Free Cowboy Justice by Melissa Cutler

riding.”
    Saddling Growly offered its own challenges. The saddle blanket, halter, and reins were as easy as breathing to affix on the horse, but the saddle took three tries to hoist onto its back. The effort strained the skin around her wound, but despite the pain, she was too obstinate to seek help.
    Once Growly was ready, she tucked a baggie of Fig Newtons in the saddlebag, along with a sky-blue ribbon from the accessory drawer Jenna had created for her horse, Disco. The plan was to stop by the west end pasture and gather dried wildflowers for a bouquet. Corny, maybe, but no one else would know.
    She’d lost her favorite hat when she fell from Lincoln the day before, so she grabbed her back-up—a worn, soft cream felt Stetson with a braided leather band. She led Growly out, pausing at the door to reach above it and touch the smooth steel of the horseshoe mounted there, a gift from Kate Parrish’s father many years ago, that her father had nailed over the door with the promise it would bring her luck.
    When she mounted Growly, a particularly sharp pain shot through her left arm. She ran her hand over the bandage and her fingers came back bloody. Dang it all, she’d probably ripped the scab open. Amy would strangle her tonight when she helped Rachel change the bandage and saw the damage. Oh, well. Nothing she could do to change that now.
    She walked Growly out of the stable yard, her thoughts drifting to the day the horseshoe was given to her. The day she’d come to consider the most liberating day of her life.
    She’d been ten years old.
    Her memory began in the bakery section of John Justin’s Grocery Store on Main Street during one of her mom’s most intense bipolar meltdowns. Back then, Rachel had never heard of the word bipolar, though she lived in a house held hostage by the illness.
    Rachel and her sisters’ reactions to their mom’s depression were as different as their personalities. Rachel’s anxiety was paralyzing. She clearly remembered, during Mom’s outbursts, not being able to breathe or make her legs work. Standing there—frozen, her eyes riveted to the scene—her body became a sponge, absorbing the pain of everyone around her, along with the fear. She took it all in and made it her own.
    Amy, almost four years younger than Rachel, took Mom’s episodes as a personal affront. Maybe because she looked the most like Mom, or maybe because she’d been born with her heart on her sleeve, but for reasons Rachel didn’t understand—and probably Amy didn’t either—she’d exacerbate the situation, picking fights, goading Mom on. Having her own parallel meltdown.
    Jenna, nine years Rachel’s junior, seemed oblivious, like she’d been born with skin too resilient for their volatile home life to penetrate. When Mom would start into an episode, she’d wander off to play. For the longest time, Rachel thought Jenna would be the one to emerge into adulthood undamaged. Then Jenna turned thirteen and she turned wild—partying, drinking, running off for days at a time until a deputy, Vaughn most always, dragged her home kicking and screaming.
    Rachel couldn’t remember what Mom’s trigger had been the day of her meltdown at John Justin’s, or if there even was one, but she remembered Mom throwing loaves of bread at the store’s baker, shouting obscenities. Then six-year-old Amy started clearing loaves of bread off the shelves while screaming at the top of her lungs. Jenna, one at the time, popped Cheerios in her mouth from the stroller tray and watched.
    In the midst of the anarchy, Rachel, paralyzed and fighting the churning pain of her tummy, felt her fear dissolve for the first time ever. The scene before her narrowed until it seemed as if she were watching it on a small television at the opposite end of a long hallway. Then her legs unfroze.
    She took a step back. Then another. Exhilarated by her newfound freedom of movement, she turned her back on her mom and sisters. And she walked away.