Chapter 7: The Horse Ate My Badge

A tow truck found us at one in the morning.

By two I was asleep in Tiernan's guest room, under a quilt that smelled of lavender.

I woke up at dawn to the sound of a horse eating my badge.

I had hung it on the fence post by the porch the night before, to dry.

I went to the window.

Tiernan's farm sat on forty acres outside Castle Rock, with a white fence and a long barn.

The pasture went on until it ran into the mountains.

In the pasture, a chestnut mare stood on the other side of the fence, with her head over the rail and the end of a purple lanyard in her mouth.

I ran downstairs in Tiernan's gray sweatshirt and a pair of his socks, and out across the wet grass.

"Give that back!"

The mare chewed.

I grabbed the end of the lanyard, and she grabbed the other end, and we stood there for a moment, face to face, pulling.

He had come out of the barn with a bucket in one hand.

"She's the one mare I can't cure," said Tiernan. "She eats paper and anything laminated. It's a known problem."

"She's eating the CEO badge."

"I'll buy you another."

"It's not about the badge. Cordelia's badge didn't get eaten."

"Cordelia's badge went into a champagne tower in front of three hundred people," said Tiernan. "I'd say yours is ahead."

The mare gave a final tug and the lanyard went down her throat in one gulp.

My laminated GWENDOLYN HARCASTLE, CEO went with it, the plastic crackling.

"That's two hundred dollars of vet bills," Tiernan said. "Maybe three."

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