The hordes descended. First, Jasper barreled down the stairs to skid into the kitchen, his body vibrating with excitement. He lapped some water from his bowl, then put his wet face in Heather’s lap and gazed up at her adoringly with his blue-and-brown-marbled eyes.
She rubbed his silky ears. “Every new day’s an exciting event, huh, Jasper?”
Josh trailed behind more slowly, wearing a pair of rumpled summer pj’s Heather had sewn herself. Josh went straight for the food, catapulting into a chair and grabbing a pancake off the stack. “Yay! Pancakes!” He took a bite before putting the rest of it on his plate and dousing it with syrup.
Then he noticed Adrian. “Hey! You came!” He abandoned his pancake to leap into Adrian’s lap and hug his neck.
“Josh, be polite. It’s not good manners to choke our guest to death.” Heather had been just the teeniest bit worried what the kids would think when they came downstairs and saw a man—even one they knew—sitting at the breakfast table.
Josh, apparently, couldn’t be happier. He sat back, his face alight with joy. “What are you doing here?”
Adrian grinned. “I heard this place had great pancakes. Thought I’d check it out.” Adrian’s smile made his already-handsome face almost unbearably beautiful. Heather felt her cheeks grow warm, then even warmer when Adrian caught her eye.
His smile widened.
He had to know that she was blushing because he was so damn good-looking. It was like having a movie star sitting at her kitchen table. Josh was starstruck too, so starved for an adult male role model that any glimmer of attention from Adrian had about the same effect as plugging the kid into a light socket.
“Josh, would you please let Jasper outside?”
“Yeah, sure!” Jasper jumped out of Adrian’s lap. “I’ll be right back,” he assured Adrian, “as soon as Jasper does his morning poops.”
“Can’t wait,” Adrian replied, smiling at Heather’s embarrassment.
She knew that her windowpane face showed every thought that crossed her mind, so she ’fessed up. “It’s hard having a kid with no social filter between his brain and his mouth.”
Adrian laughed. “I bet it is.”
Caroline came into the room quietly and hung back behind Heather’s chair for a minute before easing forward and climbing into her lap. Heather knew that Caroline wouldn’t show any outward response about Adrian’s presence here, but the wheels were turning behind her solemn green eyes. They’d have to talk about it later, after Adrian left. Heather kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Good morning, sweetie pie.”
Heather didn’t prompt Caroline to say hello to Adrian. Caroline’s extreme shyness had worsened after Dale’s death. She took a while to warm up to new people, and though she’d been introduced to Adrian at the shelter, she hadn’t spent much time in his company. Forcing her to be sociable would only result in a quick and tearful exit. “Do you want me to fix a plate for you?”
Caroline stretched up to whisper in Heather’s ear. “Can I eat in the den?”
“Yes, you can eat in the den. But just for today.”
“Me too,” Josh yelled as he came back inside with Jasper. He loaded another pancake onto his plate and soaked it in syrup. “I want to watch cartoons.”
“Just be careful with all that syrup, okay?” Normally, Heather didn’t allow the kids to eat in the den, except for special popcorn movie nights. But she knew Caroline wouldn’t eat in front of Adrian. She’d just pick at her food and look down at her lap, and that would be awkward for everyone. Heather reached past Caroline to put a pancake on a plate but had trouble reaching the whipped cream.
Without speaking, Adrian spooned a dollop of whipped cream onto Caroline’s pancake, then stuck a strawberry in the center. Heather shook her head no when he reached for the syrup. “That’s perfect, thank you.”
Adrian nodded but didn’t speak. He seemed to understand that Caroline’s anxiety around new people was less severe if there wasn’t too much noise and activity going on.
Josh headed toward the den with his plate in one hand and juice glass in the other. “Come on, Caroline.”
She slipped out of Heather’s lap and carried her food carefully into the den. Jasper fell in line behind Josh, looking up at his syrup-laden plate.
“Do. Not. Feed. That. Dog.” Heather stressed each word. “You remember what happened last time.”
“What happened last time?” Adrian whispered when the kids left the room.
“Josh never would listen when we told him why it was wrong to sneak food to Jasper. Dale threatened that if it happened again, Josh would have to clean up the mess. So even though Josh was only four at the time, when he fed the dog syrup and pancakes, Dale made sure that Josh learned the hard way that people food can be hard on a dog’s digestive system.”
