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“Hi,” the boy said neutrally.
“Hi,” Kaitlyn said, in much the same tone. “Nice to meet you.”
The boy looked unconvinced. He nodded toward Mom. “She told me you were here. You’re a photographer for this magazine thing, right?”
“I am.”
He looked at Latte, then back at her. “Newbie, huh?”
“Very,” she admitted, patting the horse’s neck. “I’m lucky you have such a sweetheart here for people like me, who love horses but have never been on one.”
“He’s a good horse to learn on,” Lucas said. Then, looking back at her, he said, “If you love them, how come you never learned to ride?”
Ry saw the flash of pain in her eyes before she lowered them, and he remembered what she said about the lessons that never happened. “Because the same kind of thing derailed her life as yours, only she was even younger,” he said gently.
Her head snapped up, his gaze shifted back to her, and he saw the surprise flash in her eyes. Which were, he noted now, nearly the same deep brown as Lucas’s, but more striking with the golden flecks. Belatedly he wondered if she was upset that he’d answered for her, when she’d seemed unwilling to answer herself. But then she gave him a fleeting version of that smile, this one touched with the remembered pain. Maybe he was reading too much into a simple expression, but he thought there might be a touch of “thank you” in there, too.
“Your parents are dead, too?” Lucas asked, the ferocity that had always been in his voice when he’d spoken of them when he’d first arrived missing now. He’d progressed to where he could at least talk about them, and them being gone, without pulling back into the hole Keller had coaxed him out of.
“My father is,” Kaitlyn said, her tone just as level as she met the boy’s gaze. “Thanks to my mother, who set our house on fire because she was drunk.”
Lucas’s brows shot upward. Ry, startled himself that she’d said it so openly to this boy she’d just met, could see him processing. Mom, he noticed, still hadn’t spoken, but was just letting the boy think it through, as she had so often for them. But then her gaze shifted to him, and he saw that too familiar expression that told him she’d seen something more here, and that that maternal mind-reading had happened again. What she’d found this time, he had no idea.
“Wow. That sucks,” the kid finally said. “What happened to you?”
“Foster care for a while.” Lucas grimaced. “Yeah. And they weren’t as nice as the Raffertys. You landed in clover.”
She said it with a smile. The boy glanced at Mom, then at Ry, then looked back to Kaitlyn. “Yeah, I did,” he said, a little embarrassed-sounding. “What happened after that?”
“They gave me back to her.”
“Wow,” he said again. “Did you hate her?”
Something about his innocent tone took any edge out of the question. Ry stayed quiet. This seemed important somehow, that Lucas communicate with someone who’d been through something similar to his own tragedy. And he had the sudden thought that that was exactly why Kaitlyn had done it. She had bared her own pain for Lucas’s sake. A boy she didn’t even know.
“I did,” Kaitlyn admitted honestly. “Sometimes, when she gets drunk again, I still do.”
Lucas’s brows shot up again, and he drew back a little. “She still gets drunk? After that?”
Kaitlyn mouth twisted slightly. “She does.”
“Man, that really, really sucks,” the boy said, and there was a world of empathy in his voice. Then, unexpectedly, he looked at Ry and said, “I’ll take care of Latte and Flyer if you want. Untack ’em and brush ’em and all.”
“That would be great, buddy. Thanks,” Ry said. He watched the boy take the reins and walk the two horses toward the big barn. Then he looked back at Kaitlyn. Somehow, in the memories of similar misery, these two had made a connection.
“That,” his mother said, speaking for the first time, and to Kaitlyn, “was a very kind and generous thing to do. I know how hard sharing your pain can be.”
Kaitlyn only shrugged, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Don’t belittle it,” Ry said. “You reached him. He wouldn’t have offered to do that work with the horses if you hadn’t.”
“I…it just seemed best to be honest. Like they weren’t with me, a lot of the time.”
“It was best,” his mother said briskly. “But you’d be amazed at how many people wouldn’t have known it or done what you did. Now, come on in, and have some coffee while I start dinner. We eat early on school nights. I swear, the homework they pile on that boy…”
She turned and went inside, leaving them little choice but to follow. Ry held the door for her and they followed obediently. His mother looked back over her shoulder at him as she started toward the kitchen.
“You do know what day tomorrow is, right?”
