A Feral Spark, page 15
“Of course not!” He swirled his tongue around the stick. “That’s why I eat it all.”
While Jason gobbled a few more marshmallows, Miranda walked over to pick up the bottles. Between chews, he critiqued her throwing technique.
“You should use a wide stance so you’re balanced and don’t topple over.”
“I was already doing that.” Miranda worked very hard not to roll her eyes at his suggestion. “My balance is fine. How do you think I ride horses? Hold on tight and wish for the best?”
“Suit yourself,” he said, retreating under the cover of darkness.
Miranda shrugged it off and let him go. Jason couldn’t help her from any personal experience manifesting fire. Just like she didn’t know what it was like to shift into wolf skin. He could only bring her something to drink if she got dehydrated from practice.
Feeling whimsical, Miranda made a ball of flame that she bounced from the mouths of one open bottle to another, like the dancing dot over a TV sing-along song. She started moving it faster and faster. Then she added another level of difficulty by sending another orb counter-clockwise after it.
Jason still hadn’t come back after a few minutes, so Miranda begrudgingly widened her stance and crouched low to do some aiming tricks. She tried to vary the fire’s properties, especially the temperature of the burn, which influenced how it appeared in the visible spectrum. She was concentrating on that so much that it took her by surprise when a familiar gray wolf ran between her legs.
Miranda let out a yelp and clutched at his shoulders like he was a mustang. She tightened her knees at his sides and lowered her body parallel over his, burying her face in his neck as he ran around the dark perimeter of the dog park.
He galloped for a while and eventually slowed enough to unceremoniously plop on the ground. Miranda tumbled off his back and laughed into the darkened sky. As though wrapped in sublime peace, she raised her fingertips to heaven and painted fire in the air as children often did with sparklers.
Rolling on her side toward the still wolfy Jason, Miranda studied him closely. It was the first time she’d seen his wolf form since the day he revealed he was a werewolf. She touched his lupine face with his black-rimmed silver eyes. His thick coat of fur was silver-gray with an undertone of black. The outer fur was not soft and cuddly, but Miranda still enjoyed petting him.
When she rubbed the space at the top of his nose, he closed his eyes in pleasure. Then he jammed his nose in her face and licked her cheek.
Miranda sputtered and screeched, “No kisses!”
He smiled at her with his full set of teeth that reminded her of the fairy tale she had been practicing in ASL. Miranda sat up and scooted back so he could see her hands. Then she tried to sign Little Red Riding Hood. After a few signs, he let out a chuffing sound that Miranda assumed was laughter. He put his head on Miranda’s knee as she finished the tale, and at the end of the story, Jason shifted back into his human form.
[And they all lived happily ever after,] he signed and propped his chin on the heel of his hand.
Miranda giggled because that wasn’t the usual end of Red Riding Hood. “Are you coming with me to the movies tomorrow so I can introduce you to my friends?”
He looked away. “Is Val’s sister going to be there?”
“Yes. And Avi, Roger, and Steve. We’ll all be there.” Miranda put her hand on his bare shoulder. “I’d like to introduce them to you.”
“I’m not ready to bond with your humans.”
“Fine, then. Be that way.” She was disappointed, but there would be other times to ask him to do things.
Miranda stretched out beside Jason on her stomach so they were shoulder to shoulder again. She put her hand over his back and made showers of sparks dance over his naked skin. Jason smiled at the sparks, so she tried to bring her fire as close to him as possible without setting him ablaze. Miranda liked the intimacy of his trust.
“I was thinking about something,” Jason said. “It’s dangerous and probably a really bad idea. What if you went to a burning building?”
“Like some kind of weird spectator?” Miranda stopped emitting sparks.
“You can stop a fire, but how much of it can you stop? The whole thing? Just a little bit? Maybe you could put out a whole inferno. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
It would be, sure, and quite unexpected. “That’s like being a reverse arsonist.”
Jason had a serious look on his face as he sat up, and Miranda couldn’t help but notice the flash of his delicate parts as he changed position.
“You said you were afraid of what would happen if your power raged out of control. Maybe you need to find fires that are already blazing and stop them. Then you’d never have to worry about your own fire ever getting out of control again. You could already trust yourself to put them out.”
“That’s a good thought,” Miranda said after a while. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself first. It’s my special talent, not yours.”
“Ideas are easy,” Jason said as he put both legs across her back. “You’d still have to do all the hard work yourself.”