“You’re telling me that last time was two years ago?”
Heather chuckled. “Yes. And it made a never-to-be-forgotten impression.”
“Wow. So Dale was a tough disciplinarian, huh?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. I could never have followed through with that threat, but Dale never said anything he didn’t mean. He was dependable that way.”
The TV came on in the den, and after a brief argument, Caroline came to the doorway to complain about her brother hogging the remote (a usual thing), then saw Adrian and scuttled back into the den. Adrian waited a second, then spoke quietly, his expression compassionate. “I guess Caroline is a little bit shy.”
Heather couldn’t help letting her frustration show. “Thank you for putting it so kindly in that colossal understatement.” She folded her napkin, then folded it again and again into ever-smaller squares. “Caroline used to be a little bit shy. But when Dale died, her shyness became off-the-charts paralyzing. She turned into a different child overnight.”
“How is Josh doing?”
“Fine, except for the fact that he spends every other afternoon in the principal’s office.”
Adrian’s eyebrows went up. “What for? He seems like a sweet kid.”
“He is. But he doesn’t take kindly to bullying, and when someone hurts his feelings, especially on purpose, he sometimes forgets to use his words instead of his fists.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. It must be hard for you.”
“It’s been hard on everyone. Erin has been a big help, but…” Heather hesitated but reminded herself that Adrian already knew the truth of what she was about to say. “I realized last night that I’ve been depending on her too much. She’s been so grown-up, I’ve…” She cleared her throat, but the lump she felt forming there didn’t go down. “I thought that since she was so good at taking care of her siblings, I could trust her to take good care of Charlie too. I should have checked behind her.”
Adrian opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again without speaking. Anyway, he didn’t need to. He had already told Heather what he thought last night, and she really didn’t need to hear it again.
“Don’t worry.” She unfolded her napkin and started rolling it against the table instead, forming the flimsy paper into a tube shape. “I’ll take care of Charlie from here on out. Erin needs to get back to being a normal teenager, not just my mini-me.”
Adrian put a hand over hers, stilling her nervous fingers. “Would you like to start working on my napkin?” He handed it over. “Yours is about shredded.”
She chuckled, though his lame offer had the opposite effect of the comic relief he had intended. She felt her eyes fill with tears. Slipping her hand out from underneath his, she used the napkin to blot her eyes. At least she hadn’t put on any makeup after her shower. She had deliberately left her too-blond eyelashes naked so he wouldn’t think she was trying to seduce him.
Which, when she thought of it, was ridiculous. She looked sideways at Adrian—who made tons of money and made Henry Cavill look like a troll by comparison. Adrian Crawford was not about to fall for an overcommitted single mom with three troubled children. He probably dated a different Victoria’s Secret model in every city he traveled to for his work. And Heather was no Elsa Hosk.
She didn’t mind not being Elsa Hosk, though. She never had. Even in high school, she hadn’t let her generous curves give her a body image complex. She hadn’t let her buxom bosom and shapely hips stop her from trying out for cheerleader and making the squad or from becoming head cheerleader by her senior year. She liked to think it was because of her intrinsic emotional stability, but it was also because Dale had loved her, every inch of her, exactly as she was.
Adrian’s lips quirked in a charming, slightly quizzical grin. “You gonna cry or what?”
She snorted. “No, I’m not gonna cry. It was touch-and-go there for a second, but I’m okay now.”
Heather heard Erin come down the stairs, and she took a breath to steady herself. Against what, she wasn’t quite sure. Erin could be mercurial. How she’d act when seeing Adrian sitting at the breakfast table was anyone’s guess. Heather turned to look over her shoulder as Erin walked into the room, her slippers scuffing on the tile floor. “Erin, you remember Adrian from the shelter.”
“Oh.” Erin wouldn’t have sounded any more shocked if she’d come into the kitchen to find a spaceship had landed inside their house. She tightened the sash of the thin cotton robe she wore over her pj’s. “Yeah. Hey.”
“I stayed to help with Charlie,” Adrian explained, his deep voice casual.
“Is Charlie…?” Erin’s shock forgotten, she rushed up to sit at the table. “Is he okay?” Her blue-eyed gaze pinged between Heather and Adrian. “Is he going to be okay?”
“The vet’s coming to check him out in a couple hours,” Heather said, “but, yes, we think he’s going to be okay.”
