Second Chance

chapter 2




Dressed in a pair of sweat pants and an old t-shirt, Ava sipped on a cup of herbal tea while flipping through the ranch bills that were coming due over the next week. She loved having her ranch, but the paperwork was the pits. A necessary evil.

Working solidly for the next half hour, Ava wrote out checks for all the bills that were due, which weren’t that many. There was something nice in the small nature of her farm. She would never get rich the way things were, but that wasn’t important to her. It was important that she was able to handle the ranch on her own, ensuring that she didn’t need to depend on anyone else. It didn’t take Freud this time for Ava to figure out those feelings. She clearly was having some abandonment issues over her parents’ death. Which made it all the more weird that she was having feelings of loneliness. And daydreaming about having a man in her life.

There was that sharp pain again in her chest. Why does it still hurt even four years later? As if feeling her sadness, Bing laid his big head in her lap and gave a little whine in commiseration. She could always count on Bing to make her feel better. She stroked his soft head, winding her fingers down to the back of his ear for a nice scratch.

Dogs always made everything better. Well, not all dogs. Just Bing.

Ava continued thinking about her parents. Jaron and Selena Clairmont had been married for twenty-five years when they had died together in a terrible car crash. They weren’t even traveling far. Just a routine trip to the grocery store. Unfortunately, the mid-sized Virginia town in which they lived was also home to a chronic drunk by the name of Bill Whettington. While Jaron and Selena talked about how their day had been and what would be for dinner that night, Bill Whettington plowed through a red light while her parents had the green. Just that quickly, Ava was alone in this world.

Ava had always thought her parents were nothing short of saints but after they were gone, she could only envision them as angels. They had always encouraged her to pursue her dreams, teaching her to face adversity with a positive attitude and a determined work ethic to be successful. Throughout Ava’s life, they had scrimped and saved for her to be able to pursue her greatest passion… horses.

Ava had been riding from the age of six and never looked back. She always knew her life’s career would be centered on horses. As that fickle bitch fate would have it, Ava had just started at The University of Virginia pursuing a degree in Equine Studies when that bastard Bill Whettington killed her parents. Her world was turned upside down and now here she was, four years later, running a horse ranch in Wyoming.

Ava never understood why some people said, “something good always comes out of something bad”. Sure, she had her dream job on her dream ranch, pursuing her life’s passion. But that was all because her parents had been killed by a drunk driver. She would never consider that to be something good that came out of her parents’ death. That was just circumstance, plain and simple, and she would give this all up just to be able to hug her parents one more time.

Still, Ava couldn’t be any more grateful to her parents than she was when she learned that they’d left her this ranch when they died. She had no clue they even owned it. There was some vague mention in their will that the property had been owned by her father’s family for generations.

It appeared she came by her passion for horses honestly. Generations of Clairmonts had worked this land and raised horses. Admittedly, she was in a state of shock following her parents’ death, so even to this day, she really wasn’t clear on all the details. All she knew was the estate attorney assured her she held the title to this ranch free and clear, and her parents had funded a trust with $1,000,000 in life insurance to help her get started. So she withdrew from college, packed her Subaru wagon, and headed west.

Ava still puffed with pride when she thought about how she’d started her business. She knew she wanted to breed horses, but more than that, she wanted to train them. She’d always had an affinity with training. A horse whisperer she’d been called on more than one occasion.

So she’d moved to Moose Gap, Wyoming, taken $100,000 of her parents’ insurance money and hired the best ranch manager in the area. Her requirements were clear. One year of employment, and the manager would teach her all there was to know about the business. At the end of the year, she would give him a $25,000 bonus and he would go along his merry way.

That was almost three years ago and J&S Ranch had since become a modest success. Well, if “modest” meant that she was breaking even and able to draw a small salary, then yes, she was modestly successful. She had regular clientele and was able to start offering riding lessons on the weekends. Sure, she worked eighty hours a week, but it was a job she loved. Not just love, I adore it. Yes, Ava adored her life. Except for that pesky loneliness that was plaguing her. Why was she so unsettled about this lately?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a low growl from Bing. He had lifted his head from her lap and was staring intently at the front door. His ears were perked slightly forward, and the hackles on his back were raised.

“What is it, Bing?”

He growled again and his hackles rose a little higher.

“Come on Bing, you’re starting to freak me out just a tiny bit here.”

Bing responded by looking at Ava and tilting his head slightly to the side. The quizzical look on his face put Ava at ease.

“Do you need to go outside before we hit the bed?”

Bing barked once and ran to the door. Ava followed. She turned on her front porch light, opened the door and Bing ran off into the night to do whatever business he had on his agenda. While waiting on him, Ava took her tea cup to the kitchen and rinsed it out. She glanced around the kitchen to see if anything else was out of place.

