On the first day of another horseless summer vacation, Selah rehearsed the “horse talk” she planned to have with Grandpa. She gave it her best shot every summer. A horse would be no trouble.
Grandpa had manicured pastures and a solid old barn. For all of her twelve years, Selah had dreamed of a happily- ever-after life with a horse. She tucked her pale pink T-shirt into her jeans and stared at a poster-size canvas painting on her wall. In the painting, done by her grandmother, Selah was less than three feet tall and leading a brown and white paint horse in from the pasture. Even with only a rope around his neck, he followed her like an obedient dog.
Selah flipped her fingers through her cream-colored hair and bounced down the narrow, dark stairs of the farmhouse. The railing felt smooth with wear, and the boards groaned as if they’d prefer not to be disturbed. Finding no one in the house, she slipped out the screen door. Grandpa’s dog, Skunk, didn’t crawl out from under the porch so the dog was somewhere with Grandpa. As Selah tugged on her cowboy boots, she spotted the black-and-white Aussie dog, nose to the ground sniffing in the brush. Skunk was never far from Grandpa, so Selah strode up the hill toward her. The long and lush pasture grass darkened her pink boots with dew.
