Changes of Heart Page 3

  In the SUV Maggie moaned and hugged her head with frantic hands. Janice held Maggie, rocking her gently, as if she were an infant. “We’ll get through this, honey.”

  Brad sat behind the steering wheel and thunked the heavy door closed. His eyes met those of his wife in the rearview mirror, and he wondered for a long moment if what Janice had said contained any bit of truth at all.

  Maggie leaned up against the birthing stall and stared at the new foal. In his eight days of life, Dancer had shown more personality than most foals did in their first couple of months. He was a curious animal. His chestnut, almost black, eyes flicked toward every new sound or voice, and his ears were in almost constant motion, pointing at whatever caught his attention. Dancer didn’t display the natural and normal hesitancy of a very young horse. He didn’t slide behind or next to his mother when people came to their stall, keeping her body between him and those strange creatures that walked upright. Instead, he moved toward rather than away from a hand held out to him and seemed to take great delight when his muzzle was gently stroked or his poll—the spot between his ears—lightly rubbed.

  Maggie spent a few hours every day at or in the birthing stall. It was there she felt a sense of peace that she couldn’t find elsewhere. But even with her horses, she found no joy. She felt Rich’s death physically, as if she carried the invisible but ponderously weighty pelt of some huge animal on her back and shoulders. She’d lost a dozen pounds from her already lean frame, and her jeans hung from her waist like they were two sizes too large for her, even though her belt was buckled at its final increment. She lived on coffee and whatever her mother was able to get her to eat.

  Maggie didn’t realize that her father had come up behind her at the stall until she felt his hand on her shoulder and heard his voice.

  She turned to face him, a forced smile beginning to mold her face.

  “Don’t,” Brad said. “Don’t try to smile, honey. You’ve never been phony in your life, and now isn’t the time to start.”

  Maggie nodded and turned back to her horses. Dancer moved closer, muzzle raised a bit, trying the scent of Maggie’s father. When Dancer recognized it, he snuffed and moved a step closer to the man and woman, seeking Brad’s usual light touch. This time, for once, Brad ignored the foal.

  “There are some things we need to talk about, Maggie,” Brad said. “I need to get back to my stores in a few days. Your mom is going to stay on for as long as she needs to. I’ll do my best to fly out on weekends.”

  “It’s not necessary for Mom to—”

  Brad cleared his throat. “Whether it’s necessary or not, she’s staying, and I don’t want you to try to dissuade her. Her heart is breaking right along with yours, and she needs to be with you, needs to be your mother.” His voice became stronger. “Don’t shut her out, Maggie.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maggie whispered.

  “Don’t be sorry, either, baby. Believe me, I know how you feel and how you—”

  “No, you don’t, Dad. Mom never died and left you alone.”

  Brad sighed. “No. She didn’t. I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have said that. But we’re worried about you. You’re losing weight you can’t spare. You’re eating next to nothing. You pace the house all night long, you won’t pray with us, and you won’t see the friends who stop by to visit you. Grief is grief, honey—and it’s the most painful thing in the world—but you’ve got to smooth some of the sharp edges away.”

  “My life is over, Dad.”

  Her father turned her away from the stall to face him, his grip firm but lovingly gentle. He used his right hand to lift her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes. “It isn’t, Maggie. I’ve never known you to be a quitter. What happened to Richie is a horrible tragedy, but you can’t allow it to destroy you. That isn’t what Richie would want, and it’s not what your mother and I want, either. I know only a week has gone by, but I—we—are really frightened by what we’re seeing. C’mon, let’s go inside and talk with your mom. OK?”

  They walked together to the house, her father’s arm protectively around her waist. Halfway there, Maggie moved her own arm to her father’s midsection, and it stayed there until they reached the steps.

  “I’m not a quitter,” Maggie said, her hand on the doorknob.

  “I know that, baby.”

  Janice was sitting at the kitchen table when Maggie and her father came in from outside. Janice had a neat stack of condolence cards and personal letters in front of her and a half dozen or so other pieces of mail that she rather clumsily attempted to cover with her arm. “I thought I’d separate the mail, honey—set aside the ones you’ll want to answer.” She stood and swept up the mail she’d been attempting to conceal into a quick, sloppy pile and picked it up. One envelope with a lurid red “Third Notice” stamped on its face dropped to the table. Before her mother could snatch up the letter, the words registered in Maggie’s mind.