Erin wilted with relief, and even reached out to touch Adrian’s shoulder. “Thank you so much for helping with him. Mom and I couldn’t have gotten him up on our own. We tried.”
“I know you did,” Adrian said. “I’m glad I was close enough to come and help out.”
Heather was grateful he didn’t mention the state they’d found Charlie’s stall in last night. She would have the conversation with Erin sometime today, but not until they were alone. She passed an empty plate to Erin. “Eat your pancakes before they get cold.”
***
A light tap on the guest room door woke Adrian from a sound sleep. He wasn’t sure whether Heather’s sheets were better than his, but he’d slept like a rock from the moment his head touched the fluffy down pillow. He sat up and rubbed his face.
“Adrian, it’s Heather.”
“Yeah. Come on in.”
She didn’t. She spoke through the closed door. “Mack’s on his way, but you don’t have to get up.”
“No, I’ll come. I want to check on Charlie.”
She opened the door a crack and peeked in, then opened it all the way. She held his clothes, clean and folded. “Here are your clothes.” She stepped into the room and set the neat stack of clothing on the bedside table, then stepped back again to hover in the doorway. “I already checked on Charlie once before I went to sleep.”
“And?”
“He’s doing good.”
Adrian sat up on the edge of the bed, blinking to clear the cobwebs.
“There’s coffee downstairs.” She was apparently the kind of person who knew what was needed before being asked.
“That sounds good.” He’d be willing to bet that she made good coffee too.
“See you downstairs.” She closed the door behind her.
He changed back into his clothes and made the bed, leaving the sweats and T-shirt she’d loaned him folded at the foot of the bed. When he got downstairs, he found her sitting at the table with a mug of coffee, gazing out the window with her chin propped on her hand. He couldn’t decide whether she looked sad, pensive, or just relaxed. She straightened and turned toward him, then smiled. “Everything’s on the kitchen counter. Help yourself.”
Relaxed, he decided. He poured his coffee, added sugar but no cream, then joined her at the table. Jasper sat at her feet—actually, he was lying on her feet—but the kids weren’t around, and the vibe of the house seemed to reflect their absence. No TV playing in the den, no video game sounds from a bedroom, no sounds of kids yelling outside. A sense of quiet calm reigned, sort of like at his loft but without the loneliness—which, he reminded himself, he was totally used to and didn’t mind one bit. He enjoyed his own company. “Where are the kids?”
“Erin’s at a friend’s house.”
Noting his incredulous expression, Heather lifted her chin. “I know she deserves to be punished for neglecting Charlie and lying to me, and she will be, but not until we have enough time and privacy for that discussion.”
“Makes sense. And anyway, not my place to judge.”
“And yet…” She gave him a quick, steely-eyed glance before looking away. “Josh and Caroline went to spend the night with Sara’s son, Max. She picked them up about an hour ago. Sara’s a good friend; we help each other out a lot. She took over the PTA meeting last night when I couldn’t make it because of Charlie. You met her at one of the shelter’s brainstorming sessions, I think.”
He nodded. Willowy redhead who hovered over her son a lot.
“Sounds like you’ve been busy while I was sleeping. Did you get any sleep at all?”
She grimaced. “I tried, but my brain wouldn’t stop churning.” Then she shrugged and smiled. “Anyhow, when you’ve got kids, it’s kind of hard to check out of life during the day. I’ll catch up tonight.”
Jasper sprung up as if someone had stuck him in the butt with a hatpin. Barking maniacally, he scrabbled across the kitchen’s tile floor and hurled himself at the back door.
“Great alarm system,” Adrian yelled over the earsplitting noise.
Heather stood. “That’ll be Mack.”
They met Mack in the barn. Mack fit the part of a country vet—broad-shouldered and muscular, his dark, no-nonsense hair clipped short. Mack had parked his dirt-caked pickup on the grass by the open door to the field. His assistant sat in the passenger seat looking down.
Beyond Mack’s truck, Adrian’s car sat in the center of the horse field, alone and unprotected from the elements. Adrian had forgotten all about it; he had shut it off intending to come back a few minutes later and head home to New Orleans. He hadn’t even locked the doors, though the chances of someone traipsing through a horse field to hot-wire an unlocked car seemed a less-than-remote possibility.
