Chapter 9: First Light

Ward's POV

The bay mare went down in her stall at four in the morning with the storm still dragging across the valley.

I'd carried Lulu's candle out to the barn myself, and I'd told her to stay in the house.

She came out after me in my slicker and her rubber boots, and I didn't send her back.

"She's early," I said.

"I know. I've been watching her for two days."

"You've been watching her."

"She stopped eating Wednesday. It's in the ledger."

It was in the ledger.

I looked at her kneeling in the straw with her braid coming loose, and I felt something I had no right to feel.

Pride was the clean part of it.

The rest of it I had stopped trying to sort out.

The foal came with one front hoof turned wrong.

I showed her how to find it and how to bring it round with two fingers, gently, on the mare's own push.

Her hands were small and steady, and she didn't flinch once.

When the foal slid out into the lantern light, wet and dark and shaking, she laughed out loud.

She looked up at me, and her face was streaked with mucus and rain.

"Ward, look."

"I see him."

"I did that."

"You did."

I wiped her cheek with my thumb.

I let it stay there one second too long, and she turned her face into my palm.

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