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“No. But we had a good time looking for it. And sometimes that’s the whole point.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SHE WAS STUCK on the cave adventure. Had been ever since it had happened. Hadn’t stopped thinking about it since Brody walked them back up to the house and said goodbye without coming back inside.
He’d shared things about his life. Dark things. Deep things. She didn’t know why. It made her want to know more.
Maybe it was something to do with him. Or maybe it was because this man, this stranger, seemed so much more interested in Benny than Carter had for a long time.
That thought immobilized her. She needed to get to her next appointment with Loralee, and she was frozen, standing there in the middle of the barn, completely undone by that realization.
She swallowed hard, then pressed forward. Loralee, a petite woman with dark hair, was standing in the center of the arena, waiting for Elizabeth.
“Good morning,” Elizabeth said brightly. “How did your conversation with your therapist go after our session yesterday?”
“Oh, it went well,” Loralee said, looking tentative. They had discussed what was going to happen today, and she had seemed nervous even as they walked through it.
Elizabeth knew that yesterday, she had done her session with Elizabeth, then had gone back to her cabin, to speak to her therapist, and then that she had been tasked with going and getting ingredients to make herself dinner. Whatever she wanted. And she wasn’t supposed to worry about anything. Whether or not someone else liked it, whether or not it was healthy, nothing.
She was just supposed to focus on pleasing herself.
“And how was your dinner?”
“Oh. I ended up... This is going to sound really stupid, but I couldn’t decide what I wanted. I was able to pick whatever I wanted, and I don’t know how to do that. I...had a salad.” She looked crestfallen.
“You don’t have to feel bad about that. You just have to try again tonight.”
“Maybe I need to make a short list before I go out.”
“It gives us something else to work on. Not your short list, but your confidence in your own desires.”
“That’s the thing. I don’t have any confidence in my own desires. My own desires landed me in my marriage.”
That grazed Elizabeth close to the bone. “Don’t be angry at yourself for that.” She shook her head. “It isn’t your fault that somebody took advantage of your feelings and lied to you about who they were.”
“So my therapist keeps telling me. But it’s a journey.”
“Understandable,” Elizabeth said.
“Okay. So, what exactly am I supposed to learn in this exercise?”
“You’re just going to... You’re going to bond with the horses. Gain confidence. Interacting with horses is a lot like interacting with other people. They pick up on your anxiety. And you need to build trust with them. Horses are prey, and they perceive us as predators.”
“But they’re... They’re huge.”
“Yes. That’s true. But they think that you might be a danger to them, and they pay very close attention to your emotional state.”
“So I have to be... Not nervous.”
“You’re not going to get it perfectly right the first time. That’s okay. One thing you don’t have to be here is perfect.”
She looked relieved to hear that. Absolutely and completely. And Elizabeth wondered how long she had spent walking on eggshells, being convinced that she had to be perfect. Being convinced that everything she did had to be a certain kind of perfect.
Elizabeth couldn’t fix everything. But hopefully she could give this woman her confidence back.
And who’s going to give you yours?
She brushed that right off. It wasn’t the same. She hadn’t been abused. She didn’t have any claim to that kind of trauma.