Jasper leaped up on Mack’s leg, and the man reached down to rub Jasper’s ears. “Hey, good boy.” Mack looked over at Charlie. “Looks like y’all worked a miracle last night. I was mighty worried about that old horse.”
“I was plenty worried myself.” Adrian and his dad had been active in a horse-riding club, so he’d heard a few horror stories of colic cases gone wrong.
Heather went up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around Mack’s burly neck, then held tight for a minute with her head on his shoulder. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he, but he must have been used to this kind of display from his clients because he just stood there and patted her back until she was done hugging. He met Adrian’s eyes over the top of Heather’s head with a you know how it is look.
Mack McNeil was a fifty-ish country vet with a rugged yet tenderhearted appeal that Adrian thought probably made many female hearts go pitty-pat. Mack was also a man’s man who looked capable of making a backwoods camp of weatherproof huts out of willow limbs and palm fronds using only a Swiss army knife and a wedge of flint. Adrian would bet cash money that Mack cut his short, dark hair with the same clippers they used to shave down dogs at the vet’s office, and if he had ever owned a comb or a hairbrush, he had probably long since misplaced them.
When Heather quit hugging Mack, he ambled over to Charlie’s stall and opened the door. He walked inside, leaving the door open but somehow knowing the horse wouldn’t try to walk away from him. As Mack slid his hands over Charlie’s hide, communing with the horse and intuiting his physical health, Mack’s truck door slammed outside, and his assistant, a young slip of a girl, came into the barn. Dressed in green scrubs scattered with cartoon images of dogs and cats, she carried a dented metal tackle box, which she set down in the center aisle with a resounding clank. She knelt by the box and swung her ratty brownish-purple braid over her shoulder. “What you want, boss?”
“Stethoscope would be nice,” Mack answered in a mild tone. “If you have time.”
“Sorry, boss.” She located the stethoscope. “I was on the phone for a minute.”
Mack lowered his brows and made a growling sound low in his throat, but he took the stethoscope without further comment and focused on listening to Charlie’s gut. It was clear that Mack’s bark was worse than his bite, and his bark wasn’t even all that scary.
After examining Charlie, Mack took the horse out into the field and ran him in circles on a lunge line, then brought him back in and fed him a flake of hay from a stack of bales in the back of his truck. As Charlie munched on the hay, Mack pronounced Charlie officially on the mend. But then he asked, in his quiet, understanding, nonthreatening way, for Heather to show him Charlie’s grain and the hay they’d been feeding him.
When Heather pulled the old quilt off the pile of hay, he shook his head and made a quiet tsking sound. “The bale on top is good, but everything under it is old and moldy.” She took the lid off the metal can that held the horse’s feed. He leaned down and took a sniff. “This grain’s okay, but it’s a full bin, and I’m not sure what’s on the bottom.”
Mack gave Heather a sympathetic look. “I know that Erin’s been helping out with Charlie. You need to be sure that she hasn’t been pouring new grain on top of old.” He stepped back and put his hands on his hips. “To be safe, I’d say you ought to toss all of this”—he waved his hands at the mess of hay and food bins in the barn—“on the burn pile, then run to the feed store today and start over with all new.”
He kindly didn’t mention the abhorrently dirty conditions of the rest of the barn. He was clearly used to dealing diplomatically with people who loved their animals but had no idea how to take care of them. “You still have the truck, right?”
Heather nodded. “It’s in the pole barn on the other side of the house.”
“It runs?”
She nodded again. “I crank it every week.”
“Okay, well.” Mack brushed his hands off on his jeans. “We’ll get out of your hair so y’all can make a feed store run.” He patted Heather on the shoulder and wished her luck, then took Adrian’s hand in a goodbye handshake. Adrian didn’t consider himself a lightweight, but Mack’s grip ground his knuckles together.
“It’s good that you’re here to help Heather get everything back on track,” Mack said in a quiet tone. “Her heart’s in the right place, but she can’t handle all this by herself. It’d be great if you could come a couple times a week and work with Charlie. It’s pretty clear that he’s depressed; he needs more interaction than he’s getting.”
Adrian’s heart fell like a stone to settle into the soles of his Lowa hiking boots. “I’ll do what I can to help.”
It wasn’t his place.
It was none of his business.
He didn’t even live near here.
He had a life of his own—a life he was quite happy with, thank you very much.
But he couldn’t turn his back on Charlie, and as it turned out, he couldn’t turn his back on Heather either.
