Brown Sugar continues to look at me warily, but leans in and scarfs up the carrot, munching away at it. She’s a Quarter Horse, favored breed of cowboys, and under normal circumstances, a horse like her shouldn’t be here. But Brown Sugar was worked hard as a barrel racer on the amateur rodeo circuit even thoughshe didn’t enjoy it all that much. Eventually, she got so nervous that she stopped wanting to enter the arena, and panicked whenever she saw it.
Beau knows her owners because they have a few other horses he looks after, and when they told him that they had no idea how to handle her or train her out of her anxiety, he offered to help. Helping, in reality, meant buying her off of them, but he just couldn’t stand the idea of her being forced to run another barrel if she didn’t want to. My brother is a grump, but a soft hearted one.
And so am I. We can’t exactly afford to take on another horse at the moment, but if there’s one thing my brother and I always agree on it’s that we’d both rather go hungry than let a horse in need suffer.
I place another carrot round on the top of the stall, but get a bit closer this time. For the moment, all I want to do is get Brown Sugar used to my presence. So I stand by her stall and tell her about my day, talking until I see the tension in her face ease, and she goes back to her hay.
I have deep respect for the barrel racers who get it right. It takes a skilled rider who really knows their horse to be good at such a difficult sport. But there’s always the odd rider who resorts to frequent whipping and kicking, and their horses can end up like Brown Sugar: too anxious to do much of anything at all. My job is to retrain her, to find out what she likes to do, and then find someone to adopt her and give her a permanent home.
“I will see you tomorrow,” I say, and reach out and scratch her neck, which she seems fine with, thankfully.
I head back through the stable and out into the yard beyond, where I find Tabitha, one of the barn cats, perched on a fence. She hops off and saunters over to me, weaving her way through my legs as I walk.
“One of these days someone is going to trip over you and land right on top of you, Tab,” I say.
She meows up at me as if she understands, but continues brushing up against me. It’s nearly dusk, and the sun is going down, painting the fields around me in gold. In the distance, the mountains loom large and hazy, dark purple against the sky.
This is a view that has never gotten old, not once in my entire life.
Because that’s how long I’ve lived in Star Mountain. I was born here, and grew up helping my grandparents with the horses, working my way up from mucking stalls and grooming, to doing groundwork and training. Our grandparents died two years ago, and Beau and I took over the rescue together.
It’s hard not to miss them every time I walk through the door of their house, as I’m doing right now, the screen door swinging and clanging shut behind me. It’s hard not to think of Grammy’s hands working swiftly as her knitting needles clacked together when I walk into the living room and see the throw she made. It’s harder, even still, not to think about Gramps’s cooking when I walk into the kitchen and smell it.
All of my brother’s recipes are ones that our grandparents taught him, and tonight Beau is making cornbread, beans, and pulled pork sliders. He’s standing over the stove, stirring the beans and chatting with Tomás, who is basically family at this point. So is Jenny, and I expect that her and her three-year-old daughter Lila will be making an appearance at dinner soon.
“So, I heard your favorite person is coming here,” Tomás says as soon as he sees me.
“What do you mean?” I ask, playing it cool because there’s no way Tomás knows how much I hate Nathan. The only person who knows that is Beau. And Winnie, my best friend.
“You know, Nate Booth. Your nemesis.” Tomás snags a piece of pork from the cutting board where Beau is shredding it, not caring about the dagger eyes my brother gives him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Nathan and I have only interacted a few times.”
“Yeah but he must have left quite the impression.” He raises a brow at me.
I give Tomás a quizzical look.
“I saw the magazine on your desk, Candice,” he says, smirking.
“What magazine?” My brother asks, now intrigued by the conversation.
“It was nothing,” I snap. I move over to the fridge and dig around until I find an open container of jackfruit.
“It was a copy of Western Horsewoman,” Tomás says. “And Nate was on the cover. Flannel shirt open, abs for miles, his trademark smile pasted on his face. Someone had drawn Xs over his eyes and devil horns on top of his cowboy hat.”
“Well that someone wasn’t me,” I say, because there’s no way in hell I’m owning up to it. It was juvenile, but I just couldn’t stand the smug look on his face staring up at me every time I picked up the damn thing. I’ve been reading Western Horsewoman since I was fifteen, and I never thought I’d see the day they had a male cover model. But Nathan Booth is the biggest name in Western riding right now and I’m sure they happily made an exception for him. I bet they sold more copies of that issue than any other, too.
“Really, Candice?” Beau shakes his head. “You’re not twelve.”
I stick my tongue out at him just to prove that sometimes I still am. I take the jackfruit out of the package and grab a pan, nudging Beau out of the way with my hip.
“I can’t believe you eat that shit over Beau’s pulled pork,” Tomás says, shaking his head. “I’ll never understand it.”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “And you’re lucky Beau still eats meat otherwise you’d be eating jackfruit and veggie burgers along with me. Because I don’t see you cooking, Tomás, do I?”
“Damn, Candice, settle down.”
“You’re just provoking her, and you know it,” Beau says, ever the mediator.
