It was hard to feel sympathy for her grandfather, who let such horrible things happen under his own roof, then drank himself to death trying to forget what he had done to his daughter. It was even harder to find sympathy for her grandmother, who had gotten ridden of one child and raised another without love. She supposed her grandmother didn’t know how to love. That she was born flawed. It was the only explanation that made sense.
She supposed it was only natural to think often of Lilly. But her heart ached imagining the nightmare she endured, and the life they could have had together if things had turned out differently. She wished she had the picture of herself as a baby on her mother’s lap, smiling and holding the calico elephant, but it was destroyed in the fire. Claude had no idea how long Lilly survived in the attic after her accident, but a heavy, nauseous feeling came over Julia when she realized it could have been weeks or months or even years. And she had been eating and sleeping and playing all that time, with no clue her mother was living in misery right upstairs. She wondered too what kind of mother Lilly would have been after being treated so cruelly by her parents. She liked to imagine her as a loving, affectionate woman who, like Julia, had learned to be gentle and kind as a result of what others had done to her.
While waiting for the new house to be built, she stayed in an inn on the interstate and went to the barn every day to work with Claude, Fletcher, and the horses. Bonnie Blue’s foal, Samantha, was growing fast and strong, as was her best friend Molly, the filly Fletcher had brought home. Julia planned to keep them both on the farm for the rest of their lives. And after doing research on the racing industry, she made the decision that no more Blackwood Farm horses would be sold into racing.
When she wasn’t at the farm, she was at the library doing research on The Barlow Brothers’ Circus and Lilly. Along with the same clippings she had read in her grandfather’s den, she found an article about two circus performers who had tried to steal an elephant. One was her mother, Lilly, and the other was a performer named Cole Holt. They were husband and wife. She also found a horrifying article about the execution of an elephant named Pepper, the same elephant her parents had been trying to steal, and another article about Lilly being injured while trying to save her. But she found no record of what happened to her father, Cole, and he remained a mystery. After reading about Lilly trying to save Pepper, she tried to think of a way to honor her mother’s courage, and the solution came to her a few weeks ago.
Now, as she reached the new barn, Fletcher pulled in with a horse trailer. She went over to the driveway and waited, trying to ignore the nerves fluttering in her stomach. He got out of the truck and shut the door, grinning like a schoolboy.
“Do you have them?” she said.
“Sure do,” Fletcher said. “And there’s more where these came from.”
He went around the back of the trailer and she followed. He unlocked the ramp, let it down, and reached for her hand. She smiled and took it, and he pulled her up the ramp. Together, they peered into the trailer.
A dozen fuzzy heads looked up at them, and several soft muzzles reached over the trailer door. Foals of all ages and colors—bays and palominos, chestnuts and paints, and one skinny runt the color of cinnamon—stood, wobbly-legged, in the straw.
Julia’s eyes grew moist. “They’re beautiful.”
“And they’re alive because of you,” Fletcher said.
She grinned and he pulled her to him. Thinking it was a congratulatory hug, she laughed. But then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, hard on the lips. At first she moved away, surprised; then she kissed him back. It was a short kiss, but they both recognized the affection behind it. When they drew apart, they reached in to pet the foals at the same time and smiled.
Julia’s heart swelled with pride and love and something that felt like joy. For the first time that she could remember, she felt elation. This was the beginning of a new future, and she could think of no better way to live her life than to save these helpless creatures. She and Fletcher and Claude would rescue nurse mare foals and other horses in Lilly’s memory. They would care for them and train them until they were old enough to be adopted into loving homes. In the meantime, the horses would be free to run in the fields, to play and jump and sleep on the grass, and chase away the ghosts of Blackwood Manor.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
During the writing of The Life She Was Given, I relied on the following books: American Sideshow by Marc Hartzman; Shocked and Amazed: On & Off the Midway by James Taylor; Step Right This Way: The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty; and Carney Folk: The World’s Weirdest Sideshow Acts by Francine Hornberger.