Chapter Nine

"Pictures of You"

"Maybe it's better this way." I said, my arms folded across my chest before I turned around to look at Caroline who was putting my clothes away, neatly hanging them on hangers with her pregnant belly pulling at the material of her shirt. My leg was still in it's cast and I felt so awkward with it and I was glad that it would be gone by the time that I started to show.

"How could it be better this way? Your in New York while your husband is in Kentucky. Pride is dead. Samantha isn't speaking to you. Charlie is heartbroken without you around. Mom and Dad are worried sick and you and I are both pregnant." It was hot. She was cranky. I understood…partially.

"I was trying to be positive." I said.

"Oh."

Silence.

"I mean, maybe it's better that Brad and I are kind of taking a break. Maybe we just needed this time apart so that we could both find out who we want to be. Maybe this will make us stronger and maybe a few weeks to ourselves is just what we need."

"You've been here a week, Ash. I've let you live out of your suitcase for a week before I couldn't take it anymore and I started washing your clothes. You refuse to answer his phone calls, or anyone's for that matter. You aren't getting any better. How could this be for the best?"

"I have to think of it that way, Caro. I'm not ready to go back to him yet and the life that I live there. I can't get back to my life with horses yet and Brad won't take me until I can or until I will."

"Will you ever?" She asked me, her voice quiet. Her blond hair was curling from the humidity and her blue eyes showed concern and exhaustion. The baby was taking a lot out of her. Worrying about her sister was taking even more.

"I don't know." I whispered.

"This coming from the girl that used to live and breathe horses. When Mom and Dad would let you, you would literally stay with them from the time you woke up in the morning till it was time to go to bed at night. When Wonder was first born, it was impossible to get you from that stall and when Black Night was sick, Mom just started bringing your meals to his stall. And now, one horse dies and you are ready to throw away everything that you've worked so hard for. It doesn't make sense, Ash."

"To you it wouldn't."

"No one else seems to get it either." She ran her fingers over her swollen belly, staring at me the way that she used to when we were fighting when we were younger over things like whose dirty sock that was on the floor, whose turn it was to do dishes, her yelling at me to put the saddle back in the barn. But now we could really fight. She could tell me that I was being an inconsiderate brat and she'd be right but I wouldn't admit that. She could kick me out of her house and leave me to fend for myself and she'd have every right to. But I needed her right now. I needed her.

"It's one more horse. It's one more thing that I've lost. I could've lost this baby during that race. I almost did. I broke my leg and I lost Wonder's first baby. I let her down during that race because I didn't take care of her son."

"Is that what this is all about? You not taking care of Pride? They've gone over every second of that race, Ash. There's nothing you could've done."

"He didn't feel right." And God it was happening again. The hot wave of tears that was threatening me. The constant wonder and worry The ache-inside pain of losing Pride. Samantha. Charlie. Brad. Of losing the girl that I used to be.

Caroline handed me my cell phone. "Call him."

It took me an hour of staring at a picture of me and him taken just a couple of weeks ago, fifteen minutes of hobbling around the room, looking out the window, and five minutes of dialing before I finally called him. Was it really suppose to be this hard to call your husband?

"Hello?"

It was him. I could hear his deep voice through the line, the way that his breaths came in and out so evenly. He sounded distracted and I realized he'd probably forgotten to look at the Caller ID. He had no idea that it was me. "Hi, Brad." I said quietly into the phone and I heard the deep intake of breath, the sharp pain penetrating itself through the line and stabbing into my heart. He missed me. I knew it. I could feel it through all of the miles. I missed him, too.

"You actually called me back for once. I'm shocked." He said dryly and I closed my eyes. I deserved that. Sharp, cunning remarks that would hurt me were exactly what I deserved. They were as cold as my silence, as sharply plunged as every time that I saw it was him and refused to answer my phone. Every time I deprived him of his peace of mind and handed him pain and loneliness in my wake.

"Yeah, I wasn't really sure what to say to you."

"How about 'hi' for starters. Or 'I got to New York safely'. I think we could've gone from there." He said and it was the white-hot anger that I hadn't been prepared for and caught me by total surprise as it came shooting through the phone line. Hurt, confusion, disappointment, wonder, pain were all things that I had pictured. This unbridled fury should've been the first thing I'd thought of but for some reason it hadn't.

"I just,' I paused for a second, seating myself in the window, staring out at the busy New York traffic that I had always hated. "don't know what to do anymore, Brad."

"Come home." he said and these two words for whatever reason shocked me far more than his bubbling, bursting anger. I had known that my leaving would hurt him but he was Brad Townsend, all-powerful man. I hadn't ever really thought that I could break him.

I guess you could say that this was the moment that it all changed. That this was the moment where I signed the slip that would forever change my life. You could say that I was the one who was wrong, that I should've just listened to him. That you don't just walk out on someone you love because your conflicted. You'd be right. I was wrong but that won't ever change what I did.

"I can't right now, Brad."

I never got to hear what he had to say. I clicked the end button and buried my face in my hands while my broken heart leaked out into my fingers in the form of tears.

*