  “What in the world is this?” she asked, reaching toward the envelope.

  “Junk mail and stuff and nonsense,” Janice said hurriedly. “You don’t need to concern yourself with it right now.” She forced a smile. “How about I put a fresh pot of coffee on?”

  Maggie tore open the envelope and scanned the letter. Her face flushed with quick anger. “This is impossible! We’ve never missed a mortgage payment! Richie pays everything on the first of each month—this is a big mistake.” She looked at her father in panic. She didn’t like what she saw.

  Her dad sighed. “No, it isn’t, Maggie. I’m sorry. I was waiting for the right time to discuss this with you.” He paused for a moment. “Sit down, OK?”

  “Brad...” Janice began.

  “There is no good time, Jan,” Brad said. “I guess now is as good as any. C’mon, honey, sit down. You too, Jan.”

  “I won’t sit down!” Maggie held the letter in front of her like a challenging sword, her hot glare focused on her father. “What’s going on here? What’s this all about?”

  “Calm down,” Brad said gently, easing himself into a chair at the table. “Yelling at me isn’t going to accomplish anything. Let’s talk about this.”

  Maggie held her father’s eyes with her own for a long moment and then stiffly moved a chair out from the table and sat down, her posture rigid, the letter still clutched in her hand. After a moment, Jan sat too.

  “I got a call from Rich about a week before Christmas. He needed money. I don’t know how else to say this. He did a very... well... misguided thing. He did it for you, honey—I completely believe that. But it was a foolish thing to do.”

  Maggie began to speak, but her father held up his hand to quiet her.

  “Let me tell you the whole thing. Then we’ll discuss it. OK?”

  Very slowly, Maggie nodded her head.

  It didn’t take long to tell.

  The color of anger drained from Maggie’s face very quickly, leaving her with a sickly white pallor. Her hand released the letter, and parts of the text were smeared from the nervous sweat of her palm. The silence in the kitchen became an oppressive force.

  Jan cleared her throat. “Rich did it for you, Maggie. We all know he didn’t lust after money for itself—this crazy investment thing was to be a gift to you, to help you expand your career with your horses, to make sure you wanted for nothing.”

  “Well,” Maggie said. Then, after a long moment of silence, she added, “He didn’t tell me, though. We always told each other everything, but he didn’t tell me about this.”

  “That was wrong, Maggie—but you had to hear his voice at the beginning of his call to me to understand it,” Brad said. “He was as excited as I was when I bought your first bicycle and kept it hidden in our bedroom closet until Christmas morning. Your mother was sure I was going to give it away—and every time I saw you, I almost did. That’s how Richie felt—like he was doing something loving and wonderful for you.”

  As Maggie began to speak, Jan leaned across the table and took her daughter’s hand. “Let me say something
here. There are two ways you can go with this, Maggie.” Maggie turned to look at her mother. Brad did as well. His wife wasn’t an aggressive woman, but she was a strong and clear-thinking Christian with a rock-hard faith that made her counsel well worth hearing.

  “You can torture yourself with what Richie did, and worry and cry and wonder what the man was thinking by not discussing his plan with you. You can make the whole thing bigger than it is in your mind and in your heart, and let it chew away at you for the rest of your life. Or...” Janice paused. “Or you can accept it for what it was: a surprise gift from your husband that went terribly, tragically wrong. And you can hold that in your heart—how much he loved you—and let it bring joy to you until you join him at the end of your own life. It’s up to you, honey. Dad and I can take care of the money for you with no problem. I’m much more concerned about how you—”

  “No,” Maggie said with a voice that was more alive than it had been since Christmas day. “What you said is true, Mom, and thanks for saying it. But the money is my problem now, and I’ll take care of it without a handout from you and Dad.”

  Brad reached into his jacket pocket and removed a neatly folded check. “We’ve been very fortunate, honey. Business is good. This”—he gestured with the check—“won’t be missed or needed. Can’t you let us help you? Isn’t that what parents do for their children?”

