“Yeah,” Maggie said, rewarding me with a generous grin. Her front teeth were crooked, and I thought about scheduling an appointment with an orthodontist. I’d heard braces could cost as
much as a year’s college tuition. “They’re named after the constellation Centaurus, and they’re near its brightest star, Hadar.”
“Well, we’ll have to have a look,” I said. “I wouldn’t miss it.”
At that moment, the timer kicked in and the corral lit. The elm in the center shone with thousands of tiny white lights along with a new addition, icicle lights lining the fence. It appeared that Maggie had been busy that afternoon.
“More lights?” I asked.
“Strings helped me. Gram found them in the bargain bin at the hardware store,” Maggie said, her dark hair falling over her hazel eyes. She looked an inch or two taller. I thought about the lights and considered protesting, but I knew how much they meant to Maggie, the comfort they gave her, as if their glow kept her father near.
Just then my mother, Nora Potts, walked down the hill from the stable, followed by the ranch hand she’d hired a month or so earlier, Frieda Cavazos, a woman in her forties with coarse black hair tied back in a single braid. Frieda’s jeans and plaid shirts hung on her narrow frame, and her haggard brown leather cowboy boots looked gray under a coat of dust. In her hands, she dangled a worn leather halter.
“Hello, Mrs. Sarah,” Frieda said, nodding slightly.
“
Buenas tardes,
Frieda,” I said, nodding back.
Mom and the ranch hand stopped next to us, and I noticed that Frieda looked troubled, her sun-worn face pinched in thought. I didn’t have to ask why.
“Mrs. Potts, I think maybe I stay with Emma Lou. Watch over her longer,” she said, handing Mom the halter. “I like to spend more time with her, just to see.”
“That’s a good idea, Frieda. I’ll bring you dinner,” Mom said, absentmindedly winding the halter into a thick loop. “Thank you.”
“What’s wrong with my horse?” Maggie asked, immediately
concerned as Frieda ambled back up the hill to the stable. Emma Lou was heavy with her first foal, due in a little more than a month.
“Probably nothing, dear,” Mom said. “Frieda just thought the horse looked a little peaked, so she’s sitting with her for a while.”
“Now about those lights?” I asked, bringing the conversation around a full one-eighty.
“They were on sale, a real deal,” Mom said, using the sleeve of her old red shirt to wipe sweat from her forehead. “Maggie and I talked about expanding the light show, so I snapped them up. I even bought a batch for the front gate. Good idea?”
I considered giving her a little nudge, but decided against it. “I’ve got to admit, they look good,” I said. “But someone is going to have to pay for all the electricity.”
Mom lifted her eyebrows and gave Maggie a look, the kind that signals,
I told you so.
I shot Maggie one of my best
okay, what’s up?
expressions, and she giggled. Strings broke the silence.
“Guess you’ll just have to work full-time to pay the bill then, huh, Mrs. A?” he said, grinning.
“Am I that transparent?” I asked. “No secrets from all of you?”
“Gram, Strings, and me talked about it awhile, back,” Maggie said. “How the captain would want you back soon.”
“And that’s good or bad?” I asked. Maggie frowned, then looked at Mom.
“You should do it, Mom. Gram and I decided you should. It’s why Gram hired Frieda, so you didn’t have to worry so much about the ranch.”
“So you two were preparing for this? And I should go back to work?” I said, giving Mom a glance.
“It’s time, Sarah,” she said. “It’s been long enough.”
“Well, I’ll be,” I said, amazed. “You’re sure?”
“We’re sure,” Maggie said. “Aren’t we, Gram?”
“As sure as anyone can be in this crazy world,” Mom said, tak
ing off one of her work gloves and ruffling her hand through Maggie’s mop of hair. “We’re sure there’s a big world out there, and we can’t stay locked up here.”
“Well, this is a pretty picture,” Bobby Barker said as he rounded the curve from the front yard, appearing from behind the side of the house. A solidly built man, his white hair fringed over muddy green-gray eyes, and instead of a business suit he wore a pair of jeans and an open-neck shirt. I wasn’t surprised to see him. The one good thing that came out of the Lucas case was that Bobby was no longer the father of a suspect but my mother’s gentleman caller, even if she insisted they were only friends. Just to prove my point, Mom flushed and tried to rearrange her short white curls. It was hopeless. After working with the horses, she really needed a shower and a change of clothes.