“What are you doing?” she protested, laughing into the ground. “Get your legs off me, you weirdo, and get dressed.”
“Boring,” he complained but got up to fetch his clothing.
Miranda stood and set up the practice targets again while considering Jason’s suggestion to seek out already burning fires. It would be a sneaky way to practice without raising suspicions about her real nature. Yes, she was going to try that.
“Hey, Jason,” Miranda asked as her mind flitted to something else about her power. “How come you can see my aura? Is it a werewolf thing?”
He turned toward her, this time in pants and smoothing the hem of his shirts at his waist. “I don’t know. I don’t think it was something special they knew to train us for.”
Miranda nodded and admitted, “I’m always afraid I’ll burn someone I’m close to.”
It happened with her grandfather, and she’d been casting sparks over Jason’s naked body like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Jason placed her hand at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “I’m not fireproof. I know that for sure. I think you didn’t burn me because you didn’t want to.”
Miranda wasn’t sure that could be true. The answer sounded nice, though, so she took the comfort that was offered. Then she put her attention back on target practice until they decided to pack up for the night.
“I’ve been thinking about something...” Jason said as they walked to her truck.
“Of course you have,” Miranda teased. “What is it now?”
He paused at the side of her truck. “If there are more people who can do what you can, what do you call yourselves?”
“Farriers. We’re called farriers,” Miranda said with a smirk.
“Yeah... you know what I mean.”
She drummed her fingers on the door frame. “A group of us? That would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“As a werewolf I’m a shape shifter, right?” Jason propped his elbow on the side of her truck and stared at her. “Maybe you can call yourself an energy shifter. I’ve seen your fire energy connect to everything. It doesn’t die. It moves. It shifts.”
Miranda blinked a few times but didn’t say anything immediately. That made her ability sound wonderful and lovely, not dangerous and shameful.
“I like that. I like it a lot.”
[Cool,] Jason signed with a big grin on his face. “Energy shifter it is then.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
On Sunday in the late morning, Miranda sat in the back of an extended cab truck that was towing a horse trailer to the Dryden Rail Trail. Bruce Guilford drove with John Coleman in the front seat, and Dennis, a chatterbox beside her. He sat so close he could have been in her lap. He pulled out his phone and showed Dr. Coleman a video of Miranda playing with fire and the wolf Jason at the riding arena.
“Put that away!” Miranda hissed at Dennis. Maybe he didn’t know her and Jason’s secrets, but showing that video to everyone wouldn’t help keep them hidden. “Your dad is going to think I didn’t protect his horses.”
“Why would he think that? You’re amazing with all animals.” Dennis stared at her with adoration that made her uncomfortable. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”
“It’s one of the reasons I hired her,” Bruce said. Dr. Guilford hadn’t talked much on the drive, but Miranda hoped that was because he was focused on the road.
Dennis’s newfound attention was a novelty that she both liked and disliked. How many times had Miranda wished for someone to look at her with interest and mean it? He didn’t know the real her, though. Not the person who set things on fire or made sparks dance over a werewolf’s naked skin.
Miranda had always told herself she wanted a relationship with someone normal who blended in well with others. Dennis was handsome, charming, and rich. Why shouldn’t she return his affections? There was nothing to say she couldn’t enjoy a short-term fling.
On the other hand, Bruce Guilford hadn’t hired her to have romps with his son. Not that she knew of, anyway. Given that she didn’t have a job to go to when this one was over, Miranda might do well to take better care of the one she had.
In the instant it took her to think all that, Dennis passed his phone over to Coleman, who tapped the screen. The picture changed to one of a furry-faced Jason.
“Tell me about this wolf.”
She didn’t want to tell Coleman anything about Jason, but Dennis was fast with his tongue yet again.
“Showed up one day, and Miranda treated him like a puppy. It was like magic watching her tame him.” Dennis smiled proudly at her.
“How did he get on my property?” Bruce asked.
Miranda thought of a fast lie. “I think he jumped over the fence. I told security and Brendan so they could keep watch for him in case he came back.”
“Good thinking,” Bruce said with a nod.
Coleman continued swiping through several more pictures of Miranda with the wolf that she hadn’t known Dennis had taken. In one photo, her fire thankfully looked like a harmless lens flare. She cursed herself for not making Dennis delete his video immediately. They’d been taking care of the horses after wolf-Jason left, and she’d forgotten.
