Chapter 10: The Foaling Barn

I held my mother's nightgown against my chest and couldn't make my mouth work.

Behind me, Hayes cleared his throat.

"Somebody ought to carry all this back inside," he said evenly. "Dot can't lift those pots."

"I'll stay and help," I said. "Just tonight."

Hayes nodded.

"I'll have the boys bring Clover's feed over in the morning," he said.

He didn't kiss me.

There were still fifty people on the lawn folding chairs, and rule one said he should have.

He just touched the small of my back once and walked to his truck.

We carried my mother back into her house until dark.

Dot hung the portrait in the front hall again and cried while she did it.

I put the nightgown in my mother's drawer in the downstairs bedroom and shut it.

Boone carried the saddle out to the mudroom himself and set it on its rack.

We didn't talk much.

Kaylee's car was gone by noon.

At eleven that night, the barn alarm went off on Boone's phone.

One of the broodmares in the foaling barn was down in her stall, rolling and kicking at her belly.

It was colic.

I knew it before we were halfway across the yard.

She was a big chestnut my mother had bred, and she was in foal for spring.

Boone held her head while I checked her gums and listened to her gut.

It was quiet on one side, which was bad, and gassy on the other.

"Get her up," I said.

He got her up.

I tubed her with mineral oil and gave her a shot for the pain.

Then we walked her up and down the barn aisle for an hour and a half.

Up and back, up and back, under the yellow lights.

Neither of us said a word about the last time there was a colic in this barn at night.

At half past one, she lifted her tail and passed a great deal of gas and manure all at once.

Boone laughed out loud, the first real laugh I'd heard from him in a year.

"Well, ain't that romantic," he said.

I laughed too, and then I couldn't stop.

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