“Leo, I know this is unusual.”
“Bring her.”
“I can’t just—”
“June. Bring her.”
There was silence on the line.
Then she said the sentence that started the fight nobody saw coming.
“The foster parents don’t want her getting too attached.”
I looked across the yard toward Titan’s stall.
He had his huge head hanging over the door, waiting for breakfast, looking old and innocent and powerful all at once.
“Too attached to what?” I asked.
“To the horse. To the farm. To you.”
I let out a slow breath.
That was the fear adults always had.
Not that a kid would stay broken.
But that they might heal in a place those adults didn’t control.
“June,” I said, “she’s twelve. She found one place where her nervous system stopped screaming. That’s not attachment. That’s oxygen.”
“I understand,” June said.
But I could hear that understanding wasn’t enough.
There were policies.
Schedules.
Foster plans.
Insurance forms.
Adults love naming every wall they put in front of a child.
June lowered her voice.
“Her foster mother is kind, Leo. Truly. But she thinks Emily needs stability, not another bond that might disappear.”
I looked at the old apartment above the barn.
The one Arthur had given me and my mother when we had nowhere else to go.
If Arthur had worried about me getting too attached, I don’t know where I’d be now.
Maybe nowhere good.
“She can come here today,” I said. “Or she can sit by a door waiting for a horse who won’t understand why she didn’t show up.”
June was quiet.
Then she said, “I’ll call you back.”
She brought Emily at two.
Not because everyone agreed.
Because Emily had not moved from the door.
When the car pulled in, Titan was already waiting at the fence.
I swear he knew.
Emily got out before June could fully park.
She didn’t run.
She wasn’t that kind of child.
She moved fast, but carefully, like someone trained herself not to look eager because eagerness could be used against her.