Because she knew Jason’s secret now, Miranda could see him as the wolf in Dennis’s photos. He had been positively attentive to her. In hindsight, Blue’s strange behavior toward the wolf made a lot more sense.
Coleman swiped the photos again, and there was a photo of her and Jason outside the door of her suite on Friday night. Dennis had been messing with his phone before he approached them, but she hadn’t realized he’d taken their picture. That was a little creepy, and it was the second time he’d taken unwanted photos of her.
In the photo, both of Jason’s shirts were rolled up to the crook of his elbow. He’d shown her something on the violin earlier and hadn’t rolled the sleeves down when he was done. With his left hand against the wall as he faced her, Jason’s lab tattoo was showing. Miranda gasped as she realized how dangerous that photo could be in the wrong hands.
Coleman flicked his eyes to her. “Who is this?”
“Just a friend. He’s teaching me Sign Language.” Miranda tried to grab the phone, but Coleman held it out of each and zoomed in on the shot.
“A friend who’ll be jealous when we go on our date?” Dennis asked. “He was standing really close to you, Miranda.”
In a panic, she heated the phone so hot and fast that Coleman dropped it. The phone bounced off the middle console before sliding onto the floor near Dennis’s feet.
“What the hell?” he said in dismay at the cracked screen.
Miranda felt the heat of guilt in her cheeks while Dennis checked it out.
“I didn’t pay for an exploding phone,” he said. “At least I have it backed up to the cloud. I’ll get a new one when we get back as long as we’re not gone too long.”
The van got quiet after that except for John Coleman and his peppermint wrappers. He popped them with the frequency of someone who might have been trying to give up smoking for all Miranda could tell. The quiet radio chimed in with an announcement about an industrial fire back in Ithaca. The news announcer mentioned that there had been multiple fires in what was a suspected rash of arson attempts. Those were places she could use her talents, just as Jason had suggested.
Coleman interrupted Miranda’s thoughts by asking, “Where’s your friend from?”
“Chi—” Miranda started to say. “Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
“Oh, so you two must talk about cowboys and horses and stuff,” Dennis said.
“Not really, no.” And even if they had, it wasn’t his business.
“Did you tell him about the wolf that visited you?” Dennis gave her an intense look, but Miranda darted her eyes over to Bruce again.
“I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that wolf anymore,” she assured.
“So what made you want to learn Sign Language?” Coleman asked her.
“I did it a little as a kid, but nothing too deep,” Miranda said. “It seemed like something that would be good to know.”
“Any second language is good to know,” Bruce added.
Being proud of Jason, she told them, “He even taught his cat the sign for food!”
Miranda grinned wide as she modeled it for Dennis. “We got talking about forms of conditioning and such, including how some scientists have used Sign Language with primates. I didn’t know it could be used with other animals.”
“Oh, it can,” Coleman assured her. “One of the projects I worked on used it extensively. I didn’t learn it myself because I wasn’t a handler. It is interesting, though.”
Dr. Guilford pulled the van and horse trailer into the parking lot a short time later because Freeman wasn’t far away. Miranda supervised each of the men claiming his horse. Bruce took Blue while Dennis took Delilah, since he usually rode her in lessons. Miranda had Delphi, and Dr. Coleman rode Brendan’s borrowed horse for the day.
“Are you still wanting to buy a horse for yourself?” Miranda asked Coleman.
“Let me see how this trail ride goes before I decide,” he replied after he got in the saddle.
They each took supplies to have a meal at the end of the trail before they would turn back.
“Your trail rides in Montana were wonderful,” Bruce told her, “but I think your meals afterward were my favorite.”
“It’s just because you worked up an appetite,” Miranda deflected.
“John, one trip she took us on ended with rain. I was ravenous and expecting the worst, but she still got a fire going. It was the darndest thing.”
Miranda remembered that and how she’d been so frustrated. The riders had been unskilled, and the horses weren’t comfortable. Add the rain to that, and the night was nothing great. In the morning, though, Bruce first floated the idea of her coming to work for him in Ithaca.
Keeping her eyes on Dennis, Miranda mounted Delphi and then took the lead position to take them down the trail. During their leisurely ride, she shared some things she had learned about the area where they were riding. Bruce added several details of his own since he’d grown up nearby, and John looked interested in the various stories. Most importantly, Dennis was riding well.
When Miranda checked on Dennis, he answered with a big smile. “This is better than the riding arena. Maybe I should have gone with Dad to Montana, too.”
“Maybe. In the meantime, he brought Montana to you.”
