Chapter 1

A chilled breeze brushed across my face and tickled the tiny hairs on my cheeks. August in Mississippi is miserably hot. Even in the last week of August, the presence of cold air anywhere, except in front of an air conditioner, was an impossible incongruity. A shiver shot down my spine, and I clamped my fists on Hitchcock’s reins. Hitchcock wrenched his head to escape the unexpected pressure from the bit.

Liz Townsley’s voice made its way through the cobwebs in my brain and relit the memory of her screaming across the arena, “Jessica! Light touch! Imagine you’re holding a bird in your hand. I told you not to bump that horse’s mouth! Do it again and the lesson is over.”

Head in the air, my normally surefooted buckskin mis-stepped in a divot in the old dirt road, and we lost our balance. That ancient ethereal connection between horse and rider broke. The feeling that I was a cohesive limb of this magnificent beast was snapped. Instinctively, my fingers grasped the mustang’s messy black mane to keep me from slipping off his sweaty back. I instantly regretted that I hadn’t bothered with a saddle. This morning, I had been in such a hurry to engage in the experience of riding that I hadn’t even taken the time to brush Hitchcock.

For me, riding was more than an addiction, it was a basic life function. I had known when I jumped onto Hitchcock without taking the time to change into long pants, that I would be covered with sweat and dirt when I got off. It wasn’t anything a good shower and my lavender scented goat milk soap couldn’t take care of.

This morning, I awoke with an obsessive need to ride, but that wasn’t unusual. When I was still young enough that I hadn’t developed complex relationships and a tangled life, I had been hyper-focused on the strength, the beauty, and the freedom that horses offered. Now a somewhat adult woman, I was not at all apologetic that my girlish hyper focus had evolved into something else, something more intense. It was a soul-deep hunger. On the back of a horse, I felt more than complete.

I had skipped breakfast and headed straight to the barn, hoping to beat the heat. If a Mississippi August morning hadn’t already become sweltering in the pre-dawn, it would quickly become too sultry to do anything outdoors, except swim. Today was already so hot and humid, it felt like I couldn’t sweat. The breeze that had suddenly chilled my face was an anomaly. It had thrown me. It was a break in my perception of reality, completely implausible.

Hitchcock recovered from his stumble, and I asked for a halt to recenter myself. The breeze seemed to have blown up from the narrow, overgrown trail that branched off from the main dirt road. That weedy trail wasn’t long,