His mind flashed back to a time when, as a teenager living on the Gulf Coast, he had been out partying with friends who had decided to drive onto a beautiful moonlit beach, only to find out too late that the car’s tires had spun down into deep sand. They struggled to get the car out, dragging up driftwood to put beneath the tires in a useless effort to gain traction. But none of it worked. They watched helplessly while the tide came in, and by the time the sun came up over the horizon, the car bobbed like a cork in the Gulf.
Like that car, he was stuck. And he had a sinking feeling that he’d soon be drifting out to sea.
***
Charlie watched all the commotion going on outside his stall. He’d been mostly ignored and forgotten for the last year, but now, he seemed to be the center of interest and activity. Heather and Adrian drove through the field in Dale’s truck, then backed it up to the barn’s field-facing entrance.
Then another truck arrived, and all the same people who’d been there the night before swarmed out of the vehicle, bringing rakes and push brooms and wheelbarrows and all manner of implements designed to stir up dust. After much coming and going, the dust began to settle on a cleaner barn. Still not satisfied, the women wiped down shelves and bins with wet cloths while Adrian brought in fresh bales of hay and new bags of feed to stack into pallets in the corners of the barn.
A fire blazed up in the center of the horse field, sending billowing streams of light-gray smoke into the air. Charlie wasn’t worried. It wasn’t close to the barn. But he kept an eye on it, just in case. Being locked into an enclosed space could be comforting (predators couldn’t get to him) but also horrifying (he wouldn’t be able to get out if he needed to).
Heather rinsed Charlie’s water bucket and refilled it with fresh water. Adrian—or was it Ade? Charlie had become confused because he’d been called by both names—dropped a fresh flake of hay into the hayrack, and a woman put a scoop of sweet feed in his food bin. Charlie half-closed his eyes and focused on enjoying the crisp, molasses-coated grains that always tasted best when they’d just been poured from a newly opened bag.
He nibbled up the last remaining grain in the food bin, then moved to the hayrack and started teasing out bits of fresh hay to munch. As with the grain, hay always tasted best when it had just been unloaded from the back of Dale’s truck. This hay was a clean, bright golden-green. The last stuff had been brittle and brown. While Charlie enjoyed this undeserved feast, he wondered why he had suddenly become such an item of interest to all these people.
Was something about to happen that he didn’t know about? Something good? Or maybe something terrible?
Was this his last good day?
He remembered when one of his dog friends was given a last good day before Mack came to the house and gave him the injection that relieved him of his body. The family had given Benji all the treats he loved best but wasn’t usually allowed to have, even ice cream.
While Charlie was wondering whether this was his last good day, one of the women came up to the stall’s closed door and started wiping down the metal rungs with a damp rag.
He wished with all his heart that Dale could still be here. Dale and Charlie had shared a deep bond, so deep that Charlie only had to think of a thing for Dale to show that he heard the thought and understood. Charlie wished that he could find someone to hear his thoughts. Someone to love him and be loved by him the way he and Dale had loved each other.
“Hello, Charlie,” the woman said. “I can hear your thoughts, if you want to share them with me.” He stopped chewing and swung his head toward her to see why he heard her voice in his head but not his ears.
“Hello, Charlie,” she said again. Strangely, she was able to send words into his mind without moving her mouth or making a sound at all. “I’m Reva. I don’t mean to invade your privacy, but I couldn’t help but notice that you’re wondering about a lot of things right now. I will be happy to answer your questions if I can.”
The strangest thing about all this wasn’t that Reva could talk into his head without speaking out loud. It was that he could understand every word in a way he usually couldn’t when people spoke to him with their mouths moving and sounds coming out.
Then he could understand only some of what was said. This way, he knew exactly what she meant. He took another bite of hay and thought about this strange phenomenon. It was a bit like the way he and Jasper communicated.
“Yes, it is,” Reva replied in his head. “In fact, it’s exactly the same, except that people and dogs and horses sometimes have different ways of thinking and communicating. People use more words, while many animals prefer to communicate by sharing images. Everyone is different, though. Which way do you prefer to communicate?”
Charlie thought this over but couldn’t decide. He and Jasper spoke in images and emotions, sending pictures and feelings to each other about what they wanted and what they missed.
“We can communicate any way you like,” Reva’s silent voice said. “Whatever is easiest.”
