I was already searching to see if there were any in here now, ready to comfort them. “I used to love coming over to see the animals with Dom.”
Dante smirked at me. “Woman, you didn’t only come with Dom. You were here every couple days, tending to a horse or a cow or a lamb.”
“Well, they needed someone,” I murmured, and then I saw a reddish horse in the corner stall. She shook her head and huffed a little as I walked toward her. “She’s hurt?”
“Physically?” He crossed his arms where he stood. “No. Emotionally, I think she might be dying of a broken heart. She lost her foal a week ago.”
I held out my hand for her to smell before running it along her neck. Staring into her kind eyes, rimmed with giant lashes, I smoothed the hair on the large bulge of her jaw. “Just a week ago?”
He nodded. “My mom’s kept me updated. Emmy hasn’t eaten since, and we had the vet come in to see if we should move her, but they think she should heal here for a month or so.”
“How did it happen?”
“It was stillborn. She was laboring, and they were sure it was alive, but the delivery didn’t go as planned, according to my mother.”
“Does Emmy pasture with the other horses?”
“She used to when I visited.”
I hummed. It felt safe here. Perfect temperature, perfect lighting, food right in front of her. Haystacks upon haystacks, and expectations upon expectations. Everyone expected her to heal perfectly here since the conditions were ideal. I faced Dante with determination. “She needs to go outside.”
He searched my eyes for answers. I knew he’d brought me here to see what this horse needed to heal and probably what I needed to heal too.
“You’re sure?” he asked. “Because it’s probably going to be painful out there for her.”
“She needs to feel free, even if she’s not, and she needs to do it on her own, even if it’s painful. She couldn’t have the baby on her own. So”—I went to the lock on her stall and wiggled it as I said the words I knew weren’t about the horse anymore—“let her do this on her own.”
He nodded and went to get the keys for the lock at the opposite side of the barn.
I whispered to her as I pet her soft mane. “It gets better. And worse. And I think you can live with it like maybe I’m living with it. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, except we’ll have more scars, right? And that’s not such a bad thing.”
Dante came up behind me and let me do the honors of unlocking the stall door. Then he placed a halter on her.
Together, we led her to the back of the barn where large sliding doors opened into a fenced-in pasture. As he removed the halter once more, I swear she stood taller, held her head higher, and her trot had more bounce.
I smiled when she didn’t even hesitate to take off galloping into the open field, the wind flying through her mane as she shook it.
With her went some of my pain, some of the failure, and some of the guilt. Other mommas went through what I had and made it out the other side, maybe broken, but probably wise enough to know themselves better. Our freedom may have been fractured, tainted by our pain and our growth, but we still had it. I could have it too. “We’ve all got to be okay in some way, right?”
“Of course,” his low voice rumbled from behind me. “Let’s give her all the time she wants.”
I followed him inside, and we let the breeze blow through the doors as we went back to her stall.
Dante straightened it up without saying much. He hung her halter on a large hook right outside the stall, then turned to stare at me in the middle of it. “You looked at that horse like you believed she could overcome it.”
I nodded, frozen in place by his penetrating stare.
“You think you can’t, though?”
“I thought that at first.”
“And now?” He didn’t move toward me, but I saw him ready to close in. He didn’t have to circle me or take a step in my direction for me to know that he was about to pounce, that he was about to be the wolf to my lamb and that I would crumble beneath him.
“Now I know I did overcome it.” I shrugged. “I’m just not sure I want to risk going through it again.”
He growled and cracked his knuckles. “You’re not sure you want to risk it with me?”
I glanced at the halter. What a representation of both freedom and prison. “I can’t imagine losing you and living through it. I felt the pain of seeing you with Izzy—”