“If you gave a woman more notice, Bobby, she’d be more presentable,” Mom said, taking a playful swipe at him with the halter. “How’s a person supposed to look her best without time to fuss?”
“You look beautiful, Nora,” Barker assured her, brushing his hand gently across Mom’s cheek. “You always look beautiful. And you invited me for dinner. Remember?”
“Of course,” Mom said, looking flustered. “I’ve been so busy with the horses, I guess I forgot.”
Just then, Frieda called down from the hill: “Mrs. Potts, I think maybe you should call Doc Larson. I think maybe something is wrong with Emma Lou.”
“What I’m worried about, Nora, is that the foal isn’t due for more than a month, and its lungs aren’t quite there,” said Doc Larson, drawing blood from the black and white pinto’s right jugular vein. The mare looked weary, and her awkward girth bulged, wide and
heavy. “But if it’s what I think it is, Emma Lou may deliver sooner. We’ve got to hope not too early.”
“What do you suspect?” Mom asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Well, I hate to speculate,” Doc said. At five-foot-five and maybe 150 pounds, Doc was a small, fidgety man. His dad’s family was Norwegian and his mom Irish, and his hair used to be red before it grayed like the stubble that covered his chin. The best horse vet in the county, Doc wasn’t fond of delivering bad news and when faced with the prospect always appeared to have one foot headed toward the door.
“We won’t hold it against you if you’re wrong, Doc,” I said. “But we need an idea of what’s wrong with the mare.”
Chewing on the inside of his mouth like he used to on plugs of tobacco before his missus made him quit, Doc said, “Well, I figure this mare of yours has most likely come in contact with some pesky bacteria.”
“Emma Lou has an infection?” Maggie asked, her voice a couple of octaves higher than usual. Doc turned to her and frowned.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds, Maggie,” he said, trying to be reassuring. “Thanks to Frieda, we caught it early.”
On her return trip to the barn, Frieda noticed that Emma Lou’s eyes were irritated, the lids red. We now knew that the horse was also running a low-grade fever.
“How sick is she?” Maggie asked. “Is my horse going to die?”
Doc frowned again, looking at her straight on. “I’m not going to lie to you, Maggie. If it’s what I think it is, it could cause the foal to abort, leave one or both horses blind, and, in the worst cases, it can be fatal,” he said, his brow furrowed in worry. “But it’s treatable. When we get Emma Lou’s blood work back, we’ll know more, but in the meantime, I’m going to put your girl on an antibiotic, to get a head start.”
“I’ll take care of her,” Maggie said, her voice small and frightened.
“Of course, you will,” Doc said.
After he gave the horse an antibiotic shot, Doc left, and we carried out his orders, cleaning out the shed behind the house for Emma Lou’s temporary home, to prevent her from infecting the rest of the horses. Instead of one of Mom’s home-cooked suppers, we ate pizzas from the freezer, and Maggie and I munched ours in chairs outside the shed. Every time Emma Lou made a sound, Maggie jumped up to check on her.
The celestial events occurred that night without notice, at least at the Rocking Horse Stables. Maggie’s telescope remained on the porch, unused. At ten, I coaxed my exhausted daughter into the house. In her room, Maggie climbed into bed and I flicked on the strings of Christmas lights that hung across her ceiling. As I prepared to leave, I turned the lights off.
“No,” Maggie said. “Please, Mom. Leave them on.”
I flipped the switch back on, and the ceiling glowed softly with the small, white lights. Before I left, I bent down and kissed her again.
“Don’t worry, Maggie,” I said. “I’ll watch over Emma Lou.”
Maggie nodded and quickly fell fast asleep.
T
he captain stared down at me with an amused grin when I opened my eyes early the following morning. In the two years since Bill’s death, I’d noticed that the men I work with often have that kind of reaction. I guess they see me less as cop tough and more single-mom scattered. I could consider that a bad thing, but most of the time it works to my advantage, so I don’t fight it. I’d slept on an old cot outside the shed, to the dismay of my back and neck. Cold, I pulled the sleeping bag up around me. Even Texas can be chilly on a winter morning.
“I knew you were excited about talking with me, but I didn’t expect that you’d sleep outside to greet me,” he said with a chuckle. The sunlight bounced off his captain’s badge, like mine, a lone star inside a wagon wheel. My silver lieutenant’s badge was stamped out of a Mexican
cinco peso,
but the captain’s, anchored onto his brown leather vest, was gold. When I put up my hand to block the glare, I noticed he carried a thick file folder.
