Free She Died Too Young by Lurlene McDaniel Page A

we’re not back by five, send out a posse,” she called to the anxious-looking nurse as the trail horses left the stables and headed into the North Carolina woods.
    Chelsea had the same horse she’d ridden during the summer. He was lazy, but she felt safe on him. She looked down as she rode, watching his hooves strike the packed brown, dead leaves. Above, bare tree branches soared into a cloudy gray sky. The air felt raw and cold, not like the humid weather of July. She shivered and pulled the sheepskinjacket she’d borrowed from Jillian tighter around her.
    Earlier, when she’d first mentioned the ride to Lacey, her friend hadn’t been enthusiastic. “I’m not sure I want to share the place with anybody else,” Lacey had said pointedly. “It was Mandy’s. And ours.”
    “But Jillian’s one of us,” Chelsea countered.
    “She hasn’t got a history with us.”
    Chelsea hated it when Lacey grew stubborn. “Listen, history for Jillian and me might be brief.”
    Lacey waved aside Chelsea’s pessimism. “We promised Amanda it would be our place alone. Don’t you remember?”
    “She’d be the first to want us to share it,” Chelsea insisted. “I know she wouldn’t want to hold us to that promise.”
    “We made plans with one another to meet up there this summer. It’s only fall. If you keep your promise, and get
better”
—she stabbed her finger into Chelsea’s chest—“let Jillian come with us then.”
    “You know I will if I can, but we’re at Jenny House
now
, and I want to take Jillian up the mountain
now.”
    Just then, Katie entered the lobby, breathing hard from her run, her hooded sweatshirt damp with perspiration. Chelsea called her over and explained her plan.
    “I think it’s a good idea,” Katie said after a minute of thought. “I’ve wanted to go and check outthe memorial myself, but wasn’t sure if the two of you wanted to go.”
    “I want to go,” Lacey replied. “I’m just not sure about taking Jillian.”
    “Then
we’ll
take her,” Kate said. “And you can go whenever you like.”
    Chelsea admired the firm way Katie handled Lacey without being rude or argumentative.
    “Oh, all right,” Lacey grumbled once she realized Katie wouldn’t back down. “Do you think we can pry her away from her nurse, or are we going to have to take the entire staff and Mr. Holloway with us?”
    “Leave the nurse to Jillian,” Chelsea said with an exasperated smile over Lacey’s sarcasm. “She’ll shed her one way or another.”
    Now, as they plodded up the looping trail, Chelsea felt herself growing apprehensive. The sight of the memorial and the memories it evoked might be too sad. What if they all started crying? What would Jillian think?
    “This way!” Katie called. A small piece of faded yellow material Amanda had tied to a tree marked the ascent up the mountainside.
    Jillian brought her horse alongside Chelsea’s. “Boy, does it feel good to be riding again.”
    The effortless way Jillian rode, as if she were one with the horse, impressed Chelsea. “You ride like a cowgirl,” she said. “I never rode until this summer, and my fanny hurt for three days.”
    Jillian laughed. “Daddy had me sitting on ahorse from the time I was a baby. Even though I was sick, he bought me my first pony when I was three. DJ had a matching one, and the two of us learned to ride together. Of course, DJ got better at it because he did it more often. When we were ten, we got quarter horses—mine is a roan. I named him Windsong. DJ has a chestnut he calls Cochise. He rides him in rodeo competitions, and no one can chase down a calf and tie it down faster than DJ.”
    She sighed, and some of the sparkle left her eyes. “That’s something else I want to do when I get a new heart. I want to ride in the rodeo.”
    Chelsea couldn’t imagine such a thing. Plodding along on a horse as tame as the ones at Jenny House was about as much adventure as she could handle. “I hope you get to do