"Hey!" I yelled at the person who was running out of the yard, having almost tackled me around the corner to the stables. She either didn't hear me or didn't care, her long strides taking her out of the entrance to Bright Fields and onto the road in a matter of seconds.
What the hell? I turned and rushed to pick up Firefly's lead, taking him into his stable. Mia appeared at the doorway just as I was taking off his saddle.
"See, aren't you glad you finally-" she began to muse, but cut herself off when she saw me next to Firefly. "Oh, Pin." She let out a sharp exhale. "I thought my cousin was in here."
"Your cousin?" I asked. Normally, I avoided engaging with anyone in the yard—especially Mia—but it wasn't every day that a stranger came to visit just to bolt away moments later.
"Yes, my cousin, Melody." she replied, looking out across the paddock. "If you had seen her, you'd know, everyone believed we were twins when we were little."
I thought back to the runner, struggling to remember any details of her appearance. It all happened so suddenly that I didn't even see her face, only glimpsed her side profile as she took off down the lane. If she was Mia's cousin, they didn't really strike me as people who looked enough alike to be confused for one another.
"I may have seen her, just now," I began, piecing together what had just happened, "why was she here if she doesn't like horses?"
Mia's head whipped around quickly.
"She does like horses. She rides competitively on the mainland and loves Firefly almost more than I do. She's just been acting weird lately."
I stood up straighter, putting Firefly's saddle on the stable door before opening it.
"You're kidding, right?" I scoffed. Mia continued to stare at me, her gaze harsh. "She freaked when Firefly nudged her just now. Threw his lead rope, ran out of the yard, almost took me down in the process." As far as I could tell, there was no way Firefly had done anything that would be considered scary by a 10 year old visiting the yard for the first time, let alone someone who supposedly adored him.
Mia shook her head, clearly agitated by the situation.
"Like I said, she's been acting weird," she huffed. After a pause where neither of us moved to walk or speak, she started up again while pacing the length of the fence.
"Ever since she came to stay, she's only come with me to the stables one time, and now she keeps blowing me off. She's supposed to be going to study veterinary medicine, she can't just stop riding now. Daddy says she needs 'time to heal' or whatever, but I don't think it's any excuse for throwing away her future."
It was almost as if Mia was talking to herself as she ranted. That would explain why she'd tell me—of all people—any of these things, as well as why she looked up at me suddenly and rolled her eyes at the confusion that must have shown on my face.
I was struggling to understand how any of it tied together, but at least one thing in her monologue caught my attention.
"She's studying veterinary medicine? The person who couldn't stand to be near a horse for more than a second?" I asked, skeptical.
Mia hoisted Firefly's saddle into her arms and started walking toward the tack room. I followed on her heels, not ready for the conversation to be over. I couldn't remember a time I'd ever talked to Mia for this long—I probably never had.
"Believe it or not, it's all she's wanted ever since we started riding together. She knew the name of every bone in a horse's body by the time we were 7," she explained as she began putting up the tack.
It was a little hard to believe. But if my experience with Mia and Elliot was any example, their family didn't mess about when it came to going after what they wanted.
"How did she get into a veterinary course?" I pressed, and she clicked her tongue against her teeth, scowling.
"She's not on a course right now," she clarified incredulously. "She's the same age as us. It's just always been certain that will be her course at university, after we finish A levels."
I kept my mouth shut and took a sheepish step back. She was gathering her things from her locker, getting ready to leave, and I could feel my chances at getting any more information out of her fading into nothing.
"Is she coming back? To the stables?" I forced myself to ask, clinging onto the hope that I might eventually meet her. If I wanted any help from her, I'd also have to hope that she was easier to converse with than the family member in front of me.
"I don't know," Mia answered flippantly. "This is the first time I got her to come anywhere near close in over a week. Might as well stop trying if she's not going to appreciate it."
She turned on her heel and left without any other form of goodbye, not that I expected as much from her.
Still, I had to take a moment to untangle my thoughts in the quiet of the empty tack room before I could finish preparing the stables for the night. I pushed the door open and the cool air of the early summer evenings sped me on as I completed the last of my work.
