Page 21 of Adored

“Is he okay?” Poe asked. When a horse laid down, it was rarely a good thing. In this case, seeing Diablo down was alarming.

Gamble glanced over.

“I think he’s saying goodbye to someone he loved,” he admitted, understanding grief.

He’d gone to his child’s grave and laid on it much like this before The Hunters brought him back to save him.

“He misses Hemmingway.”

Poe sat beside the horse, and put his hand by his nose to comfort him. When Hemmingway died, it took time to get his remains returned from war. When they got him back, they immediately buried him.

No one opened the casket.

No one said goodbye the proper way that was needed to heal, and that meant the animals didn’t grieve either. Diablo never got to say goodbye.

“I miss him too, Diablo. I miss him every day of my life, so I know how you feel. Sometimes, I forget that I’ll never see him again. There are times I walk past a mirror, and I don’t see me. I see him. I used to just know when he was going to call me. Now, I never get that feeling anymore.”

Gamble let them have their moment.

They both needed it.

The tombstone was still white while all the others had a green patina from age. Mother Nature had not aged it in the three years.

Well, not that much.

The big horse rolled over the flowers that had been planted there likely by Poe’s parents.

In the upper part of the marble cross hung the one thing that Gamble understood.

The Victoria Cross, the highest military honor in the UK, was there as a reminder of Hemmingway being a war hero.

Oh, and they didn’t know the half of it.

It had been set into the marble to show all who came here that Hemmingway wasn’t just a soldier.

He was an exemplary hero.

Diablo laid there, chuffing and snorting, and it sounded like mourning to the two men.

Gamble sat beside him, and ran his hands over his horse.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to say goodbye, Diablo. You too, Poe. I wish I could give you that,” he admitted.

Poe was honest.

“We’re getting to say goodbye now,” he offered. “I wouldn’t have wanted to see him, Gamble, Mate. He wouldn’t have looked like himself.”

No, he wouldn’t have.

“It was better this way,” Poe added. “We got to say goodbye now.”

Wasn’t that the truth?

“That’s all that matters. Hemmingway knows and is around. How could he not be?” Gamble asked. “He left his twin and his horse behind. I know I would haunt this place to see a brother again.”

Poe wiped his eyes, and they sat there in silence. He stared at the stone and thought about his brother. There was a hole in his life, and it was from Hemmingway’s death.

It would always be there.