style="font-size:15px;"> “Apparently,” she shot back, “you weren’t there, either, not for my sister. Your buddy? Well, he had gear, right? Gear to keep him from getting burned, and a mask to help him breathe, and—and training—he knew what to do in a fire—it was his job—but my sister...she’s just a kid! And all she had on was—was yoga pants and the pink bunny slippers I gave her for Christmas—”
Mallory felt the dinner she’d just eaten rise in her throat, her stomach churning. She put her hand to her mouth and ran from the room. She had to get away—away from Andrew Monroe.
Three months later
THE EARLY-JANUARY sky stretched out in a deceptive azure blue over the country road Mallory drove down, the sun bright as it shimmered across the asphalt. A sky like that called to mind balmy temperatures, not the forty degrees it was, made even colder by the brisk breeze that feathered through the tall thickets of pines on both sides of the road and buffeted the canvas top of her convertible.
Beside her, Katelyn riffled through the stack of papers. “Yeah, this is the road. See? Stanton Mill Road.”
Mallory dared a glance at the brochure from the therapy facility that Katelyn had shoved into her line of vision. The ugly scar on her sister’s small hand—a starburst with a long tail—gave Mallory a fresh jolt.
And that’s the least of her scars. Mallory pushed away the thought. No, she had to be positive. Katelyn was here, in this car, able to talk, able to get around in her wheelchair. She’d come so far, first at the burn center, and then in an in-patient rehab facility.
And maybe this last round of therapy would actually get Katelyn up, out of that wheelchair, and on her way back to college.
Focusing her gaze back on the road ahead, Mallory said, “So we just keep our eyes peeled for the sign—Happy Acres Farm? Right?”
As if she didn’t know. As if Katelyn hadn’t begged and wheedled and pleaded, like she was so good at doing. When she’d first mentioned it, Mallory had thought she’d lost her mind. Hippotherapy? She’d never heard of it.
Somewhere, somehow, Katelyn had gotten hold of the shiny, colorful brochure featuring uplifting photos of kids and grown-ups on horses.
Katelyn had always been crazy about horses—why, Mallory couldn’t say. Anything that big and hulking, that could tumble you off and trample you, couldn’t really be a pet, could it?
Whether it was Katelyn’s horse obsession or someone’s assurance that hippotherapy would get her out of that wheelchair, the brochure hadn’t left Katelyn’s possession. Over time, the corners had become dog-eared, the folds so frail that one of them had to be mended with cellophane tape. The brochure had become Katelyn’s talisman. Happy Acres Farm, the thing she’d work toward when nothing else would motivate her, when she’d wanted to simply give up.
Mallory couldn’t blame Katelyn for those times. Her sister’s screams of agony as nurses cared for her burned legs and feet still echoed in her head. And even now, Katelyn had days of unrelenting pain.
There’d come a point during a particularly bad day of therapy when Katelyn had given her scarred legs and feet a disgusted grimace.
“Nobody’ll ever want me,” she’d said. “I won’t ever be able to walk again. What’s the point? Maybe I should just be happy with what I’ve got. I’m alive, okay? Isn’t that enough for you, Mallory?”
It wasn’t. Mallory had to give her sister her life back—she owed it to their parents. Their mom and dad would expect that, would want her to do whatever she could.
Even if it means getting lost in the middle of the pinewoods of south Georgia trying to find a horse farm.
“Hey! There it is!” Katelyn pointed. She jumped up and down in the seat beside Mallory. “See? Happy Acres Farm! You found it, sis!” She gave Mallory an ebullient punch on her arm.
Sure enough, a big wooden sign with a silhouette of a horse announced the facility. Mallory followed a long post-and-rail fence down to the sign and bumped along the gravel driveway. Here she saw the green metal roof of low buildings—stables, she assumed, and hopefully an office.
“Oh, wow! It’s pretty, isn’t it? Ooh, Mallory! Look! Horses!”
It was pretty—Mallory had been worried that the place wouldn’t live up to the bucolic photos in the brochure. The rehab facility surely hadn’t—no happy, smiling staff members and triumphant patients to be found in all their time at that facility.
Happy Acres Farm appeared as advertised. Horses frolicked in the cold, crisp air across pastures of impossibly green grass. Beyond them, a pond reflected the blue sky, with clouds of fog still hovering close over its surface.
The stables—if that was what the long, low building was—were fastidiously neat, light green, with dark green trim and shutters. Everything seemed perfectly groomed—and perfectly deserted.
Where were the other patients? Where was the staff shown in the photos? The discharge planners at the rehab facility had warned Mallory that Happy Acres Farm was a small clinic, run by a single owner-operator. Mallory had tried to talk Katelyn into choosing a similar, bigger facility nearer to Macon, where the two of them had grown up and Mallory had lived up until now.
But no. Katelyn wanted this hippotherapy facility. And the discharge planners had told them that the therapist was highly qualified—certified in both traditional physical therapy and hippotherapy, and she had certification in counseling. Plus...it was close to Katelyn’s college. Maybe her old school friends would encourage her to get better and get back into her classes.
Mallory surely hadn’t been able to accomplish that.
“Can you help me with my chair, Mal?” Katelyn’s grin was so big, it practically hung off either side of her elfin face. Mallory’s heart melted, and her reservations about the place evaporated. Believing it was half the battle—maybe Katelyn would be able to walk again here.
“Okay. We’re early, though—”
“I want to see it! I want to go pet the horses!”
Mallory shuddered. Horses were great from a distance—beautiful and graceful. Close up, though?
She loved animals—how many dogs and cats had she and Katelyn fostered over the years? Horses, on the other hand, had big teeth and sharp hooves and eyes that seemed to stare straight through you. She was embarrassed to admit such a phobia, but there it was.
Still, she knew better than to argue with her little sister. The therapist could establish the rules, and Katelyn would certainly listen to her more than she would Mallory. After all, Katelyn had demonstrated time and again that she thought Mallory was an uptight fussbudget who worried too much.
I didn’t worry enough.
She took in Katelyn’s excitement. Her sister was pink cheeked for the first time in months, her coppery hair, so like Mallory’s own, fluffing out around a thinner, still-gaunt face. It was like looking at their mom’s photo as a teenager. Katelyn and she had both inherited their mom’s auburn hair, but Katelyn had drawn the delicate elfin features of their mother,