“Late night,” I said, reluctantly unzipping the sleeping bag and pulling my legs out, still wearing my jeans and sweater from the
night before. I wrapped the open sleeping bag around my shoulders, attempting to keep warm. “We moved Maggie’s pinto into the shed. She’s sick. Some kind of infection, it looks like.”
“Isn’t she carrying a foal?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She is.”
“I’m sorry about the horse, Sarah. I hope she and the foal pull through,” he said. “But I need a couple of answers. First, any more thoughts on the Cox file?”
The truth was that I’d been unsettled half the night, thinking and rethinking the case. “It’s not easy to fall asleep out here in the cold,” I said. “I had lots of time to consider it.”
“And?” he prodded.
“I see no reason to irritate our friends at H.P.D., at least not about this case,” I said. “There’s nothing in those photos to indicate this is anything other than a suicide.”
“Good,” he said. “I would have stood by you if you thought it was more, but I’d hate to have a showdown over a hunch.”
“I agree,” I said. The case still nagged at me, but I had no evidence, nothing to hang my suspicions on. Bending down to retrieve the Cox file from under the cot, I said, “I’ve got it right here.”
“Great. And regarding that other matter?” he said, taking the folder in his meaty hands.
I’d almost forgotten about the question of my return to the rangers. Maggie and Mom said it was all right, but now with Emma Lou . . . ? “How about I work half-days at the office and half-days at home, just for the first couple of weeks, until Emma Lou and the foal are out of the woods?” I proposed. “Then you’ve got me back in the office full-time.”
“Well, it’s about time!” the captain crowed. “Sarah, you’re going to make a lot of folks happy. You’ve been missed.”
“Thanks, Captain,” I said. “It’ll make me happy, too. I’ll see you at the office in a little over an hour. I’ll work this morning, so
I can be here when Doc Larson swings by this afternoon, if that’s okay?”
“Couldn’t be better,” he said. “It’s more than okay.”
“It’s settled then,” I said, shaking his hand, cementing our deal.
The captain turned to leave but then swung back. “I almost forgot,” he said, handing me the folder he’d brought with him. “This is a new case. Some young girl, a singer, has a lowlife obsessed with her. Her security people think it’s a guy from Houston, although we’re not positive they’re looking at the right man. Anyway, this girl is pretty scared. She lives in Los Angeles, but she’s scheduled to give a concert in Dallas this weekend, Saturday night, and then open the Houston rodeo with a concert next Monday evening.”
“And you’d like me to . . . ?”
“Figure out if this stalker is really dangerous or just some crackpot fan,” he said. “Also, maybe you can tell if the man they’re looking at is the right guy.”
I scanned the folder and noticed the girl’s name. “That’s the singer? Cassidy Collins?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “You know who she is?”
“Maggie has every one of this kid’s CDs,” I said. “And that’s something that hasn’t made me happy. Collins is a teenager but she acts like she’s twenty-four. Some of her songs are, well, let’s just say not what I want Maggie listening to.”
At that moment, Emma Lou neighed softly in the shed behind us, reminding me that I had a sick expectant mom to care for.
“I better go, Captain,” I said. “I’ll look at this later.”
“Yup, duty calls,” the captain said. “Sarah, I’ll see you at the office.”
Another neigh, this one coupled with an impatient snort, and I waved at him as I turned toward the barn. I had an appetizing bucket of oats and hay to fetch for the pinto’s breakfast. When I walked into the shed, feed bucket in hand, Emma Lou shook her
white mane, and I ran my hand over her muscular back, giving her a solid tap on her right hip. She’s one beautiful animal, the foal of Mom’s favorite brood mare and a neighbor’s prime sire. We’d picked her parents and raised her, then had her bred to extend her bloodline. But the truth is that folks who love horses understand you never really own one. You don’t buy the horse, just the right to care for one of God’s noblest creatures.
“I’m here, girl,” I whispered. I ran my hand down to her round belly and felt the foal move. Emma Lou nudged my shoulder, pushing my arm away. “Tender down there?” I asked. I remembered my own pregnancy, the rush of watching my infant daughter’s feet pushing against my abdomen, as if eager to enter the world. “Don’t be in such a hurry little one,” I whispered. “It’s a big world out here. A crazy world. You stay inside your momma as long as you can, where you’re safe.”