Page 260 of Things Left Unsaid

“You’re such a man,” Margot jibes with a soft laugh at my reaction. “Do you need nitrous oxide?”

I shoot her a disgruntled look but flick my eyes over the mom-to-be as I inform Zee, “She made it to day 320. This whole thing has been cut too close to the wire.”

“I told you she would,” Margot inserts.

“You a seer?”

“Horse whisperer.” She taps her nose. “That’s me.”

I’d call her out but she isn’t lying. Margot’s our local miracle worker.

“I wish this weren’t coming so quickly. We’d have gotten the straw out for her but she wasn’t showing any of the signs?—”

“She’ll be fine.”

Harriet grunts as if to tell me Margot’s lying. The whites of her eyes are showing as the muscles in her abdomen cramp and flow over her side like a wave. In between grunts, her legs jerk and spasm.

She rolls onto her forelegs and stands so she can pace. That’s when I get a good view of her back end where her tail’s erect and the milky-colored sac droops from her with two small hooves peeping through the opaque membrane.

“She’s making progress but we’re edging toward forty-five minutes,” Margot murmurs in an aside.

Unbeknown to Harriet, who’s unaware that nature needs to hurry the hell up, her abdomen heaves from exertion while her grunts echo around this half of the stables that’s empty of other mares as we’re out of foaling season.

When the exhausted dam plops down, this time, she does it with her back end in plain view. Contractions expose a breach in the sac, revealing two skinny black legs.

The sight triggers activity from Margot and me.

“You wanna pitch in?” she asks.

Though it’s her job, we both know there hasn’t been a foal birthed on the Seven Cs without me around since I returned home from university. Even then, I’d travel back as soon as I could to be with the dam and her new foal.

A sharp neigh from the mare has Margot tossing me a towel. Cautiously, I approach Harriet, who lifts her head so she can huff angrily at me.

“It wasn’t me,” I protest. “And we’ll keep Fen away from you in the future, I promise.”

My reassurances are ignored once I’ve wrapped up the foal’s hooves in the towel and, in time to her contractions, help her where I can. The ticking of the clock as we edge toward a birth that runs too long echoes in my head.

My relief when the foal’s forelegs are fully out shifts as she rolls upright only to fall back down. Her exhaustion has me gritting my teeth.

“There’s a good girl,” Margot praises.

Zee chimes in, “You got this, honey.”

For what feels like endless moments, Harriet lies there, building the strength for what needs to be done.

“Margot?”

“It’s fine, Colt. Just a couple more minutes then I’ll intervene. But I know she’s got this.”

Like she agrees, Harriet snorts and, with one big push and a soft tug from me, the foal’s head finally pops out, the sac covering the whole of its face.

My relief is intense. As is my gratitude. The guilt I’ve been feeling since Fen’s breakout—all three-hundred-and-twenty days of it—dissolves in a rush.

“Almost there, Harriet,” I cheer as, shifting the towel under the shoulders, I bring the foal out into the warm summer night.

More comfortable with this part of labor, I quickly clear off the sac, rub the towel over the snout and eyes, and scrub away the amniotic fluid as gently as I can while checking they’re breathing.

“Do you know what it is yet?”

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