Part 4
“Then you won’t,” Noah said.
Martin set the block down. He turned to Noah while Abby kept one hand under Finch’s mane.
“You told me she might be riding by summer.”
“I did. I should have called you when it became clear I couldn’t give you that date.”
“Is the horse unsafe?”
“I don’t know what he’ll do when she puts her weight in the stirrup,” Noah said. “I’m not asking Abby to find out for us today.”
Martin looked at his daughter. “You said you missed riding.”
“I do.” She glanced at Finch, then back at him. “I don’t want to make him stand there because we brought the block.”
Martin had brought her to Old Mill Road through rain and summer heat. Noah could see why he wanted to take home something more than notes about the ground work. He also saw Abby waiting for her father to hear the answer she had given.
Martin said he would take Finch home. He had paid for training he expected to lead to riding, and he wanted the unused part of his advance returned. Noah went to the kitchen and wrote the check. Then he brought out his notes, marking the exercises Abby and Finch had done together and the point at which both had become uneasy.
Abby asked if she could finish brushing Finch before they loaded him. Martin said yes. He and Noah waited outside the pen until she was ready. Finch walked into the trailer with Martin leading him; the mounting block stayed in the truck bed.
When they were gone, Noah carried the block to the shed. He had made Saturday harder by letting Martin hold on to his summer estimate for too long. Abby had said what she needed before he put her on the horse.
Evelyn was at the kitchen table when he came in. Noah put the refund receipt beside her ledger.
“We’ll have to wait on the roof,” he said.
“The roofer can do the worst section first.” She found his entry for Finch and read the spring intake date. “When somebody asks you for a date again, I want the answer in here to match what you told them.”
“It will.”
She did not tell him the lost fee was unimportant. On Monday she called the roofer and arranged the smaller repair. Noah took fewer client horses that fall so the ones already at Old Mill Road had room in the paddocks and time in his day. When a caller wanted a gelding ready for a holiday visit, he described the work he could begin and let the caller decide whether to wait.
A letter came from Abby in February. She had drawn Finch with his head over their fence. She wrote that she brushed him after school and sometimes walked him past a mounting block without going near the saddle. She had not ridden him. Her father was helping her find someone nearby to continue the work. Noah put the letter in his notebook, where her observations would be easy to find if she called.
By the next spring the tax payments were current. Evelyn still worked at the diner three mornings a week. The south roof had new boards over the stalls they used, though rain still found an empty one at the end. Leon brought Fern over for a few days while he repaired a fence on his place. Her shoulder scar showed white beneath her summer coat, and she pushed Copper away from the hay net as if she had never left.
One Saturday a woman arrived with a small gelding who would not enter her barn. Someone had told her Noah could make him go in. Evelyn showed her where to park and brought her to the fence. Noah asked the woman to lead the horse across the yard so he could see what happened.
Near the barn, the gelding slowed and looked into the dark aisle. Noah remembered his hand tightening on Copper’s rope at a doorway. He asked the woman to stop and tell him what she had seen at home. While she spoke, he went around the barn and unlatched the far door.
The gelding was still outside when she finished. Noah left him beside her, with the yard behind them and daylight visible through the barn.