Hannah pulled her hand away from mine.
Not mean.
Just shocked.
“I can’t take him,” she said quickly.
Arthur didn’t answer.
“I mean, I’m in school,” she said. “I live in a small apartment near campus. I work part-time at a stable outside town. I don’t own land. I don’t have a trailer. I don’t have anything.”
Her voice started speeding up.
“I can barely afford groceries some weeks. I can’t just take a horse.”
Then she looked at me.
Her face broke.
“And I can’t take away the last thing your mother touched.”
I swallowed hard.
Because that was exactly what I had been thinking.
And I hated myself for thinking it.
Mom had asked me to give Copper to Hannah.
Not keep him because I was lonely.
Not keep him because he smelled like hay and dust and the last secret place my mother had been alive.
Give him.
That was the promise.
But standing there with my hand on his warm neck, I suddenly understood why promises were easy to make before they cost you something.
“He belongs with you,” I said.
It came out flat.
Too clean.
Too fake.
Hannah heard that too.
“No,” she said softly. “Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re handing me a box.”
I looked away.
Copper shifted his weight, and the boards creaked.
Arthur leaned against the fence.
“Copper doesn’t belong to anyone the way a chair belongs to someone,” he said. “Your mother knew that. She never wanted him owned. She wanted him loved.”
That sounded beautiful.
It also solved absolutely nothing.
Because love still had to live somewhere.
Love still needed feed and shelter and time.
Love still needed someone to show up every morning when the weather was bad and every night when grief got ugly.
Hannah wiped her cheeks with her sleeve.
“What did she actually want?” she asked.
Arthur reached into his jacket and pulled out another folded paper.
I recognized my mother’s handwriting before he even opened it.
My knees went weak.
“There was a note,” he said. “She asked me not to give it to either of you until you were standing together.”
Hannah made a tiny sound.
Arthur handed the paper to me first.
“I think Chloe should read it.”
My fingers shook so badly the paper fluttered.
The note was written in blue ink.
Some letters were uneven.
Some words dipped down like her hand had grown tired halfway through them.
But it was my mother.