Bruce and Dennis started talking to each other, so Miranda didn’t interrupt the father-son moment. She quietly enjoyed the trail and the multi-colored foliage of New York, so different from her Montana home. She didn’t claim to know anything about the city, but the state itself was beautiful with an old-world charm.
Coleman caught up to Miranda and smiled to get her attention. “I heard you had a job interview last weekend. How did that go?”
“Not well,” she admitted. “I’m good with horses, but he couldn’t see it. My classes are sometimes harder than I expected.”
She pressed her lips together because she didn’t want to share her inadequacies. Miranda had already told Jason about her struggles with some of the technical aspects of farriery. The detailed anatomy knowledge was essential if she didn’t want to permanently injure a horse, but the information wouldn’t stay in her head. She found it completely irritating when she was otherwise very good with horses.
“Sometimes things are hard for us in our chosen field. I know that from personal experience,” Coleman said with a commiserating expression.
“What happened?” Miranda asked.
“I couldn’t figure out the answer to a riddle,” he said with a sigh. “That’s the project Bruce and I did together. He is a fertility expert, and I tried to make our subjects reproduce. It was something that plagued me daily until I left the project. Success would have been my professional crowning achievement.”
His tone was contained, but his voice had more emotion than the casual humor he normally used when visiting the Guilford family.
“Did you leave because you...” Miranda didn’t want to insinuate he gave up. But sometimes a person walked away when things got to be too much. Other people did, anyway. According to her Scottish grandparents, giving up wasn’t an option for her.
“I was dismissed,” Coleman said in a clipped tone. “Even experts have their troubles. Don’t let this setback impede you. I am curious as to why you’re trying to be a farrier instead of a trainer.”
“I like molten materials,” Miranda said sheepishly. “I did a glass blowing workshop when I was fourteen, but being a glass artisan doesn’t make much money. I wanted to work with horses, so it seemed logical.”
She checked on the Guilfords again, and Dennis waved at her. He had that rugged manly look of a certain type of Hollywood A-lister in a cowboy movie. He was much more at ease in the saddle than he had been when she first arrived.
Turning her eyes forward again, she asked Coleman, “You became a geneticist because of your family, right? Was someone sick? Are you trying to cure cancer?”
While Jason gobbled a few more marshmallows, Miranda walked over to pick up the bottles. Between chews, he critiqued her throwing technique.
“You should use a wide stance so you’re balanced and don’t topple over.”
“I was already doing that.” Miranda worked very hard not to roll her eyes at his suggestion. “My balance is fine. How do you think I ride horses? Hold on tight and wish for the best?”
“Suit yourself,” he said, retreating under the cover of darkness.
Miranda shrugged it off and let him go. Jason couldn’t help her from any personal experience manifesting fire. Just like she didn’t know what it was like to shift into wolf skin. He could only bring her something to drink if she got dehydrated from practice.
Feeling whimsical, Miranda made a ball of flame that she bounced from the mouths of one open bottle to another, like the dancing dot over a TV sing-along song. She started moving it faster and faster. Then she added another level of difficulty by sending another orb counter-clockwise after it.
Jason still hadn’t come back after a few minutes, so Miranda begrudgingly widened her stance and crouched low to do some aiming tricks. She tried to vary the fire’s properties, especially the temperature of the burn, which influenced how it appeared in the visible spectrum. She was concentrating on that so much that it took her by surprise when a familiar gray wolf ran between her legs.
Miranda let out a yelp and clutched at his shoulders like he was a mustang. She tightened her knees at his sides and lowered her body parallel over his, burying her face in his neck as he ran around the dark perimeter of the dog park.
He galloped for a while and eventually slowed enough to unceremoniously plop on the ground. Miranda tumbled off his back and laughed into the darkened sky. As though wrapped in sublime peace, she raised her fingertips to heaven and painted fire in the air as children often did with sparklers.
Rolling on her side toward the still wolfy Jason, Miranda studied him closely. It was the first time she’d seen his wolf form since the day he revealed he was a werewolf. She touched his lupine face with his black-rimmed silver eyes. His thick coat of fur was silver-gray with an undertone of black. The outer fur was not soft and cuddly, but Miranda still enjoyed petting him.
When she rubbed the space at the top of his nose, he closed his eyes in pleasure. Then he jammed his nose in her face and licked her cheek.
Miranda sputtered and screeched, “No kisses!”
