Lindsay giggled as one of the cows gave her a look that clearly meant, "Feed me. Now." She tossed a flake of hay into the cow's manger and moved onto the chicken coop. She quickly felt around for any eggs and dumped a bucket of grain in the middle of their area. The hens hadn't laid any eggs in a week, but they tended to do that. She moved on to the pigs and dumped two buckets of slop into their trough. She gave a scoop of grain and two flakes of hay, and went to the tack room to grab an apple for her horse, Maggie. Lindsay heard snorting and pawing as she approached Maggie's stall. As Lindsay yanked the stall door open, her eyes fell upon a bloody corpse. It was her mother. Lindsay yanked Maggie's bridle over her head and leapt on her back, not bothering with a helmet. She grabbed a pistol just in case, and galloped into the hills to be alone and think.
Lindsay cried as she clung to Maggie's back. Finally Maggie slowed to a trot, then a walk. She wasbreathing hard, and she lowered her head to drink from the cold clear stream that flowed through the meadow in which the light brown horse had stopped. "You really like this spot, don't you," Lindsay said wearily but with a slight laugh in her voice. It was ironic, how she could speak so happily to a horse who was just as disturbed as she. Lindsay slid off the horse's back and led her to the edge of the meadow. She tied Maggie to a tree and then climbed into it. She pulled a pillow out of a large knothole and set it in the V of two large branches and began talk to Maggie.
The Monroe family lived on an isolated farm in rural Montana. Their farm provided everything they needed, and as a result Lindsay was home-schooled. Her mother had leukemia, and she was rapidly dying. The Monroe's weren't spectacularly rich, and they lived fifty-three miles from the nearest hospital. Every time Lindsay's parents went to the hospital, they left her alone on the farm with four cows, three horses, six pigs, and fifteen hens. Lindsay didn't mind. She loved the company of the animals and the beautiful solitude of the scenery. She was especially happy to be left alone when her parents had been fighting again. Her father sometimes couldn't take the pressure of running a farm, home-schooling his 17-year-old daughter, and taking care of his wife, and he took it out on his family, his animals, whatever was closest.
Lindsay suspected that her father had lost his temper again. He had been drinking lately to help wash away his worries. When he was drunk, his normal rage was made ten times worse, and he was certainly capable of killing Mrs. Monroe. Additionally, Lindsay had heard her parents arguing late at night. It seemed that money was running low between her mother's cancer treatment and vet bills for all their livestock. Lindsay hadn't told her parents that she had earned a scholarship to the Forensic Science Academy of America. Now she didn't know if she would be able to fulfill her life-long dream of becoming a CSI, and the recent tragedy gave her all the more reason to give 150 at the Academy.
Suddenly Lindsay realized that she hadn't seen her father since she had gone to bed the previous evening. She wondered if Maggie had possibly gone berserk and trampled her mother to death, but Mrs. Monroe had no reason to be in Maggie's stall and Lindsay hadn't noticed any blood on Maggie's hooves or legs. The last non-Monroe on the farm was the vet, and he had come a month ago. Then Lindsay remembered what she had told her mind to bury and never dig up. In the middle of the night, Lindsay and her mom sometimes went and sat with the horses, just to bond and be together. Last night, however, they had gotten into a fight. Lindsay remembered punching and kicking her mother's weak body and screaming, "You can't just leave us, Mom! We need you on the farm. We need you for our sanity! You can't die!" Lindsay rode Maggie back to the farm and crept into her bedroom. Pulling the blankets back on her bed, she revealed fresh red splotches. She knew that with a little care, she could get away from this crime. She was leaving for the Academy in a month. She conspired with her father, and they agreed that a criminal investigation would be undignified. Together they cleaned Mrs. Monroe's body and then called the hospital. The world would never know.