Looking up into the shaggy boughs of the old cottonwood, she had a brilliant idea. She went back up the hill to her house, then paced around the big front yard.
A tree would provide her house some privacy and would be a beautiful addition to her landscape. Mandy wrapped her arms around her stomach. It could be the center focus of a garden for Zavi’s mom. A place to visit with their memories of Kadisha. It would be a way for Rocco to make peace with his past as much as it would also open the conversation with Zavi about why his mother was no longer part of his life.
Mandy was done playing Rocco’s game by rules that changed with his mood. If she said anything to him about the garden, he’d nix her idea.
She walked in a circle, locating the perfect spot. Maybe she would include a fountain. It could be the center of the memorial, with a few trees surrounding it. The sound of the water would almost make it seem as if Kadisha was there with them, answering their prayers and questions. Like a mother would.
Mandy could work with a landscape designer to make it perfect. Peaceful.
And there would be no escaping the garden for Rocco, because it would always be there, in front of the barn, beckoning him to deal with what he most wanted to keep hidden.
This was indeed war…for Rocco’s very soul.
Chapter Two
Rocco watched the security camera of the stables on his phone, waiting for everyone to leave. A young Army veteran had just finished his first hippotherapy session with Mandy. The kid held on to his walker with a white-knuckled grip. The tremors he suffered from made it look as if a cruel puppeteer jerked him around on invisible strings. Even so, Rocco knew the kid’s smile was genuine—he’d observed the whole session. The change in the guy’s demeanor as he left compared to how it had been when he’d arrived had been a one-eighty shift. There was hope in his eyes now, hope that had come from working with Mandy and her horses.
He’d seen it happen with each of her clients. Maybe there was something to the whole hippotherapy thing, which was why he was waiting for the area to empty out.
When everyone was headed to the parking area with the young vet, Rocco made a beeline for the stables, hoping to saddle a horse before Mandy got back and peppered him with questions he couldn’t answer. He needed time alone. Some room to think. Some space to find the pieces of himself he’d lost to the shadows. He hoped a long ride might help him do that.
He’d told Kit where he was headed. The team was too skittish after Fiona’s abduction to take any unexplained absence casually. The last thing he wanted was the whole fucking group out looking for him.
As he went by Kitano’s corral, the brown and white Paint lifted his head and tracked his movement. Rocco wished he could ride Mandy’s rescued horse, but he wasn’t any more healed from his past than Rocco was, and as yet, he couldn’t tolerate being saddled or ridden.
Rocco selected a sorrel, saddled her, then led her outside and swung up into the saddle. He walked her down the narrow dirt road between the stable and corrals. Kitano jogged along his fence line. Rocco’s heart ached for the freedom Kitano lacked.
As he cleared the stable yard, Rocco saw Mandy watching him from the edge of the parking area. The late afternoon sun lit her hair to the color of flames. He could feel her emptiness—the void he himself had carved inside her.
It was good that he could feel that, no?
He’d been trying to find the part of him that cared about others, the part that could sense their emotions. Empathy. It had kept him alive in Afghanistan, where it seemed he’d used all of it up. How long had it been since he’d truly cared for anyone other than himself?
He remembered Mandy had asked him recently: “Do you love me?”
“Yes,” he’d answered.
“Do you love Zavi?”
“Yes.”
“Does that love hurt?”
“Yes.”
He did love them, but even that he saw in terms of himself. His truthful answer had only served to widen the gap between them. He couldn’t win for losing.
He turned onto the rough tracks behind Blade’s that he often jogged. For a long while, he kept his mind focused only on the wind, the sound of the sorrel’s hooves hitting dirt, the feel of the hot sun.
The now and here, as Mandy often suggested.
It wasn’t so bad, this, if he stayed in the present, looking no farther. Forward or back. The now was nice.
An hour into the ride, he reached a wide ravine, in the middle of which three buttes stood, great pillars of sandstone. The sun was behind him and poured warm colors over the bone-dry vista. The grasses that were so lush in the spring had long ago turned summer brown, dying in advance of winter’s harsh temperatures. The pale green sage and rabbitbrush’s yellow blooms were a visual break in the sun-bleached ground.