I swallowed hard. I had already been hit with enough today without having this conversation.
I texted Emma, my phone out of sight beneath the table.
Are you okay?
No, but I need some time alone. Please, she responded.
Okay. Let me know when you are ready to see me again. I have things I want to say in person about tonight,I wrote back.
Okay.
“I don’t care about the will, Dad.”
“I know you don’t, not anymore. That’s exactly why you are ready to hear this. You and Emma will be fifty-fifty owners of the farm.”
He looked over to my step-mother and said, “You get a very large amount of money, but the land, it goes to the kids. I hope you can understand that.”
“I do,” she said, looking at him and then directly to me. “This place is your home, and I would never take it from you,” she said to me.
“Why?” I asked my father, not understanding this decision.
I wasn’t angry; I would gladly share anything I had with Emma, even this farm. But I needed to know why.
“It’s something we planned all along. Her parents helped me really change this place and made it special. I told them I would repay the favor.”
“Tell me about them,” I said, changing the course of conversation.
I wanted to know more about the two people who had cared for Emma when I didn’t have the emotional maturity. When I was too prideful to say sorry.
“They were amazing people. There is a reason she feels their loss so deeply.”
“How did it happen?” I asked.
He knew what I was referring to.
“It was raining hard that night, and winds had picked up. They had just rescued a horse and were going to bring it to the farm. They were going straight through a green light, when a drunk driver who couldn’t see through the storm slammed into their truck. The truck rolled, and the trailer flipped on its side. Items had been thrown from the other vehicle in the accident, including bottles of booze.”
“Emma wasn’t in the vehicle. If she had been, she wouldn’t have survived it. She was home that night because they were trying to make the horse a surprise for her.”
He wiped away a tear.
“The truck was smashed to bits. Her parents had died instantly. I got the call from the police that night. I called Rodrigo and left you with him, not that you even knew. This was late at night, and you were upstairs asleep.”
I swallowed. I wasn’t asleep. Through the window I had watched him come home with the trailer. I watched him unload Athena. I watched him walk into Emma’s trailer, and then a short time later a police officer entered. Both men had left that trailer crying.
“I got to the scene, to hook up the trailer and take the horse back here. The truck was almost unrecognizable. I hope you never have to stare into the blank, unstaring eyes of your friends, knowing that you would have to go home and tell their daughter what happened.”
I now had tears rolling down my cheeks. My father’s stare was far away as he spoke.
“That horse was so scared. I brought it home, and it took both Rodrigo and me to get her off the trailer into the stable. She almost killed him with a well-placed kick. I had to tell Emma what happened, and an officer came by shortly after to check in on us. I told her that her parents had gotten her one last gift and brought her to the stable to show her the horse. I was so scared we would have to put the horse down, that she would be too much of a danger to those around us. Emma approached the horse, and they locked eyes. They both soothed each other’s soul.”
“Athena,” I breathed out, already knowing the horse’s identity.
Now it all clicked. Athena was Emma’s lifeline. Athena soothed Emma’s soul like Emma had soothed mine.
“Athena,” he repeated while wiping away a tear.
That’s why Emma despised me for drunk driving. Why she looked so utterly destroyed when she stood out on the front lawn watching me after I crashed my truck into the fence. It’s why she sat in the stable, with Athena, during thunderstorms. It explained why Athena got worked up during them.
