Page 135 of Touch the Sky

I stuff the truck keys into my pocket and trudge towards the barn. Once I’m a little closer, I recognize Sam. His black tail swishes, and his ears flick towards the sound of my footsteps.

“Salut?” I call out. “Maman?”

There’s no answer. I walk faster.

By the time I reach the hitching post, I still haven’t heard or seen anyone.

“Sammy,qu’est-ce que tu fait?” I croon, stretching my hand out to let him sniff me.

Then I spot the sticky note on his saddle. I rip it off and hold it up to my face to read the short sentence scrawled in blue ink.

Meet me at Sunset Ridge.

My heart pounds. That’s notMaman’s writing. I stuff the sticky note into my pocket and whip my phone out instead. I shootMamana text to ask if everything is okay and then stand there giving Sam some pats while I wait for a reply.

She answers in less than a minute, with a whole bunch of winky face emojis and a message telling me there’s someone waiting for me.

“What the hell is going on here, Sam?” I ask while stroking his forelock out of his eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

He snorts and tosses his head.

I guess he’s right; it’s pretty fucking obvious.

I’m supposed to go to Sunset Ridge.

Five minutes later, we’re trotting along the trail through the woods. Sam is extra frisky in the chilly air, but I don’t try to cull his scampering. I’m too busy with some scampering of my own. My pulse is racing, and my body is urging me to nudge Sam up into a gallop.

I can’t tell if I’m excited or terrified.

There’s only one person who could be waiting at the end of this ride, and I have no idea what she’s got to say to me.

By the time I make it out of the woods and up the hill to the ridge, the sun is almost kissing the mountains goodnight. The sky is a mottled indigo and pink, with brilliant orange fanning out from the west.

Even without the glow of their autumn leaves, the Laurentian Mountains are stunning. The endless rolling slopes look like the curves of a woman’s body stretched out under a patterned bedspread, like shoulders and hips just waiting to be kissed.

I tug on the reins to bring Sam to a halt. He prances around a little but stays still enough for me to scan the ridge.

We have to walk a few more meters around a clump of bushes, and then there she is.

Tess.

She’s tied Nana up to the old hitching post, and she’s sitting on a boulder spread with a striped blanket. There are a couple saddlebags sitting on the ground beside her, stuffed with what looks like a Thermos and a few Tupperware containers of food.

She jumps to her feet as soon as Sam plods around the edge of the bushes.

“You came.”

Her eyes are wide. She’s wearing a thick black jacket zipped up to her chin and her usual worn blue jeans over some riding boots.

“You left me a horse with a sticky note on his saddle,” I say. “Of course I came.”

I don’t know if I should laugh. It feels risky to even smile.

Sheprobablywouldn’t drag me all the way out to the ridge and bring a nice meal for us if she was planning on announcing she’s leaving forever, but stranger things have happened out here in these hills.

“I take it I should, uh, get off the horse?” I ask.

She snaps out of her trance and comes over to hold Sam’s bridle for me. A couple minutes later, he’s hitched up next to Nana while Tess and I stand face to face.