That man! I swear, he hasn’t had a warm meal in a decade. One of these days, I’m going to drop his blasted phone right in the soup bowl.”
Maddie giggled at the image and Sue and Jim both smiled at her. Her daughter had a way of charming everyone, even crusty old ranchers.
“He’ll put his phone away quick enough when he has the chance to get out again with the horses,” Jim said.
Maddie inhaled sharply. “You have horses here?”
Oh, dear. Here we go, Eliza thought.
“Why, we certainly do!” Jim said proudly. “Six of the prettiest horses you could ever meet, including a little pony that’s just the right size for a girl such as yourself.”
“Oh. Mama, did you hear?”
“I did.”
Maddie was a little obsessed with all things equine. Okay, a lot obsessed. Her daughter loved horses with a deep and abiding passion.
Eliza didn’t quite comprehend the depth of the obsession since her daughter had never actually ridden a horse and had only seen a few closer than out the car window. Yet Maddie drew horse pictures, she had horse toys, her favorite pajamas featured horses and every time they went to the library, she wanted to check out books about horses. She even pretended she was a horse sometimes and made clippy-cloppy noises when she walked and her imaginary friend—who seemed to appear and disappear in their lives with rather alarming and random frequency—was a black horse named Bob, for reasons Eliza had yet to determine.
“Do you think I could see the horses?” Maddie asked, as if the prospect was far more exciting than even meeting Santa Claus on Christmas morning.
“Don’t see why not,” Jim answered. “Maybe you could even help me feed them in the morning.”
“Oh, could I?” she asked Eliza with eager entreaty.
“We’ll have to see.”
It was her traditional maternal nonanswer but Maddie barely heard her, too enthralled by the idea that Snow Angel Cove had six horses, including a girl-sized pony.
“I have a horse,” Maddie declared. “His name is Bob.”
“Is it?” Jim looked interested.
“Yes. He’s black with a white nose and he can gallop as fast as the wind. He says hello.”
The couple exchanged surprised looks. “He...says hello?” Sue asked.
“Yes. Didn’t you hear him? He’s right next to you.”
They both looked baffled, until Eliza mouthed imaginary friend.
She had been concerned enough about Bob to speak with the unit mental health counselor during Maddie’s last hospital stay, who assured her imaginary friends were both normal and healthy for children, whether or not they had chronic conditions.
“I guess I must have missed him,” Jim said. “Black with a white spot, you say. That must be why. He blends right into the dark window there.”
“He likes it here. So do I.”
“Maybe he’ll like making new friends with the other horses tomorrow,” Jim suggested.
“He will. He loves new friends. I do, too.” She beamed at the grizzled man, who seemed to visibly melt. People tended to do that around Maddie.
An alarm suddenly went off on her phone. She and Maddie both knew what it was without looking and her daughter gave a little groan.
“Do I have to?”
“You know you do, honey.”
Eliza reached into her purse to find the four medications Maddie took twice a day, morning and evening. She shook them out and set them on her daughter’s plate. Maddie sighed but obediently picked up her water glass and swallowed them, one after the other, with the ease of long practice.
“My goodness,” Sue exclaimed. “What’s all this?”
“I have to take pills for my heart,” Maddie said. “It doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to and the pills help it, plus I have a little machine in there to make sure it beats the right way. When I get bigger, I might get a new heart like my friend Paige.”
“Oh. Oh, my.”
Jim and Sue both looked astonished. It wasn’t an uncommon reaction. Maddie seemed healthy most of the time. She was healthy, just like other children—to look at her, it would be impossible to know she had a rare, idiopathic form of juvenile cardiomyopathy, a thickening of the lining of her heart.
For the past few years, her condition was wonderfully stable. While the disease was incurable, the pacemaker helped steady her irregular heartbeats and the medications she took slowed the progression of her condition but she would probably need to be put on the heart transplant list before she hit puberty.
The harsh reality constantly prowled through Eliza’s thoughts like a huge, voracious beast that never slept. With the help of her specialists in Boise, Maddie was a happy, well-adjusted girl who was hardly bothered by the fact that she lived with such a serious condition.
Eliza intended to keep it that way.
“She has a heart condition,” she explained. “It required the implantation of a pacemaker when she was two. But she’s doing very well now.”
“I’m a trouper. That’s what my mom calls me.”
“Sounds like that’s exactly what you are.”
She looked up at the voice to find Aidan had returned to the dining area while her attention was focused on Maddie. He watched them with an inscrutable expression.
“You’re a trouper with a horse named Bob,” Jim said.
“Bob comes to the hospital with me when I have to stay there. He likes the nurses a lot, especially when they feed him candy.”
“Well, sure. Who wouldn’t?” Aidan said as he sat back down.
Eliza shifted, uncomfortable that he had overheard the discussion for reasons she couldn’t have explained. She was, no doubt, already an object of pity to him, the widow who had just lost her job and had been hit by a car within five minutes. Throw in a daughter with a serious heart condition and it was a wonder she didn’t have her own personal violin trio following her around playing mournful tunes.
This man had everything he could ever want or need. He was insanely wealthy, powerful, successful. She, on the other hand, probably presented a pathetic picture to him and she hated it.
Aidan Caine, of all people. Why did her path have to cross with him?
She had nurtured a completely unreasonable resentment toward him and Caine Tech since Trent’s death. Logically, she knew he wasn’t to blame directly. He hadn’t even been at the fateful meeting that afternoon.
Her emotions weren’t
