Chapter 10: She's My Sister

Abby's POV

Jesse came to my barn at eleven that night, and he didn't knock.

I was sitting on an overturned bucket outside the gray mare's stall with a flashlight, checking her gut sounds for the fourth time.

She was fine.

I'd needed something to do with my hands.

He stopped in the aisle with his hat off.

"I'm going to tell you," he said. "All of it. I don't care what it costs."

I put the flashlight down.

"Sit," I said.

He didn't sit.

He stood there with his hat crushed in both fists and his eyes on the floor.

"The day you lost the baby," he said, "my father called me at noon."

"I was in Cheyenne, that part was true. I had a hotel room for the sale."

"Go on."

"He said Kit was in labor in Casper, and she was alone, and there was nobody he could send."

"He said he couldn't go himself, because Mom would ask where he was."

I frowned.

"Why would your father send you to a stranger in labor?"

"Because she wasn't a stranger."

He finally looked up.

"She was his bookkeeper at the co-op," he said. "For a year. And it was him, Abby. It was always him."

The barn went very still.

Somewhere down the aisle a horse shifted.

"I drove to Casper," he said, and his voice cracked.

"I thought, she's a woman by herself, and Dad is a coward, and somebody has to be in that room."

"I held her hand. I cut the cord."

"My phone had died, and I'd left the charger in Cheyenne."

"I didn't know you were in the hospital until I plugged it in at four in the morning, and there were nine calls from you."

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