He smiled at her with his full set of teeth that reminded her of the fairy tale she had been practicing in ASL. Miranda sat up and scooted back so he could see her hands. Then she tried to sign Little Red Riding Hood. After a few signs, he let out a chuffing sound that Miranda assumed was laughter. He put his head on Miranda’s knee as she finished the tale, and at the end of the story, Jason shifted back into his human form.
[And they all lived happily ever after,] he signed and propped his chin on the heel of his hand.
Miranda giggled because that wasn’t the usual end of Red Riding Hood. “Are you coming with me to the movies tomorrow so I can introduce you to my friends?”
He looked away. “Is Val’s sister going to be there?”
“Yes. And Avi, Roger, and Steve. We’ll all be there.” Miranda put her hand on his bare shoulder. “I’d like to introduce them to you.”
“I’m not ready to bond with your humans.”
“Fine, then. Be that way.” She was disappointed, but there would be other times to ask him to do things.
Miranda stretched out beside Jason on her stomach so they were shoulder to shoulder again. She put her hand over his back and made showers of sparks dance over his naked skin. Jason smiled at the sparks, so she tried to bring her fire as close to him as possible without setting him ablaze. Miranda liked the intimacy of his trust.
“I was thinking about something,” Jason said. “It’s dangerous and probably a really bad idea. What if you went to a burning building?”
“Like some kind of weird spectator?” Miranda stopped emitting sparks.
“You can stop a fire, but how much of it can you stop? The whole thing? Just a little bit? Maybe you could put out a whole inferno. Wouldn’t that be cool?”
It would be, sure, and quite unexpected. “That’s like being a reverse arsonist.”
Jason had a serious look on his face as he sat up, and Miranda couldn’t help but notice the flash of his delicate parts as he changed position.
“You said you were afraid of what would happen if your power raged out of control. Maybe you need to find fires that are already blazing and stop them. Then you’d never have to worry about your own fire ever getting out of control again. You could already trust yourself to put them out.”
“That’s a good thought,” Miranda said after a while. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself first. It’s my special talent, not yours.”
“Ideas are easy,” Jason said as he put both legs across her back. “You’d still have to do all the hard work yourself.”
“What are you doing?” she protested, laughing into the ground. “Get your legs off me, you weirdo, and get dressed.”
“Boring,” he complained but got up to fetch his clothing.
Miranda stood and set up the practice targets again while considering Jason’s suggestion to seek out already burning fires. It would be a sneaky way to practice without raising suspicions about her real nature. Yes, she was going to try that.
“Hey, Jason,” Miranda asked as her mind flitted to something else about her power. “How come you can see my aura? Is it a werewolf thing?”
He turned toward her, this time in pants and smoothing the hem of his shirts at his waist. “I don’t know. I don’t think it was something special they knew to train us for.”
Miranda nodded and admitted, “I’m always afraid I’ll burn someone I’m close to.”
It happened with her grandfather, and she’d been casting sparks over Jason’s naked body like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Jason placed her hand at the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “I’m not fireproof. I know that for sure. I think you didn’t burn me because you didn’t want to.”
Miranda wasn’t sure that could be true. The answer sounded nice, though, so she took the comfort that was offered. Then she put her attention back on target practice until they decided to pack up for the night.
“I’ve been thinking about something...” Jason said as they walked to her truck.
“Of course you have,” Miranda teased. “What is it now?”
He paused at the side of her truck. “If there are more people who can do what you can, what do you call yourselves?”
“Farriers. We’re called farriers,” Miranda said with a smirk.
“Yeah... you know what I mean.”
She drummed her fingers on the door frame. “A group of us? That would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“As a werewolf I’m a shape shifter, right?” Jason propped his elbow on the side of her truck and stared at her. “Maybe you can call yourself an energy shifter. I’ve seen your fire energy connect to everything. It doesn’t die. It moves. It shifts.”
Miranda blinked a few times but didn’t say anything immediately. That made her ability sound wonderful and lovely, not dangerous and shameful.
“I like that. I like it a lot.”
[Cool,] Jason signed with a big grin on his face. “Energy shifter it is then.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
On Sunday in the late morning, Miranda sat in the back of an extended cab truck that was towing a horse trailer to the Dryden Rail Trail. Bruce Guilford drove with John Coleman in the front seat, and Dennis, a chatterbox beside her. He sat so close he could have been in her lap. He pulled out his phone and showed Dr. Coleman a video of Miranda playing with fire and the wolf Jason at the riding arena.
