“I . . .” I met Caresa’s gaze. She blinked away the shine from her eyes and said, “I think that is the most poetic and heartrending view on soul mates I have ever heard.”
My heart pounded. My hands grew damp, and shivers darted down my spine. “You do?” When my father had told this to his friends over the years, most had ridiculed him as over-sentimental.
Secretly, I had always thought my father had been right. I saw the undying love he had for my mother in his eyes every day. She had been his everything.
Caresa’s hand went to her chest, right above where her heart lay. “To have someone feel that way about you. To have someone love you so much for so long.” She shook her head. “How could anyone ever wish for more?”
“The prince may feel that way about you.” I didn’t know why I said it. But at the mention of the prince, Caresa’s expression hardened and she cast her eyes away. The words infused my mouth with a bitter taste.
“We shall see,” Caresa answered after a beat, but even I, a man who had no experience with women, or even people, could hear the doubt lacing her words. She believed the prince was not her split-apart.
He would never make her spirit whole.
We turned the final corner onto a narrower track that led home. Just as we reached the gate, Caresa said, “How did your father live all those years without her?”
This time it was my turn to find water in my eyes. “He said a part of her soul lived within me. He saw her every day through me. I looked like her and had her personality. And he knew he would meet her again in the afterlife. He said that years on earth were nothing to wait through. Not when soul mates’ bound eternities were promised after this life. Until then, he was content to be a devoted loving father to me . . . to his vines.”
A lone tear had escaped onto Caresa’s smooth, tanned cheek. I wanted to reach out and wipe it away. Caresa chased it away with her hand. “It gives us all hope, does it not?” she whispered. “That we may even have a mere scrap of the same?”
“My father said you would know when you found it. It may not be apparent at first, but eventually, an overwhelming sense of peace would settle in your heart, and you would just know . . . know that you were bonded for life.”
“Abrielle,” she whispered my mother’s name, tipping her head up to the sky as though my mother could perhaps hear her in paradise. She must have read some of the articles my father had placed on the tack room wall. She dropped her head. “She was a national champion in dressage?”
“Yes. She rode until she fell pregnant . . . then she never rode again. She set her dressage routines to opera, symphonies or choral music.”
“So do I. When the competition calls for it,” Caresa remarked fondly. When I looked at her this time, it took us longer to break our locked stares.
We arrived at the paddock and drew our horses to a stop. I pointed to the small practice arena where my horses now grazed most days. “My father built this for my mother. He would tend the vines and she would ride. After her death, he taught himself dressage in her honor. He even trained Rosa to a high standard before he got ill. It helped him keep her memory alive, I think.”
Caresa smiled as she looked at the arena. I dismounted from Nico and took the reins over his head, ready to lead him away, when she said, “Achille?” I looked at her over Nico’s back. “Do you have the music you play in the fields nearby?”
My eyebrows pulled down in confusion, but I nodded.
“I don’t suppose you have “Sogno” by Andrea Bocelli, by any chance?”
“Yes.”
Caresa squeezed her legs and steered Rosa through the gate to the paddock. She turned to me. “Could you get it for me, please?”
I didn’t question her further. I tied Nico’s reins to the fence and ducked inside the barn. My old cassette player was on the counter where I always left it. I took the Andrea Bocelli cassette from its case and inserted it.
When I went outside and saw Caresa in the arena, I stopped dead. Caresa was schooling Rosa, warming her up.
She was doing dressage.
Only she was not only doing it, it was a flawless execution as she urged Rosa into a smooth extended trot. Caresa was sitting perfectly in her seat, even more so when she turned Rosa and brought her into a piaffe—an elegant and complex diagonal movement—directly across the paddock. The mare was slightly rusty in her movements, but I could see that she had retained some memories of my father’s training.
Caresa saw me watching and came over to the edge of the fence. “Press play when I give you the signal.”
I sat on a stone bench just behind the fence and watched her move to the center. She closed her eyes, leaning forward to run her hand over Rosa’s neck. It looked like Caresa was whispering something to her. When she straightened, she looked my way and lowered her head. I pressed play. The music began.
Then I sat, mesmerized, as Caresa began an obviously well-practiced routine to the slow tempo of Andrea Bocelli’s voice. Her movements were fluid and poised, like a prima ballerina on stage. Rosa responded to every subtle command Caresa gave, the Andalusian doing what her breed did best—dancing with breathless grace.
She was almost as beautiful as the angelic rider on her back.
Even in fitness clothes with her dark hair pulled back off her face, Caresa’s beauty was a shining light, a beacon. Her smile was soft on her lush lips as she executed each move with practiced ease. Her skin was flushed from the exercise. Or maybe it was from doing something she loved.
As the music faded out, Caresa brought Rosa back to the center of the arena. My jaw dropped when Caresa worked her legs and Rosa dipped to bow. I saw the burst of joy take Caresa hold as Rosa completed the difficult move.
When Rosa righted her stance, Caresa directed an elegant bow my way. The only things I was aware of were her happiness, my awe and the singing birds nearby.
Caresa dismounted and removed Rosa’s tack. After Rosa had been turned out to graze, Caresa returned, carrying the saddle in her hands and the bridle over her shoulder.
When Caresa approached me, I had absolutely no words.
“She is an excellent horse,” Caresa commented. “Your father has trained her well. She is a natural at dressage, but then most Andalusians are.”
I nodded. I wanted to tell Caresa that only a rider of her caliber could get such a performance from a fresh horse. But I didn’t. Something inside me suddenly felt different, stealing my confidence.
I didn’t know what it was . . . it made me feel both empty and filled at the same time.
A roll of thunder sounded in the distance. Caresa looked at the approaching gray clouds. “There’s a storm coming. I had better go.” I still didn’t say anything as she took the tack into the tack room then, with a delicate wave goodbye, headed for the path toward the main house.
A flash of lightning illuminated the sky. “Caresa?” She turned. “You . . . you are welcome to come back tomorrow . . . if you wish, if you don’t have any engagements to attend. To harvest, and maybe school Rosa, if you want? She . . . she has no one else to ride her.” I ducked my head, unable to look her in the eye. My heart was beating incredibly hard, so hard I rubbed my hand across my chest, searching for relief.
“I would like that,” she replied quietly. I didn’t look at her again. I didn’t watch her leave. Instead I removed Nico’s tack and put the horses in their stables. I gave them fresh water and a hay net each, and then the heavens opened.
Taking the cassette player, I was about to go and crush the grapes in the barn. But when I looked over at the tack room, I changed my plan. I entered the small room, walked to the locked closet at the back and unlocked the door. A spray of dust and the distinct scent of stale leather assaulted my senses. I flicked on the light, my mother’s old horse equipment suddenly revealed.
I took the pieces out, one by one, assessing what I could salvage and what had perished beyond recall. Then I lit a fire and sat down beside it, saddle soap and wax at my feet.
Against the climbing orange flames of the burner and the pounding rain hitting the roof above, I began the hard task of restoring the tools of a lost dream, of bringing them back to life.