At the center of the field, something moved, a brown shape staying low behind swaying stalks of prairie sandreed. As Kris watched, the object rose up above the grass’s splintered tops, and shining black eyes stared out at her. Dark nostrils flared as the creature gave a curious snort.
A horse. A jagged white line ran from just above its gray nose and narrowed as it cut across the animal’s tan forehead, coming to a point at the center of its forehead like a lightning bolt. A pale white mane billowed up behind its eyes and fluttered gracefully down its muscular neck.
The horse snorted again, but it did not look away.
“Mrs …”
The voice, unexpectedly close, made Kris flinch.
Camilla had returned. Behind her, the second stall was empty. Jesse was gone.
“Barlow,” Kris managed to say, hoping she didn’t look as startled as she felt. “Kris Barlow.”
“Kris, you’re in luck. My husband thinks there’s a tire out back that’s a perfect match. Shouldn’t be more than an hour and we’ll have you all fixed up. He just …” Her voice trailed off. She glanced down, either out of frustration or embarrassment or some combination of the two. “He needs to feed the horse first.”
“That’s fine,” Kris said.
Camilla was still staring at the ground, her sharp words spoken into her chest. “I told him I could do it, but he insists … He likes to be the one.”
“Really, it’s okay,” Kris assured her.
Camilla looked up, and her thin lips flattened into a small, appreciative smile. “Thank you.”
Movement caught Kris’s attention. The horse was trotting away through a sea of yellow grass, toward the wood-shingled roof of a nearby stall.
“Quarter horse?” Kris asked.
Camilla tilted her head curiously. “Yeah. You have one of your own?”
“No. No, I’m a vet. Back …”
Don’t say “home,” she warned herself. This is home until the end of the summer. She quickly changed the subject. “Boy or girl?”
“Boy. His name’s Cap. Short for ‘Cappuccino.’ My daughter, she thought his face looked like the foam on the top of a cappuccino, you know, with the white streak against the tan.”
“Cap,” Kris said, testing it out. “It’s perfect. Your daughter must love him very much.”
Camilla gave a stiff, affirmative nod, but she said nothing. Her brown eyes were staring down once more.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LOOSE GRAVEL SHIFTED under Kris’s shoes as she and Sadie made their way down the Auto Barn’s long drive toward Center Street. Flanking them on each side were rows of eighty-foot maple trees stretching into the cloudless blue sky like billowing green smoke.
Even though it was only ten in the morning, the day was hot and getting hotter, the perfect excuse to indulge in some pre-lunch ice cream. But the thought of returning to the Dairy Godmother and that odd young woman with the sunken eyes made Kris shiver despite the heat.
“You ought to keep an eye on a little girl like that in this town.”
No, there had to be a better place to pass the time.
Suddenly a cluster of concrete and gravel went bouncing ahead of Kris.
She looked over at Sadie, who was trudging along beside her. With every other step, the little girl let the toe of her Converse dig into the uneven ground, unearthing a clump of stones and sending them skittering across the cracked, buckling drive. Her arms were folded across her chest, her eyebrows pinched into a sharp V, her ruby lips pursed in a childish pout.
“We had to do this at some point,” Kris said. “We couldn’t keep driving on the spare. It wasn’t safe.”
Sadie said nothing. She kicked at the ground, and a ball of dirt and gravel exploded into shrapnel around the toe of her shoe.
Like most eight-years-olds, Sadie had a fairly basic range of interests. She liked plush toys, cartoons, coloring, YouTube videos of funny animals, books—
An image flickered to life across the dark screen of Kris’s mind, a memory of walls lined with the spines of books, of a strange little house on a street corner where the books lived.
“I know what we can do,” Kris said with a smile.
Despite the deep shadows cast by the monstrous maple trees, Sadie’s face brightened.
The Book Nook was another block down, on the corner of Center and Willow. Housed in what was once a residential home, the bookstore stood out from the rows of uniform 1950s-era buildings that gave the rest of downtown its quaint consistency. Whoever had claimed this land first, whoever had built this structure as a home, they were long gone, and the inside of the two-story Victorian had been invaded in the name of commerce. Each room had been cleared of furniture; walnut shelves lined each wall, filled end to end and top to bottom with a combination of new and used books.
The front room was devoted to Fiction. Tabs of white paper displayed the subcategories of each section in an elegant, handwritten script: Mystery; Romance; Western; Science Fiction; Historical Fiction. Past this, an archway opened to a living room with scuffed wooden floors partially covered by a decorative rug. This room was evenly split between Classic Literature and Nonfiction. A sign taped to the wall beside the entrance to a short hallway read: Children’s Section in Back Room.
They wiped their feet on the front doormat, even though it had not rained a drop since they’d arrived in town and the sidewalks were pristine, free of even a single orphaned cigarette butt.
“Can I get a book, Mommy?” Sadie asked as Kris began to scan the shelves in the front room. There was the rare vibration of excitement in the girl’s voice.
“Yeah, you can get something,” Kris assured her.
She followed Sadie through the archway and into the living room. It was bright and warm thanks to a large half-moon window over the tops of three bookshelves. Dusty shafts of sunlight streamed in through the beveled glass.
She noticed the man behind the counter a split second before he welcomed them with a cheery “Hello!” He was in his sixties, dressed in what she could only think to call a “spiffy” plaid sweater vest and striped button-down shirt. A thick wave of silver hair curved down over the purple frames of his round eyeglasses. He was very tall and very thin. What muscle there was on his body clung tightly to his bones like the dry meat of an overcooked chicken wing.
“Hello, hello, hello,” he sang as he slipped out from behind the ornately carved credenza that served as a front counter. “Welcome to the Book Nook, and, don’t tell me, you two are sisters, am I right?”
Sadie glanced back at her mother, confused, and Kris shot her a knowing smile that said, He’s joking.
The man crouched down so that he was level with Sadie’s wide green eyes. “Are you her big sister?”
Sadie gave her head an unsure shake.
The man took a moment to study the little girl’s face. Finally, he said, “How old are you? Twenty-five? Thirty?”
“She’s eight,” Kris answered for Sadie.
“Well,” the man said, “in that case, there is a whole room down that hall with books just for you.” He pointed to the short hallway leading to the back room. “Do you like to read?”
Sadie nodded.
“What do you like to read?”