“No!” Ashlyn declared. “He’s been better than a therapist for me since I got here. He needs to be put in the ground out by the half-mile marker. He loved his afternoon walks, so he should be buried out there.”
“Do you know how big a hole you’d have to dig to bury a horse?” Elijah asked. “It’s six feet down even for a small human.”
“What’s going on in here?” Keelan yelled from the door. “Is everyone all right?”
“No, we’re not,” Ashlyn wailed in a high-pitched voice.
Keelan didn’t even stop at the stall gate but fell on her knees beside the horse and hugged him like a long-lost brother. Pretty soon the other girls had gathered round the dead animal, and all of them were sobbing.
Jayden let go of Ashlyn and carefully made her way out of the stall, leaving the girls to console one another. Elijah laced his fingers in hers and led her back to the main part of the barn. He sat down on a bale of hay and pulled her down beside him.
“Those kids have no idea how much a horse weighs,” he whispered.
“Can you use any of the farm equipment to get him up on the hay trailer?” she asked. “They need to bury him and have a funeral. They’ll have closure for something deeper and entirely different than what they’re feeling for Dynamite.”
What about you? the voice in her head asked. What would bring you closure for your parents, and for the way your mother treated you at the end of her life? You would have been much happier to have had the home than the small savings account, but Skyler got the house. Nothing was sentimental to her, and now it’s all gone.
“Are you all right?” His voice cracked.
She wiped a tear from her cheek. “No, I’m not. I used to come out here at night when I couldn’t sleep and talk to that horse. I don’t want to see him taken off to a landfill or wherever dead horses go.”
“I’ve talked to Dynamite pretty regularly for the past two years,” Elijah admitted. “The vet came out about a month ago and wanted to put him down, but I couldn’t let him. I wanted the old boy to die when he was supposed to.”
“From everyone’s reactions, I think he must have been a therapist to a lot of us,” she whispered.
“Oh, honey, I would have never gotten this far without Dynamite. He helped me so much when I just couldn’t get past the idea that if I’d done something better, my friends wouldn’t have died,” Elijah said. “I flew the helicopter to bring six of them home after they’d been attacked. Three made it; three didn’t. I’ve gone over the whole day so many times that it’s burned into my brain, and I keep thinking that if I’d done something different . . . they were my family, my brothers—no, that’s not right. They were closer than even a brother, and just like that they were gone. Dynamite listened to me work through some of that.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jayden said. “I talked to him about this thing between me and Skyler. I stayed with Mama and yet she made Skyler executor over everything. Skyler got the house. I got a small savings account that Mama had inherited after Gramps died. I still feel like it was the wrong decision. I would have kept the house forever.”
“Guess Dynamite will take a lot of secrets with him, including mine and yours.” Elijah sighed. “And I’m sorry, but we don’t have a backhoe around here to dig a hole big enough for a horse.” Elijah slipped an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer to his side.
“If you can get him out to the half-mile marker, the girls will take care of the rest,” Jayden said. “This will teach them teamwork more than anything they’ve done yet, and it will help them heal.”
Elijah gave her a gentle hug. “All right. I’ll trust you to know what you’re doing. Thank goodness for the rain yesterday. At least the ground won’t be as hard as a rock, like usual.”
“Even if it was, they would find a way to dig a grave. I should go check on them,” she said, but she didn’t want to leave the comfort of his arms.
“I’ll go with you.” He dropped his arm and stood up.
When she got to her feet, he slipped his arm around her shoulders again. “I’m glad