“Put that away!” Miranda hissed at Dennis. Maybe he didn’t know her and Jason’s secrets, but showing that video to everyone wouldn’t help keep them hidden. “Your dad is going to think I didn’t protect his horses.”
“Why would he think that? You’re amazing with all animals.” Dennis stared at her with adoration that made her uncomfortable. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”
“It’s one of the reasons I hired her,” Bruce said. Dr. Guilford hadn’t talked much on the drive, but Miranda hoped that was because he was focused on the road.
Dennis’s newfound attention was a novelty that she both liked and disliked. How many times had Miranda wished for someone to look at her with interest and mean it? He didn’t know the real her, though. Not the person who set things on fire or made sparks dance over a werewolf’s naked skin.
Miranda had always told herself she wanted a relationship with someone normal who blended in well with others. Dennis was handsome, charming, and rich. Why shouldn’t she return his affections? There was nothing to say she couldn’t enjoy a short-term fling.
On the other hand, Bruce Guilford hadn’t hired her to have romps with his son. Not that she knew of, anyway. Given that she didn’t have a job to go to when this one was over, Miranda might do well to take better care of the one she had.
In the instant it took her to think all that, Dennis passed his phone over to Coleman, who tapped the screen. The picture changed to one of a furry-faced Jason.
“Tell me about this wolf.”
She didn’t want to tell Coleman anything about Jason, but Dennis was fast with his tongue yet again.
“Showed up one day, and Miranda treated him like a puppy. It was like magic watching her tame him.” Dennis smiled proudly at her.
“How did he get on my property?” Bruce asked.
Miranda thought of a fast lie. “I think he jumped over the fence. I told security and Brendan so they could keep watch for him in case he came back.”
“Good thinking,” Bruce said with a nod.
Coleman continued swiping through several more pictures of Miranda with the wolf that she hadn’t known Dennis had taken. In one photo, her fire thankfully looked like a harmless lens flare. She cursed herself for not making Dennis delete his video immediately. They’d been taking care of the horses after wolf-Jason left, and she’d forgotten.
Because she knew Jason’s secret now, Miranda could see him as the wolf in Dennis’s photos. He had been positively attentive to her. In hindsight, Blue’s strange behavior toward the wolf made a lot more sense.
Coleman swiped the photos again, and there was a photo of her and Jason outside the door of her suite on Friday night. Dennis had been messing with his phone before he approached them, but she hadn’t realized he’d taken their picture. That was a little creepy, and it was the second time he’d taken unwanted photos of her.
In the photo, both of Jason’s shirts were rolled up to the crook of his elbow. He’d shown her something on the violin earlier and hadn’t rolled the sleeves down when he was done. With his left hand against the wall as he faced her, Jason’s lab tattoo was showing. Miranda gasped as she realized how dangerous that photo could be in the wrong hands.
Coleman flicked his eyes to her. “Who is this?”
“Just a friend. He’s teaching me Sign Language.” Miranda tried to grab the phone, but Coleman held it out of each and zoomed in on the shot.
“A friend who’ll be jealous when we go on our date?” Dennis asked. “He was standing really close to you, Miranda.”
In a panic, she heated the phone so hot and fast that Coleman dropped it. The phone bounced off the middle console before sliding onto the floor near Dennis’s feet.
“What the hell?” he said in dismay at the cracked screen.
Miranda felt the heat of guilt in her cheeks while Dennis checked it out.
“I didn’t pay for an exploding phone,” he said. “At least I have it backed up to the cloud. I’ll get a new one when we get back as long as we’re not gone too long.”
The van got quiet after that except for John Coleman and his peppermint wrappers. He popped them with the frequency of someone who might have been trying to give up smoking for all Miranda could tell. The quiet radio chimed in with an announcement about an industrial fire back in Ithaca. The news announcer mentioned that there had been multiple fires in what was a suspected rash of arson attempts. Those were places she could use her talents, just as Jason had suggested.
Coleman interrupted Miranda’s thoughts by asking, “Where’s your friend from?”
“Chi—” Miranda started to say. “Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
“Oh, so you two must talk about cowboys and horses and stuff,” Dennis said.
“Not really, no.” And even if they had, it wasn’t his business.
“Did you tell him about the wolf that visited you?” Dennis gave her an intense look, but Miranda darted her eyes over to Bruce again.
“I don’t think we’ll have a problem with that wolf anymore,” she assured.