I didn't need to know more. I've been keeping my head down, working at the stables, getting by in school, helping dad around the house, taking care of Elvis and, more recently, the moor pony. The routines I'd settled into were working, and I had no reason to pull them apart by entertaining some fantasy plan to go to veterinary school. The pony had been doing okay, so far; maybe I could get him to heal enough to go back onto the moors without medicine or another opinion.
I fell back on my usual justifications—the most important thing was for me to continue working so that Dad and I wouldn't have any trouble, so I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
My chores occupied me for another half hour and then I headed home. Even throughout dinner with Dad, I was fine carrying out our usual conversation to catch up on our respective days. I kept myself in order up until the moment I got into bed.
I was used to the quiet. Especially in my room, only the faint sound of the sea outside breaking up the seasonal chorus of bugs chirping in the fields below. That night, it felt like every element had gone silent just so that my mind could roar louder. Eventually, I let it take over; the possibilities of a different, much less certain future playing out before me in a dozen different scenarios before I finally lost them in sleep.
——
A couple of days later, I overheard Becky asking Mia for someone called Melody's number.
"Excuse me?" Mia griped, seemingly startled by the question.
"It's just- I forgot to ask her and I told her I would let her know if something happened and-" Becky blurted, the sentence sounding like one long word. "-she said she was your cousin, sorry, I must have got it wrong."
I stood back against the wall of the stable that I was in as I heard Becky begin to shuffle away, but she turned back around when Mia finally relented an answer.
I waited a few minutes before going to search for Becky and found her in Bob's stable tacking him up for a ride. I approached slowly, not even certain what my intention was or how to introduce the question that I had in mind. She startled me when she called out well before I thought I'd be in her line of sight.
"If you're looking for someone to help with the mucking out, you've come to the wrong girl." She glanced at me briefly before continuing, "I have a lesson in a few minutes and I just did my turn yesterday."
"Uh, no actually, I wasn't going to ask about that," I managed to reply. I approached Bob to give him a pat as I tried to put together the right words.
"Look, I know Bob is marvelous, but you can have some time with him later-" she began, but was interrupted when the horse shimmied wildly in order to keep her from buckling his girth. I reached out to catch the piece of tack as it swung under Bob's belly, attempting to steady him with my other hand. Once we got him under control and she successfully finished attaching his saddle, I took a breath and looked at her from over his neck.
"How did you meet Mia's cousin?" I wondered, hoping it didn't seem intrusive. Her eyes brightened and her movements became quicker as she perked up.
"You know Melody, too? I met her at the café, she's come in the last three days in a row while I was working, and today I finally got to talk to her besides just taking her order," she relayed the information quickly.
Of course she'd been at the café, one of the few places that I almost never visit in order to avoid sideways glances from the groups of other kids that gathered there. I used to frequent the cozy shop when I was younger, spending hours at the tables to draw, read, people watch, and occasionally complete homework. Once secondary school began, my classmates made it the spot to meet for after school gossip and flirting; it looked strange for me to be there on my own, watching as they socialized, and they'd only had to point that out to me twice before I stopped going altogether.
"-and she's really cool to talk to, that's why I was so surprised when she told me she's related to Mia," Becky was saying as I zoned back into the conversation I'd started. I felt a jolt of dread pass through my body as realized I had missed most of what she'd said as she rambled on in front of me.
"I'm sorry, I got distracted-" I started, only to be cut off by Dad calling for me out in the yard. When I looked back at Becky, she had strapped on her riding hat and offered a small smile as she led Bob out of the stable.
"No worries, maybe we can all hang out soon!" she offered as she walked away.
The invitation may have been comforting to me, if I'd actually ever met the girl. Becky's enthusiasm was somewhat reassuring; she shrank in Mia's presence, but seemed to light up at just my mentioning of her cousin.
Melody, I reminded myself. Her name is Melody.
I rolled my shoulders and headed towards the direction I'd heard Dad shout from. Work would bring me back, stop any daydreaming before it could start. I didn't need to know more—
but I wanted to.