Page 1 of Beside the Rolling Waves
One
Becky Peck opened a bleary eye and lifted one tentative hand out of the warm cocoon of her covers, slapping around on her almost freezing nightstand, trying to find her phone to shut off the alarm.
Finally, her groping fingers hit the snooze button, and she yanked her hand from the chilly air back underneath her cozy blankets. She had at least seven on her bed. And she wore a set of long underwear, two T-shirts, a long-sleeve T-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a puffer vest on the top, plus three or four layers on the bottom, along with a thin pair of socks underneath two warm wool pairs.
Her toes were still cold.
That probably meant her blankets had shifted during the night, but instead of trying to fix the blankets, she just pulled herself into a ball and used one of her hands to try to warm up her toes while closing her eyes and enjoying a couple more minutes of blessed rest.
Her day was going to be busy from the time her feet hit the floor until she fell into bed tonight. And she really should get out of bed and get it started.
But she dreaded the cold.
Her small apartment above the horse stable where she kept her precious babies was heated, but she kept the heat down to the very lowest it would go, just warm enough to keep the water lines from freezing. She couldn’t afford the heat bill, not with the feed bill she had, plus the rent for the stable, and she did try to buy food for herself with whatever was left.
She ought to have health insurance, but she couldn’t even think about that.
She wiggled around, trying to get the toes on her other foot where she could reach them. She moved so much, she knew she wasn’t going back to sleep. So she might as well get up.
Bracing herself for the cold, dreading it, and wishing, just once, she could turn the heat up as high as she wanted, she took a deep breath and then threw the covers off, throwing her feet out of bed and going quickly to the bathroom.
It didn’t take long at all to get dressed in her work clothes and pour a steaming hot cup of coffee.
She didn’t really like coffee, and she had never needed it to wake up, but the warmth was what she craved, and she’d gotten herself hooked on the caffeine in the process. Not that it mattered.
Sometimes she wondered if anything mattered.
She’d always wanted to be around horses, it was her dream, but…she was sinking further and further into debt, and she had absolutely nothing to show for it.
Last summer, she hadn’t made enough money on the carriage rides she gave tourists to even pay for the feed bill, let alone the farrier and vet bills, and the idea that she might eventually need another horse could cause her heart to stop for a couple of seconds. It certainly wasn’t enough to support her. She did that by cleaning houses. But she only had so much time that she wasn’t taking care of her horses, especially in the winter when ice needed to be broken, water hauled, snow scraped, andhorses manually exercised, because she didn’t want to chance them slipping on ice in the pasture. They were too expensive, too valuable, and she loved them too much for that. A horse with a broken leg would have to be put down.
She wrapped her hands around her coffee mug, eyeing her gloves by the door. She already had her coat on and her boots as well. The last thing to do was put her gloves on, pull her hat down over her ears, and head outside into the Michigan winter.
At least she didn’t have to walk far to get to work, she thought to herself, not for the first time. She lived above the horse stable where her horses were stalled, so it smelled interesting in her apartment, but that didn’t bother her, and her commute to work was her favorite part of her job.
No. Her favorite part of her job was the horses.
Draining the last of her coffee, she set the mug down on the counter to deal with later, grabbed her gloves, stuck them on, and then walked out the door.
Immediately the scent of horses and fresh manure hit her, and she breathed deeply. It smelled like home to her. Like safety and happiness and all the good things. That’s part of the reason why she did what she did. Because she loved it. She loved this. Stepping out into a new day, breathing deeply of the smells that made her heart soar, and knowing that she got to do what so many people just dreamed of.
Sure, she lived below the poverty level, at a level that most people could not even begin to think of surviving at, and common luxuries, like toilet paper, were closely rationed, but…she loved her life.
There was only one thing missing.
“Good morning, Jasper,” she said, walking down the stairs and petting the nose that stuck out of the stall.
Jasper was always up and waiting on her in the morning.
Sometimes Jethro, and the two mares, Velvet and Clementine, slept in a bit, but Jasper faced the day eagerly. He was always the one who wanted out, wanted to run, wanted to enjoy each new day, like it was a gift. He reminded her what a gift life really was. Sometimes she needed that reminder more than others.
“I wish I was as unaffected by the cold as you are,” she said to Jasper as she scratched his wide forehead. Clydesdales were tall, a heavy draft breed. They were also extremely expensive, and that was part of what made her bills so high. She’d overextended herself buying all four of them.
She couldn’t ask her adoptive parents, who would have insisted on giving her money and not allowed her to pay them back. Matt and Jubilee Landry from Strawberry Sands had loaned her the money, and she knew that if she went to them and said she couldn’t pay them back, they would be perfectly fine with it. They could afford to lose the money anyway. But there was something inside of her that absolutely would not allow her to not do what she said she was going to do. And when she asked to borrow the money, she told him she would pay a certain amount every month until it was paid back with interest.
It wasn’t right to not keep her word. Because a man was only as good as his word. That went for women too.
She thought about someone who had not kept his word to her, and her heart broke a little, as it did every time she thought about Rodney.
