Everything seemed normal. The sweet-sour smell of hay and horse bodies mingled into its familiar musk. The rows of pine stalls on either side of the empty corridor looked as tidy as ever, and the stall doors were all closed, as they should be. Since we tended to leave the green-barred windows open, a few inquisitive horse heads poked out over the tops. Also normal.
And yet…there was almost no way Mom had forgotten to latch that door. Not after the mini-lecture I’d gotten when we first moved here. Plus she was so vigilant about locking the guesthouse, you’d think we stored diamonds in our beds.
Mom peered over her shoulder and spotted me. I could see fear in the wide blue eyes behind her rain-splotched glasses, in the way she stabbed a finger toward the door.
“Outside,” she mouthed.
I clenched my jaw and shook my head, even though squeezing air into my ever-tightening lungs had become tricky. No way was I leaving her here, to deal with…whatever…on her own.
I must have had my determined face on, because she didn’t bother with a second hopeless attempt to send me fleeing. Instead she motioned me toward the stalls on the right side of the corridor, while she crept to the left.
She leaned her upper body into the open window of the first stall, looking for what, I didn’t know. But her paranoia was contagious. Feeling wound up enough to explode at the slightest sound, I peered into the first stall on my side. Gentle Jim’s quarters. When the big roan gelding saw me, he lumbered over and nosed me in the forehead, hoping I’d slip him a carrot from my pocket. The stall was empty except for him. Leaning over, I quietly grabbed his tin feed bucket and a steel-clipped lead. Just in case. Not my first choice in weaponry, but they were better than nothing.
I checked the next two stalls. Nothing but groggy horses.
Clank.
Loud. Just like I’d heard it before. Coming from the row of stalls around the corner.
Mom’s head whipped toward the noise. I tiptoed across the concrete floor, dodging unswept pieces of hay but ignoring the growing collection of grit and other unsavory substances on the balls of my bare feet.
As soon as I was close enough, Mom grabbed my head with one firm hand. My heart galloped as she pressed her mouth close to my ear. “I’m going to check it out,” she whispered. “Wait here. If you hear anything, run.”
I tried to shake my head, but her grip tightened, pressing me even closer. Her breath hissed between her teeth and collided with my earlobe, which I swear was already jumping from the thud-thud-thud of my pulse. “Mila. Please.”
As soon as she let go and rounded the corner ahead, I took off on stealthy feet after her, clutching my makeshift weapons like they were swords rather than random barn utensils.
When I reached the corner, I noticed the first three stalls in the next corridor had their green-barred windows tightly shut. Empties. There were a lot of those, space vacated by the boarders who came when the Greenwood family was actually in residence. Mom stalked past them. She moved so quietly, so smoothly, that her blond ponytail barely bobbed behind her.
She was only three stalls from the end of the row when we heard it again.
Clank.
Our heads swiveled as one toward the last stall on the right. My breath hitched in my throat. If there was a crazy stalker or horse thief in there, he or she could probably hear my heart slamming against my rib cage by now.
But under the rapid-fire beat of my heart lurked something else. An anticipatory tightening of my muscles, an unshakable determination to help Mom.
No matter what.
I traced Mom’s careful footsteps as she picked out a silent path that led to that last stall. I watched while those slender, capable fingers wrapped around the handle, squeezed, and eased the door open.
Maisey let out a startled whinny when Mom leaped across the threshold, Maglite poised for action.
The long black flashlight lowered an instant later.
“What the…?” I heard Mom say as I leaned into the stall. Maisey was the lone occupant.
My heart decelerated to a gentler rhythm while I scratched the mare’s soft muzzle. Meanwhile, Mom performed an itemized inspection of the stall’s contents, running her hands along the walls. She stopped on the feed bucket attached to the wall.
Slipping farther inside, she reached over and pulled the bucket away from the wall, then pushed it forward.
Clank.
“Silly girl. Was that you, playing with your bucket? Mrs. Greenwood warned me about that.” Mom said, her laugh flowing like water; the easiest, purest laugh I’d her from her in ages. The sound released the tension from my limbs, like a valve had opened up and drained it all away. Part of me wanted to join in. The other part worried. This type of reaction, it wasn’t Mom. Had Dad’s death finally sent her over the edge?
But when Mom slipped her arm around my shoulder and smiled at me, I gave in to the laughter, pushed aside the niggling voices.
Like a squirrel, I felt compelled to store every spare scrap of affection I could find. You never knew when winter would strike and make the scraps scarce again.
It wasn’t until we reached the barn door that Mom’s smile slipped.
I followed her gaze and realized what she was thinking. “I’m sorry I left the door open. I was in a hurry and forgot.”