“You look like you have something on your mind, care to tell me what it is?”
I glance at him, and then shrug my shoulders. “I feel horrible about what happened out here. Rhett didn’t deserve his first retreat to go down like this. For the media to be crawling all over it. For it to make him look bad. That’s on us. On me.”
Ranch ponders that for a moment, and then puts a hand up on the horses back and rubs it down, flicking water off. “Let me ask you something. This horse right here, strong and powerful, it goes out there everyday knowing there could be something waiting. It isn’t because it’s scared, it’s instinct. It knows there are a million things that could hurt it, yet it goes out there anyway. Every single day, it grazes as if it has not a care in the world, but I’m here to tell you it does, it’s always watching, always fearful.”
I listen, intently. A man like Ranch, he talks because he has something to say, otherwise he doesn’t. So, I know he’s going somewhere with this.
“A man like Rhett, he’s the same. The way he was raised, the way his daddy treated him, he walked out the door every day not knowing what was going to happen to him, was it a good or bad day, would he get beaten or fed. He watched his momma die, found her body and that lives in his mind every single day of his life. He created this retreat, knowin’ that every day he’d walk out there not knowin’ what could happen. But he did it anyway. He did it because he knows that, even if the worse happens, he is still going to risk it. You have to trust that he’ll pull through this, he just needs time to do so.”
God damn.
A few things in that paragraph struck me just now. The first being that Rhett found his mom, nobody ever reported that and he certainly never told me that, so it comes as a shock. My heart aches, but it makes a lot of things so much clearer. The other thing that stands out, is the fact that what Ranch is saying makes so much sense.
“I understand,” I say. “I just hate knowing it was because of us that it happened.”
“It could have been anything, at any time. You create a place like this, you’re risking something happening and the media going crazy on it. The thing about the media is, they’ll forget it about it in a few days and move on.”
“What if nobody wants to come here again, knowing someone died?”
“Or,” Ranch says, turning back towards the horse, “maybe they’ll want to come here even more.”
Well then.
He has left me lost for words once again.
“Thank you,” I say, smiling even though he can’t see it.
“Welcome, darlin’.”
I leave the barn and walk in the direction of my cabin but get sidetracked when I see the path that leads to the barn. I haven’t yet gone there to look around further, but curiosity has me turning and going in that general direction.
I know I shouldn’t, it’ll probably make things worse, but I also know if I don’t make sure I’ve turned over every rock, I’ll never forgive myself. Taj deserves to have justice, if someone hurt him. His family deserve that. I have no doubt they reported his death, why wouldn’t they? Their son came on a retreat and died. Even though they think it was an accident, it looks horrible for Walker Hills. All of it is just a big mess.
I reach the barn and hesitate, staring at it and its run-down ruins. God, one thing is for sure, I don’t want to go anywhere near it, but I know I have to. Rhett is planning to knock it down and clear it away in the coming days. If there is something in there, something that could help, I need to know what it is. I take a deep breath and duck under the police tape that is still surrounding it and go inside.
I’m sure they’ve already looked through everything in here, but if they thought it was only an accident, they might have just as easily missed something.
The second I step in, my chest tightens with a weary feeling. I don’t know how the guys came in here at night, I would have peed my pants stepping into this place when it was dark. I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight, even though it’s daylight out, it’s quite dark in the barn. I flash it around, and for a minute, I just stop.
I stop and take it all in.
It’s quite fascinating, actually. On the ceiling, old lights still hang, pretty lights, no doubt lights from the dance they had when everything went wrong for this place. There are old tables overturned, chairs strewn about. It has just been abandoned, just left ... untouched, for so many years. My heart aches being in here.