YARA
I don't ask Dean about the sound he made. Some part of me isn't ready for the answer yet, so I let the rest of the ride pass in ordinary conversation - weather and horses and Rhett catching up to complain about a girth strap - and I bury the strangeness of it somewhere I can pull it back out later, alone, when I have the nerve to look at it directly.
Two days pass before the sky finally breaks.
It happens fast, the way storms do in the low country: one minute a hazy gold afternoon, the next a wall of green-black cloud swallowing the horizon whole. I'm at the stables checking on my mare's shoe when the first gust hits, hard enough to rattle the barn doors on their hinges, and by the time I think to look for shelter, the rain is already coming down in sheets.
Dean's there too, furth