  Maggie pushed her chair back, stood, and stepped to her father. She leaned and kissed his cheek. “Thank you so much, Daddy—but no. I can’t and won’t accept it.” She stood straight again, and some of the color came back in her face. “I’ve got some figuring to do. I’ll be in my room.”

  “Listen to me for a minute, Maggie. This is—”

  Brad stopped speaking when Janice nudged his leg with her toe under the table. Their eyes met as they listened to Maggie’s footsteps hurrying up the stairs. “She hasn’t walked that fast since Richie died,” Janice said. She took the check from her husband’s hand and tore it once and then again—and then again.

  “She’s going to make it,” Janice said.

  Ten days later, early, with the sun barely nudging the horizon, Maggie stood next to her dad’s SUV with her father and mother. Cartoon balloons drifted from the mouths of each of them as they spoke, and a sharp, hostile wind stirred up dust devils and whisked the breath steam away.

  Maggie studied her parents as they embraced one another, memories of her childhood flooding her mind, at least for short moments taking her back to an idyllic time when everything seemed perfect and peaceful and so wonderfully full of promise.

  “Maggie?” Janice brought her daughter into the family embrace. The scent of the Clubman cologne on her father’s freshly shaved face tickled Maggie’s childhood memories once again—he’d used the product as long as she could remember. Janice’s hair had a very light scent of lilacs, another sensory bit of her parents Maggie stored in her heart.

  “Do me a favor today?” her father asked, his voice slightly muffled in Maggie’s hair.

  Maggie nodded, still embracing her parents, almost afraid to let go of them. “Sure... what?”

  “Ride today, Maggie. Run the barrels, go out on a trail—but get on a horse.”

  “I will, Daddy. I promise.”

  The ground was flinty-hard that afternoon, but the persistent night wind had scoured the snow from the paddock. Maggie tugged her Stetson down at the brim, securing it against the sniping breeze. Happy was a good mare, a pretty fifteen-hand dappled gray with almost perfect legs. She was a fast and agile barrel horse, but, equally important, Happy was an endlessly willing mount with a heart bigger than the state of Montana.

  Maggie shifted in her saddle, standing in the stirrups and then easing down onto Happy’s back. She took a deep breath, and the familiar scents of Lexol saddle cleaner, sweet-feed breath, and the pure, clean aroma of cold horsehide enveloped her. The chunk-chunk of Happy’s hooves hitting the ground was the only sound in the entire world, and that was just fine with Maggie. She eased the mare into a lope, following the three-railed fence and easing the corners of the rectangle into smooth left turns.

  Maggie felt in control of this fine mount, if not in control of anything else in her life. She knew the feeling would last for only a mere speck of time—a quick shard that really changed nothing. But it felt good, at least momentarily.

  She leaned forward slightly in the saddle and touched Happy’s sides with her boot heels. Clumps of frozen soil pelted the air behind the mare as she hurled herself forward, scrambling to a full-out gallop within a few strides. Maggie rode with rather than on her mount, moving with the fluid, stunningly fast, controlled rampage. Her eyes streaming from the battering of the arctic air, Maggie touched Happy’s mouth with a breath of rein pressure on the low port bit, easing her through a gentle turn to the left.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Maggie noticed the black GMC with Danny Pulver standing next to it in her driveway. Sunday, his copper and white coat gleaming in the harsh sunlight, stood next to Danny, apparently watching the barrel run as intently as his master.

  The moment of solace Maggie had found in the saddle evaporated, leaving her once again empty. She raised a hand to Danny and hooked her horse in a turn to the far end of the paddock, away from the man and his dog. A friend stops and I have to turn away from him so he can’t see my face, the look that I know is there, the one that says “Leave me alone.”

  Danny waited where he was until Maggie turned her mare and rode at a walk to the fence near him. “Good to see you, Maggie,” he said.

  “Good to see you too. C’mon into the barn while I put Happy up.” Her eyes dropped to Sunday, whose tail was moving tentatively as he watched her. A genuine smile crossed her face as she met the big dog’s eyes, much different than the one she’d forced to greet Danny.

