Flamethrower - Maggie Estep [32]
She found herself standing by her car. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to tell Ed she’d actually driven. He’d bought her that car. Back when it had seemed that they had a long and lovely future before them.
Ruby got into her car, popped a Fireball, and stared blankly ahead. She thought about selling the car. Taking the money and moving to France. Starting over in some little town the Tour de France passed through. But she didn’t speak French.
Her head started hurting. She rolled down the window, spat the Fireball out, then took a bottle of Advil from her backpack, popped two pills dry, then put the car in drive, and headed for The Hole.
11. FALLING
Lorna, a tiny woman who boarded her palomino at the barn next to Coleman’s, was trotting her horse in figure eights on the dirt road ahead. Ruby drove slowly so as not to spook horse or rider. She parked in front of Coleman’s stable gate and got out, nodding at Lorna. The small woman nodded back. Ruby had never said more than two words to Lorna. Not that she disliked her. There’d never been a reason for conversation. Ruby wondered about that now. About all the missed interactions and conversations in a lifetime. For all she knew, Lorna was the most engaging and brilliant woman on the face of the earth. And Ruby would go through life without finding this out all because she didn’t have the energy to talk to the woman.
Ruby unlocked the stable gate and greeted Honey and Pokey, who were camped out there, sunning themselves. Both pits lifted their large heads, stared at Ruby, then put their heads back down. Ruby would hate to be an intruder coming face to face with those two. They were wonderful dogs to the humans they knew but would kill anyone with bad intentions.
Ruby stopped in the tack room to get peppermints from her trunk. Feeding candy to a horse was a cheerful, optimistic thing to do. But Ruby still felt like dying.
Locksley, the barn cat, jumped down from the shelf he’d been sleeping on. He was covered in dust and had cobwebs in his whiskers. He violently bumped his head against Ruby’s calves until she got out one of the cans of emergency tuna she kept in her trunk and fed him.
As she walked toward Jack Valentine, the horse shook his head and made faces at Ruby. She gave him his peppermint and watched the effects take hold. His ears were in neutral and his eyes went to half-mast as he rolled the candy over his tongue. He was ecstatic. After he’d crunched the mint and swallowed it all, Ruby buried her face against his neck. The horse stood perfectly still as she relaxed enough to let tears come to her eyes. She’d needed a good cry for months. It wasn’t quite the soul-purifying wail she could have used, but it helped. Something shook loose.
Ruby put Jack’s halter on and brought him into the aisle. She put him on the cross-ties and contemplated him for a few moments. He was big. And she was going to ride him.
As she started putting tack on him, Jack’s ears flicked back and forth, searching out information. By the time Ruby led him out of the barn, he was on his toes, prancing toward a nonexistent starting gate.
Jack shook his head once when Ruby tightened the girth. She lowered the left stirrup and took a deep breath. She had no idea what Jack would do when she got up on his back. Horses were funny that way. You could have an excellent relationship on the ground, but it was a different story once you climbed aboard.
Ruby put her foot in the stirrup and hoisted herself up. Jack darted to the right a little, but Ruby had expected this. She quickly shortened the reins and took hold of him. She asked him to walk forward. They circled the paddock with Jack looking at everything intently, as though he’d never seen any of it before. Ruby was brittle with tension and it was transmitting to Jack, flowing through him, then coming back at her amplified tenfold. After a few minutes of walking, both horse and rider were stiff with anxiety. Ruby asked him to come to a halt so she could dismount. This was definitely enough for one day.
At this exact moment, one of the neighborhood