, but they never failed to thrill her. The program wasn’t changing the world, but for Blake the simple joy of sharing a riding story with his daughter was a small miracle. She felt privileged to be part of it.
“The barn is closed to regular lessons and riders on Mondays. If you want, you can bring your family out here next week and your kids can meet Frosty. Around four thirty?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’ll be here.”
He went over to the gray mare and started his grooming routine. Drew and Ainslee were already working on their horses, with Chris and Vanessa—two of Myra’s volunteers—helping them. Myra tugged on her tank top, loosening it where it had stuck against her chest while she had hauled grain bags at a punishing speed. She felt good. Exhausted enough from work so her mind stopped fretting about her attraction to Ainslee and her worries about the military program. Buoyed back to life by Blake’s progress here and with his family. For the first time in weeks, she felt she was capable of handling the lessons and the memories of Jeffrey without—
The thud of a metal hoof pick hitting the wall jarred her out of her smug reverie.
“Stop pushing me! I told you I was as close as I was going to get,” Ainslee shouted. She was facing Vanessa with a defiant and scowling expression on her face and her arms crossed tightly over her chest. Teenaged Vanessa stepped between Ainslee and Deacon, her hands held out either to placate Ainslee or to protect the horse in case she threw something at him. Probably both, Myra decided. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. One small victory had made her forget how far the students still had to go in the healing process, and how many challenges she’d yet to face while she helped them.
Although she wanted to rush into the scene and fix everything, she made herself walk slowly over to Deacon. Ainslee didn’t seem inclined to continue throwing things, and neither Vanessa nor Deacon appeared to be in danger. The horse was so accustomed to people and noises that he had done little more than prick his ears toward the sound of the hoof pick against the side of the barn.
Myra shook her head at Chris, who had come over to help, and he nodded in silent acknowledgment of her gesture. He went instead to where Drew and Blake were watching Ainslee and got them back to work on their own horses. Myra appreciated the easy communication with him, at least. The lanky, bearded young man had been working with her and Kate for years, and she could count on him to distract the other students and keep them safe so the disruption in the lesson didn’t escalate.
“What’s going on?” she asked, directing her question at Ainslee. Let her take responsibility for her actions instead of being discussed like a child by Myra and Vanessa.
“She kept harping at me to stand closer, but I can’t. She should have backed off when I told her to.” Ainslee’s cheeks had turned from pale olive to a blotchy red, and she was frowning so deeply that her full lower lip made her appear as petulant as a child. There was something heartbreakingly unguarded in her expression. Her pain was showing to the world, and she seemed incapable of controlling its expression and protecting herself. “Why does it matter anyway? Cleaning stupid horse hooves won’t change anything.”
“I’d never ask her to do something unsafe,” Vanessa said. “I only wanted her to move toward him a little to make it easier for her to hold his hoof, but I should have—”
Myra held up her hand before Vanessa could apologize. The girl was experienced, and Myra trusted she knew what she was doing with her students. “I understand, Vanessa. Please take Deacon back to his stall for me.”
Myra stepped closer to Ainslee as Vanessa led Deacon away from them. She suddenly remembered standing over the heater vents in her grandmother’s house when she was young. Ainslee’s anger blew at her with nearly as tangible a force. Myra wanted to reach beyond it, to see the wounds Ainslee was fiercely protecting. She wanted to join Ainslee’s battle against the unfairness of her injury. She wanted and wanted, but she wasn’t capable of fighting or cajoling her way through to Ainslee. And as much as she longed to forget everything else around her and focus on the beautiful, touchy, and hurting person in front of her, she had to do her job. That meant providing a safe place for her horses, her volunteers, and the class as a whole.
“Rule number four. Don’t bring your anger into the barn or around the horses.”
“I didn’t throw the hoof pick at Deacon. I’d never…I was just…” Ainslee’s words sputtered to a halt.
“I know. If you had, I’d tell you to leave and never come back. Instead I’m telling you to take a break from riding today. Find another way to vent your anger, and we’ll be happy to have you join us again next week.”
Ainslee raised her hands in a gesture of disbelief. “You’re actually kicking me out of the lesson? The horse didn’t even flinch!”
“Deacon is very calm, but another horse might have been frightened by what you did. And Vanessa gives her time as a volunteer. She doesn’t deserve to be yelled at when she’s only trying to help.”
Ainslee stared at Myra before shaking her head in disbelief and walking away without another word. Her halting gait kept her from storming out of the barn like she probably wanted to do. Instead, the irregular clack of her leg against the concrete of the barn aisle seemed to echo for ages.
Drew, Blake, and Chris had been watching the interchange in silence, but now they broke into an overly cheerful-sounding conversation about bridles. Myra needed to get her attention back to them and continue the lesson, but instead she watched Ainslee limp down the aisle, pause briefly by Deacon’s stall to exchange a few words with Vanessa, and then disappear out the barn door. Myra was about to go after her—common sense and duty be damned—but Kate appeared through the side door of the barn and put a firm hand on Myra’s arm.
“You handled that well. Don’t doubt yourself. Let her go.”
“And if she doesn’t come back?” Myra asked. She knew the answer. It would be her fault. Her silent words mimicked the ones she had stopped Vanessa from saying. I should have…
“If she chooses not to come back, it’s up to her. You did the right thing.” Kate’s low voice was soothing, although not entirely convincing. “I have a feeling she’ll make the right decision and continue with lessons. Give her time to calm down, and time to heal.”
“You’re right. Thanks.” Myra gave Kate’s hand a pat and moved away from her and toward the other students. She wanted to help every rider who came through the barn, and she was sad each time one of them gave up and left. But she had never before felt as if part of herself was walking out the door.