Free Whatever Remains by Lauren Gilley

“My office.”
     
     
    The Greens – Rebecca, the wife of a successful divorce attorney, and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Abby – had committed a sin so often practiced by those with more money than sense. Without any equine knowledge whatsoever, Rebecca had gone out and bought up horses for herself and her daughter under the assumption that the more expensive the horse, the better the horse. This was true, yes, but she hadn’t counted on one key factor: the more expensive the horse, the more intelligent and highly-trained the horse, and the more finesse and skill required to ride the horse. Spending sixty-grand on an imported Dutch gelding hadn’t made Rebecca Green a better rider; if anything, the horse’s grace and sensitivity highlighted his rider’s incompetence.
                  Decathlete – “Dec” for short – was a brilliant chestnut with tall white stockings on his hind legs and a perfect, diamond star. He was an even seventeen hands and leggy and springy as Jeremy worked him through a half-pass across the arena, hooves gliding over the sand. Jade had ridden him a few times and loved him; Jeremy did too. Rebecca stood at the rail, hands on hips, duded up in a thousand dollars’ worth of designer riding gear and looking flustered.
                  “He does it for you,” she complained.
                  Jeremy was made to sit a horse; his long legs draped around its barrel and his torso was motionless, long lines of his body following the horse’s movement with seamless ease. He pulled Dec to a neat halt beside his owner. “He takes a light touch; he’s sensitive,” he told Rebecca. He swung his leg over and dismounted the same way he did everything: gracefully. “This time, half-halt as you go through the corner and then let him go. Just taps with the outside spur; don’t press him with your leg the whole time.”
                  “That’s what I was doing ,” she complained.
                  “Uh-huh.”
              “Mommy?”
                  Jade turned away from the arena and glanced down at Clara; she was sitting beside the bench where Jade perched, playing with a Breyer model appaloosa, sunlight dappling her dark hair with bright spots of honey. Her play clothes – jeans, soft white t-shirt – were dusted with barn dirt, her knees damp where she knelt in the grass. She pushed her hair back and glanced up at Jade, little face worked into the most serious of expressions.
                  “Mommy,” she asked in a voice innocent of the horror of her words,” are we gonna get murder-red too? Like Heidi?”
                  Jade’s heart gave a great leap and settled into a driving, shallow rhythm. Kids were curious, she knew that, and of course Clara wanted to know more about the “bad thing” the adults had stayed up all night discussing across the kitchen table, lamp throwing twisted shadows across their faces. But, stupidly, up till this moment, she’d thought of Heidi’s death as a singular event. It had happened; they were dealing with it. She hadn’t stopped to consider that Heidi could be just the first knocked down in a grizzly game of dominos.
                  She felt her expression devolving and caught herself, forcing a tight smile for her daughter’s benefit. She wasn’t going to start thinking serial killer until she had a reason to.
                  “No, baby,” she assured, “we’re not.”
                  Seemingly satisfied with that answer, Clara returned her attention to her model horse, moving him in what was supposed to be a canter through the short brush of grass.
                  The day had turned out warm, the autumn sun pouring over them in thick molten waves, a dozen varieties of songbirds calling on and on in what had become a wedge of trilling, formless sound. The barn was clean, the old