Broken Horse

Chapter 22 - Jacey

The yard was quiet. Far too quiet. As I headed out to the barn, the wind had caught the metal clanking it. The gate. The gate was open. It was the one gate that I checked ten times before I had gone in for dinner. That broken horse was gone. Long gone.

I held the flashlight up, but there was no horse there. It was the one horse Sergei brought back to me, the last thing that he gave to me. I couldn't let him go. I needed that horse as a reminder for  what I had done to such a beautiful man. The man, who I single handily crushed and needed to let go of.  

Each day I walked past the corral, I saw him there. His head hanging low and his feed untouched. And I couldn't help but see the man I loved inside that fencing. I destroyed him by forgetting who I was supposed to be.

I never should have switched in the first place. I knew better. I knew I would never be able to go through with it. I wasn't the one who mastered the switching of twins. That was my twin, even when I wasn't involved. She's pretended to be me more than anything. Getting out of sticky situations, was her excuse. And it was an excuse that I couldn't even use.

I circled around the fence line wondering where the large black horse was, but Cobalt wasn't even in the yard. He was gone, too. Both of them ran away from me, just like Sergei did. And I didn't blame any of them. Not one bit. I would run away from me too, if I had the chance.

Midnight and I was out there wearing my heavy sweatpants and my thick jacket. John should be awake and he would help me. It was Saturday night and only midnight. What else did he have to do? He's been hanging around the farm more, and pulling away from his stream of womanizing.  

With my fingers going numb, I typed a message asking him for some help. When I sent it, I curled my fingers around it, and held it tightly hoping for a reply. Getting into the barn, I looked at the old horse, one that John had trained and purchased from my father a while back. She would be fine to ride and the doctor said that I could as long as I was careful. And Cobalt would be at our spot, where he liked to go and hide out. There wasn't a way down there in my truck and the vehicle would make the new horse run more.

 John's mare was calm as I saddled her and buttoned up my coat. It wasn't that cold, but being pregnant made me cold all the time. At least with the ending of winter, it was thawing and I could see the tracks that were in the muddy earth.

I lifted my left leg, but there was no way I was able to lift it high enough to slip it into the stirrup.; Not with the heaviness and cramping I've been having in my belly since Sergei walked out of my life. My belly was becoming a little more noticeable, but nothing that had screamed woman with a baby from the man that she had destroyed.

When Jacki and I were younger, and we hadn't been able to jump up from the ground to mount, we used hay bales to climb on. And that would be what I would have to do. And we always had the rectangles by the stall doors of the horses we kept inside at night. I just hand to nudge one over, just enough for me to step up on. Then, all I had to do was give the saddle a little tug and that mare would nuzzle right up to where I could just throw my leg over and slide onto her back.

My stomach cramped slightly as I used my knee to wiggle that bale over. I spread my hand over the protruding  bump, and rubbed  to help ease the cramp. It was normal to feel the cramping, mom told me when I asked her about it the other day. Normal, right? I just had to swallow it up, come to terms with the fact I ruined everything I had with Sergei, and move on with the business, as my dad insisted.

There wasn't a time throughout the day that I didn't think of Sergei; what he was doing, where he was, or how he was doing. He was right. I should have told him I switched in the first place, and in a way, I think he saw the differences on that first day. It would have been much easier if I did tell him when he mentioned it, when I was at his place talking after the death of his father. Or, even before we started anything, like when he started talking about me graduating and him waiting until then.