“So what made you want to learn Sign Language?” Coleman asked her.
“I did it a little as a kid, but nothing too deep,” Miranda said. “It seemed like something that would be good to know.”
“Any second language is good to know,” Bruce added.
Being proud of Jason, she told them, “He even taught his cat the sign for food!”
Miranda grinned wide as she modeled it for Dennis. “We got talking about forms of conditioning and such, including how some scientists have used Sign Language with primates. I didn’t know it could be used with other animals.”
“Oh, it can,” Coleman assured her. “One of the projects I worked on used it extensively. I didn’t learn it myself because I wasn’t a handler. It is interesting, though.”
Dr. Guilford pulled the van and horse trailer into the parking lot a short time later because Freeman wasn’t far away. Miranda supervised each of the men claiming his horse. Bruce took Blue while Dennis took Delilah, since he usually rode her in lessons. Miranda had Delphi, and Dr. Coleman rode Brendan’s borrowed horse for the day.
“Are you still wanting to buy a horse for yourself?” Miranda asked Coleman.
“Let me see how this trail ride goes before I decide,” he replied after he got in the saddle.
They each took supplies to have a meal at the end of the trail before they would turn back.
“Your trail rides in Montana were wonderful,” Bruce told her, “but I think your meals afterward were my favorite.”
“It’s just because you worked up an appetite,” Miranda deflected.
“John, one trip she took us on ended with rain. I was ravenous and expecting the worst, but she still got a fire going. It was the darndest thing.”
Miranda remembered that and how she’d been so frustrated. The riders had been unskilled, and the horses weren’t comfortable. Add the rain to that, and the night was nothing great. In the morning, though, Bruce first floated the idea of her coming to work for him in Ithaca.
Keeping her eyes on Dennis, Miranda mounted Delphi and then took the lead position to take them down the trail. During their leisurely ride, she shared some things she had learned about the area where they were riding. Bruce added several details of his own since he’d grown up nearby, and John looked interested in the various stories. Most importantly, Dennis was riding well.
When Miranda checked on Dennis, he answered with a big smile. “This is better than the riding arena. Maybe I should have gone with Dad to Montana, too.”
“Maybe. In the meantime, he brought Montana to you.”
Bruce and Dennis started talking to each other, so Miranda didn’t interrupt the father-son moment. She quietly enjoyed the trail and the multi-colored foliage of New York, so different from her Montana home. She didn’t claim to know anything about the city, but the state itself was beautiful with an old-world charm.
Coleman caught up to Miranda and smiled to get her attention. “I heard you had a job interview last weekend. How did that go?”
“Not well,” she admitted. “I’m good with horses, but he couldn’t see it. My classes are sometimes harder than I expected.”
She pressed her lips together because she didn’t want to share her inadequacies. Miranda had already told Jason about her struggles with some of the technical aspects of farriery. The detailed anatomy knowledge was essential if she didn’t want to permanently injure a horse, but the information wouldn’t stay in her head. She found it completely irritating when she was otherwise very good with horses.
“Sometimes things are hard for us in our chosen field. I know that from personal experience,” Coleman said with a commiserating expression.
“What happened?” Miranda asked.
“I couldn’t figure out the answer to a riddle,” he said with a sigh. “That’s the project Bruce and I did together. He is a fertility expert, and I tried to make our subjects reproduce. It was something that plagued me daily until I left the project. Success would have been my professional crowning achievement.”
His tone was contained, but his voice had more emotion than the casual humor he normally used when visiting the Guilford family.
“Did you leave because you...” Miranda didn’t want to insinuate he gave up. But sometimes a person walked away when things got to be too much. Other people did, anyway. According to her Scottish grandparents, giving up wasn’t an option for her.
“I was dismissed,” Coleman said in a clipped tone. “Even experts have their troubles. Don’t let this setback impede you. I am curious as to why you’re trying to be a farrier instead of a trainer.”
“I like molten materials,” Miranda said sheepishly. “I did a glass blowing workshop when I was fourteen, but being a glass artisan doesn’t make much money. I wanted to work with horses, so it seemed logical.”
She checked on the Guilfords again, and Dennis waved at her. He had that rugged manly look of a certain type of Hollywood A-lister in a cowboy movie. He was much more at ease in the saddle than he had been when she first arrived.
Turning her eyes forward again, she asked Coleman, “You became a geneticist because of your family, right? Was someone sick? Are you trying to cure cancer?”