  “Hey, Sunday,” she said. She’d met the collie a couple of times before, but only through the open window of the vet’s truck. Still, even in those brief exchanges of ear scratching and hand sniffing, she’d felt a quick bond with the dog. He was a beautiful tawny creature, in vibrant good health, with a coat as polished as that of Lassie on the old TV show. That wasn’t what attracted her to the collie, though. Sunday’s eyes had reached into her own at those first meetings, just as they did now.

  “OK if I let him explore?” Danny asked. “He won’t get into anything.”

  “Sure, no problem. Come here, Sunday—say hello.”

  Danny snapped his fingers, and the dog rushed toward Maggie, tail swinging much harder now, his paws pattering over the frozen ground. As any male dog would, he skidded to a stop at the fence, sniffed a post, and swung his body to leave his signature scent.

  “Does he know about...” Maggie began.

  Sunday hefted a leg, and a stream of urine dashed against the fence post—as well as the resistor that held the smooth gray electrical wire that ran a foot off the ground around the entire paddock. The wire served a pair of purposes: it kept bored horses from toying with the fence, and it stunted or killed the weeds that grew along fence lines with its pulsing electricity. The power followed the liquid. Sunday was thrown back a yard by the assault, a yip punctuating his scrambling retreat. In the smallest part of a second, the eighty-pound collie turned into a warrior—and he attacked the post. This time, as his fangs slashed at the resistor, the wire pressed against his tongue and the jolt rolled him over in the dirt. His yowl of surprise and pain was almost puppylike as he got his feet under himself and stood glaring at the fence. A feral growl rumbled from his throat, the fur along his spine raised in challenge and his lips curled back, revealing snowy white eyeteeth.

  Maggie turned away from the scene, her shoulders shaking, laughing for the first time in what felt like forever. Danny, too, ducked his head and turned to his truck. The pulse of electricity was far too small to do a horse or Sunday any harm, but the collie’s reaction—and the fact that he backed a full dozen feet away from the fence while issuing his challenge—was like an absurd pr
atfall from a silent movie. Even so, both Maggie and Danny realized that laughing out loud would hurt the animal’s pride.

  Danny, his face under strict control, walked to the gate and worked the latch, opening it for Maggie and her mare. Sunday waited until the gate was closed and Maggie and Happy were several steps toward the front door of the barn before he scurried up to her. She crouched and hugged the dog. “What a good, brave boy! You sure showed that fence, Sunday!”

  Danny dropped to his knees next to Maggie, and Sunday turned to him. The vet rubbed his dog, hugged him, and then pointed away from the barn. “Good boy, Sunny—good dog. Go, now—go.” The collie lapped Danny’s hand and hustled off toward Maggie’s house, knowing he was free to explore.

  “He’s magnificently trained,” Maggie said.

  “I wish I could claim credit for that, but I can’t. Sun’s a rare animal. I’ve had dogs—mostly collies—all my life, but he’s... well... something else.”

  Maggie nodded and rose to her feet to bring Happy to her stall. “Yeah. The same thing happens with horses every so often. There are good ones and smart ones and willing ones—but then a really special horse comes along and captures a person’s heart.”

  “Like Dancer?”

  “Exactly.” Maggie paused for a moment. “The same thing’s true with people. The majority of us are good people who lead good lives, but we don’t have that rare spark that some do.”

  “Like Rich?” Danny asked quietly.

  “Yes. Like Rich.” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “I didn’t come up to you at church, Maggie, and I’ve stayed away until now because I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. I still don’t, I guess, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.”

  Maggie began stripping Happy’s saddle and saddle blanket off, looking over the mare’s back at the vet.

  “Rich was important to lots of us,” Danny said. “I know what you mean about the rare people, the special people, and he was one of them. The thing is,” he paused for a moment, searching for the right words, “I always felt good around him. He had a way of making a person feel better, somehow—more worthwhile, maybe. And there was no more prejudice to Rich Locke than there is to a newborn kitten. He was interested in each person he came across, wanted to know about them, what they thought, what they believed, how they lived. And that was real about him, Maggie. It wasn’t hype or a façade—it was the way he was.”