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That was Mom, perceptive as hell, and at the most inconvenient times. “When we get home,” he muttered, hoping she’d let it go until then.
“All right,” she said after a minute. “You’ve earned that much, after rescuing Britt.”
Rescuing. Right. Was it still rescuing when you had quite possibly caused the disaster in the first place?
He spent more time than usual when he got back to the barn and tended to Trey. Stalling, maybe. But not really, because the horse deserved it. He unsaddled him and traded the bridle for a halter, then, figuring the horse had had enough of being wet just as he had, he skipped the bath, cleaned the mud and dirt off of his coat and out of his hooves, then went to a long, hard rubdown.
“You earned it, buddy,” he said to the big bay as he worked. “You did it all, and perfectly.”
“It certainly sounds like he did just that.”
Mom’s voice came from behind him; she’d done her own routine with her Seven and put him back in his stall. Now, with Quinta sitting at her feet, he told her the basics of what had happened after he’d found Roth, focusing on the horse’s part in it.
“Oh,” she said as she walked around to the horse’s head, stroked his muzzle, and crooned to him, “you are just the best ever, aren’t you?”
Trey’s head bobbed, as if nodding, and she laughed.
She waited until he was done and had Trey back in his stall. Care for the animals always came first. It was what she believed and what she’d taught them all their lives.
But when he slid the latch on the stall door home and turned around to see her standing there, waiting, he knew this was it.
“I think…it might have been my fault,” he said.
“The drone that crashed.”
He should have known she’d figure it out. She was the smartest woman he’d ever known, when it came to figuring people out.
“I wasn’t harassing her, Mom, I swear I wasn’t.” He let out a compressed breath. “I know how it sounds, but honestly, I just…lost track for a minute or two. At the wrong time. In the wrong place. It hit the ridge. Too close to her. I think. I found her before I found it, so I don’t know for sure where it was. But it could have been over the line.” His jaw tightened. “It was just a combo of things. A perfect storm.”
“You, the precisionist, lost track?”
“I was…thinking.”
“About what?” she asked. As if there was something that could make up for what had happened.
He grimaced, lowering his gaze to his muddy boots. “Roth,” he admitted. “About what you told me, her big plans, for the future. I never knew she…thought like that.”
“You thought she was still that little girl who always annoyed you?”
“I guess,” he admitted, feeling more the fool than ever.
“Well, that fits. She apparently thought the same about you. Rob said she was stunned to find out about the business you’ve built with those drones, about the weather station, and that you wrote the ranch software the Roths use.”
“Yeah, well,” he muttered, studying his boots again. They were going to take a lot of cleaning, and before he ever set foot in the house, or she’d be on him about that, too.
And after a moment, sounding a bit exasperated, she said, “I swear, you two. Sometimes I wonder.” He didn’t know what to say to that, so said nothing. He was fairly sure he didn’t want to know what she wondered. “And then sometimes,” she added in an entirely different tone, “I’m certain.”
His brow furrowed, and he looked at her. He couldn’t read her this time, had no idea what that had been supposed to mean. “About what?”
“Never mind. Let’s think about how we can help.”
His mind snapped back to his earlier thought. “I have an idea, but I need to do some research. And it might take some equipment. I need to call the hospital, talk to the orthopedics people.”
His mother smiled knowingly. “You do that. But think about something more immediate and practical, too. When she gets home, what’s going to drive her the craziest?”
Besides not being able to get back at me? He thought for another moment. “I guess…not being able to ride, or maybe even see to her horses for a while.”
“Exactly,” Mom said as if she was proud he’d seen that. “So, what can you do to help with that problem?”