He looked at her, then back at the delicious fresh hay. Mack had apparently been satisfied with Charlie’s appetite, and he drifted into the house along with everyone else. Everyone except Reva. She slowly wiped each of the metal bars along the top half of Charlie’s stall.
“You can keep eating, and I’ll keep cleaning while we chat.”
Charlie turned back to the hayrack but kept part of his attention on his conversation with Reva. He found that it didn’t diminish his enjoyment of the hay.
“It seemed to me earlier that you were wondering about what is happening?”
“Yes.” Charlie chewed a mouthful of hay. “Is this my last good day?” He shared with her the memory of talking to Benji about his last good day. Benji and Charlie had communicated before Benji left his body and then again afterward.
Benji had explained to Charlie what had happened inside the house and how it felt when Mack gave him the shot that made it easy for Benji’s spirit to rise above his body and leave it behind. He showed Charlie that all of Benji’s aches and limitations had stayed in the lifeless husk that had once belonged to him but was no longer necessary once it had outlived its usefulness to the spirit within.
“No, it’s not your last good day,” Reva responded. “But you got very sick, and Heather asked us to come and help you get better.”
“What next?” Charlie asked. That was the only part of his thoughts that felt like words; the rest was emotion: his grief and remorse and his fears of an uncertain future. But then out of those emotions, the questions that had been niggling at his consciousness rose up like ghosts to haunt him. Had he been punished enough for his role in Dale’s death, or would he go back to being shunned by his family?
“Oh, Charlie,” Reva said out loud, her voice full of concern. Then she went back to sending silent thoughts. “You didn’t kill Dale.”
He stopped eating and looked around at Reva. She had stopped polishing the bars of his stall and now just stood there, her hands gripping the bars, looking at him with an expression of love and understanding.
He didn’t believe her, even though he wanted to. “Then why was I being punished? Why did my family stop loving me?”
“They didn’t stop loving you.” Reva turned away to take something off the shelf, then opened Charlie’s stall door and went inside. She laid one hand on his shoulder, sending such love through her palm that he closed his eyes and let his head droop. Then she started brushing his coat with the soft brush that felt so good.
The currycomb felt good too, because its metal teeth gobbled up masses of shedding hair that kept Charlie from feeling the breeze on his skin. But this brush, with its stiffly soft bristles, stimulated his skin and scratched all the itchy fly bites he couldn’t reach with his teeth.
“You remember how much you grieved when Dale died?” Reva asked by sending the words from her mind to his. “Well, Heather and the kids were feeling that way too. They didn’t know what to do with those feelings, so they all had to…disappear…inside their own pain for a while.”
“Jasper didn’t disappear.”
“No, he didn’t. But he’s different, you know? He remembers what it was like to be here before, in his other body. He knows that the body is just a thing and that Dale’s spirit can still be here whenever it wants to.”
Reva continued to brush Charlie’s coat with long, soothing strokes while he thought about what she’d said. Benji had told Charlie that he would come back one day and inhabit another body. Charlie only just now realized that the body Benji had come back to inhabit was Jasper’s. The two dogs were the same in a lot of ways. But they were different in others. How could Benji come back to live in a different body and be the same dog but not the same dog?
“I don’t know,” Reva said. “It’s a mystery that maybe we’re not supposed to solve entirely.”
“Can Dale come back?”
“Yes, but I don’t know if he will. And I don’t know if he would come back in a body that you could recognize. Even his personality wouldn’t be exactly the same. After all, there’s no point in coming back to do exactly the same thing, be exactly the same person all over again, is there? Dale might want to try something different, slip into a new persona along with the new body. Like Benji did when he became Jasper.”
“The same but different.” Charlie understood. Next time, he might decide to come back as a blond horse, maybe one with white spots. He would definitely want to come back as a horse who wasn’t quite so afraid of snakes.
“Yes. And you don’t have to be a horse all the time either. You could be a dog or a person even.”
Charlie and Reva communicated for a while longer, then Reva left to join the other humans who were outside in the field, tending the burn pile. Charlie went back to eating his hay and thought about the idea that he could leave his body and come back as a different kind of animal. He couldn’t think of anything he’d want to be other than a horse. But he would rather be the kind of horse whose family loved him. He had been that kind of horse once. But he wasn’t sure he was that kind of horse anymore.