Page 134 of Touch the Sky

She wants to stay here forever. She’s not the kind of kid to throw that word around.

“May I say something?”

I blink to clear the glare of the sun from my eyes.

“Be my guest,” I answer Gabrielle. “At this point, I’d even take advice from Joaquin.”

She indulges me with a chuckle and then turns serious again.

“If you and Jacinthe were rushing into thistout fou, without thinking or being careful, I would say something different, but you’re not.En fait, you are both thinking a bittoohard. You are smart, responsible women. You both care about Shel and aboutla grange. I do not think that means you can’t care about each other too.”

I blink harder as pinpricks of heat begin to gather in the corners of my eyes again.

“I know when you’re a mother, all you do is worry about what could go wrong.”

Gabrielle pauses and nods as she drifts off into a memory for a moment.

“And things do go wrong,” she continues. “I know that. I know that very well, but sometimes, every once in a while, if you let them, things go very, very right.”

I dab at my tears with my fingertips, but there’s no stopping them now.

“So how do you know?” I ask, my voice cracking. “How do you know when it’s right or wrong?”

“You don’t.”

My heart drops. For a moment, I think that’s all she has to say about it, but then she reaches for my hand and squeezes.

“You trust,” she says, leaning in close so I don’t miss a word. “You listen to your headandyour heart, and you do your best,ma belle.”

Her eyes are shining too. She gives me a watery grin.

She makes it sound so easy.

Shel made it sound easy too.

Maybe, somehow, it can be.

Maybe I can do what Gabrielle said and give this life a chance to be good.

Chapter 28

Jacinthe

Ipull into the driveway at La Grange Rouge just as the sun is starting to set. My hands are shaking on the wheel. The only reason I got through the day without collapsing was by chugging coffee from the kitchen at Balsam Inn every two hours.

Maddie even tried to get me to take a nap in one of the empty guest rooms, but I was way too wired. Sleep-deprived or not, I needed to move.

It only took me a few hours to zoom through my whole to-do list of tasks at the inn. I even got started on packing up the lawn furniture for the winter before Natalie caught me trying to stack picnic tables all by myself.

She called me an insurance risk and ordered me to go home.

I cut the engine and hop out of the truck. I’m about to head into the house to grab a snack when I spot something out of place down by the barn.

Specifically, it’s a horse out of place.

One of the horses is saddled up and tied to the hitching rail.

I glance around to see ifMamanmight have decided she’s feeling up for a ride, but there’s no one in the yard that I can see from here.