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that took time.

Seventeen
    Another Sunday morning and another church service Charlotte had been able to elude. Jonas came back from his church to find Charlotte brushing Beelzebub in his stall.
    “Hey missy. You didn’t go to church again this morning did you?”
    “Nope I didn’t. Much prefer the company of horses than Miss Haden and the stupid tattletale girls. Don’t believe in that stuff anyways.”
    “You don’t believe in God?”
    “I don’t think so. I can’t figure out who God is anyway. The minister says that he’s up there in the sky…looking down on us, taking care of us. I don’t believe him. Otherwise, Lee and I would have parents. And awful things wouldn’t happen…like Lee being tied to the tree. How come you believe in God?”
    “Well, I just do I guess. Always have…makes me feel safe. It’s called faith.”
    “Why did my mama leave me then? Was I bad? Was that God punishing me because I did something wrong?”
    “I don’t know why those things happen Charlotte…why your mama did what she did. That was a terrible thing. But I bet it didn’t have anything to do with you. She must not have felt like she had a choice. Everybody is just trying to do the best they can with what they got. I think God sometimes gives us trials and tribulations to see what we do with ’em. But I don’t believe for a second that God punishes you.”
    “Well maybe he doesn’t, but that’s what it feels like. I wish I could feel safe like you.”
    “You know Charlotte, God isn’t just up in the sky. He’s down here too. I see him in my horses. I see him in you. That’s what makes me feel safe.”
    Charlotte scrunched up her nose. “That’s funny. You see God in me? In Beelzebub? What about in old Miss Haden? Do you see God in her?
    Jonas chuckled. “Well, maybe not Miss Haden. But even when we don’t like someone, we gotta treat them with respect. With compassion. Humans and otherwise.”
    “I’ll never respect Miss Haden. Not ever.”
    “All comes down to treating people the way that you want to be treated. It’s the old do unto others…like the Bible says? Miss Haden doesn’t understand that. Maybe you will though someday…Come on now missy, guess you just got your church for today. Let’s wash up for lunch.”

Eighteen
    Two years later Charlotte was still at the stable, waking in the cold mists of the morning, washing herself in the frigid water of the barrel, mucking out the stalls, exercising the horses, currying them, feeding them. She’d learned to ride. She could ride Beelzebub now; she could ride him with effortless grace—stallion and girl, one coursing creature.
    The horse had tested her and found in her a likely student of himself, and then with a delicacy and mystery, he’d instructed her. In the end there was a deep and wordless communion between them, borne out of a hard-won trust. Jonas saw it come to life out of nothing. He watched it. It deepened and widened and then swirled around the two of them so palpably that you had to stand back if you were not to be pulled into the powerful vortex of it.
    And Miss Haden? Any inkling of a thought about the boyish girl approaching and she willed her mind to go blank. Let her stay in the stable and sling the horse manure. If that’s what she wanted her life to be, then so be it. She was Jonas’s problem. The same could not be said of Lee…that wretched boy was still hanging around the main house. Headmaster Meade had inexplicably given him a job as handyman. She was sure that damn man gave him the job just to spite her.
    And Lee? Lee never stopped thinking of Charlotte. At seventeen his thoughts had been murky and sultry. At eighteen they grew precise. They grew urgent.

    One afternoon, Lee was leaning against the stable door, watching Charlotte ride up on Beelzebub.
    “Let me get on,” he said as she approached.
    “I don’t think so. You’ll get hurt.” She swung down in a dismount.
    Lee grabbed the reins from