The kitchen was her favorite room in the old farmhouse. She had renovated it when she moved to the ranch. It had knotty, pine floors which she’d restored and white washed cabinets she’d painted herself. She’d splurged on the stainless steel appliances but reasoned that she more than made up for it by the junkyard find that was her kitchen table. The ten foot table made of reclaimed chestnut wood had hand carved, square inlays and a trestle base. It sat under a wrought iron chandelier with metal roosters upholding the lights on each arm. She had to do some minor refinishing but the table was in amazing condition. Of course, she had a hodge-podge of mismatched chairs surrounding it, but she didn’t think that in any way diminished its beauty.

Ava turned off the kitchen light and went to let Bing in. She opened the door but he wasn’t on the porch. That’s odd. Bing always went out and did his business fairly quickly. He was not one to run off or linger outside at night. Ava told herself this was because he was too afraid to be out in the dark by himself, but in reality, Ava was the one who didn’t like the dark and was more comforted when he was by her side.

“BING! Come on!”

Nothing.

“Let’s go knuckle head. I’m tired”.

Ava listened intently and couldn’t hear him at all. She peered hard into the darkness surrounding the house. The porch light illuminated just a few feet outward, and past that she couldn’t see much. Over to the right, the outside light on the main barn illuminated the front of the barn and part of the paddock, but the area around that was pitch black as well.

This is just great. I have to go find my dog in the sinister black of the night. Probably a serial killer lurking behind a bush, just waiting for the dumb female to walk his way.

Ava slipped on her tennis shoes that she kept by the front door and stepped out on the porch. The night had cooled the air considerably and Ava felt a slight chill on her arms.

“BING!”

Even though Ava was a little spooked in the dark, she didn’t feel any real apprehension. Moose Gap was a very safe community and crime was virtually non-existent. She was sure that Bing was just sniffing around and got caught up in some delicious rabbity scent.

THUMP.

Ava jumped and her head snapped toward the barn. Ava stilled and listened intently.

THUMP.

It was definitely coming from the barn and her first thought was that one of the horses was kicking the inside of the stall. Or maybe it was Bing somehow stuck inside. Which was ridiculous, because how could he have gotten inside? She was pretty sure she had closed the door and secured the latch. It wasn’t locked, because, hey, this was Moose Gap, Wyoming and no one ever stole anything out here. But being the diligent ranch owner that she was, and wanting to hurry up and find Bing so she could go to bed, Ava headed toward the barn to investigate the weird noise.

Stepping into the light at the barn door, she felt a weird prickling on the back of her head, as if her hair decided to stand at military attention. Mentally shaking off her foreboding, Ava opened the door and walked inside. Reaching to the right for the interior light switch, Ava gave it a flick. The overhead lights came on and flooded the interior with bright warmth. She didn’t see Bing.

Walking forward, she approached the first stall which belonged to Beastie Girl, a small, delicate little mare she had bought about a year ago. As she reached the stall door, Beastie Girl stuck her head out and gave a soft nicker. The sound was comforting. Moreover, Beastie Girl was calm, if not curious as to why she was getting a visitor at this time of the night. If something sinister was in the barn, no way would Beastie Girl be so calm. Two more heads popped out of their stalls.

“Hey King… Hey Macy. Seen any serial killers lurking around?”

Both horses just stared at her.

“How about Bing? Have you seen that doofus dog?”

Again, more staring.

“Well, thanks for all of your help. Your support means the world to me. Truly, I wouldn’t be what I am today without the three of you.”

Giving each horse a soft rub on their muzzles, Ava walked the remaining length of the barn to the back door. Opening it to step outside, she was thankful for her foresight in installing lighting on the back of the barn too. She was immediately bathed in a soft, sulfurous glow. Ava peered into the dark but couldn’t see anything past the edge of the light.

“Bing, come on buddy. It’s time to go inside.”

She listened but heard nothing.

Now she was really starting to worry about Bing. What if he got bitten by a snake he had disturbed while it slept? Or fell down a ravine? Or carted off by dog thieves? Okay, the last one was stretching it a bit, but in the Wild West, there were always dangers out in the dark.

Ava decided to head back to the house and get a flashlight so she could check out more of the property. In fact, she decided to grab her gun too. It would be just her luck to run into a bear and not be prepared. Damn dog. Remind me again why I love you so much? Rather than cut back through the barn, Ava decided to walk around it. Between the lights on the front and back of the barn, she should have enough ambient light to see where she was going.

Ava closed and latched the back barn door, and headed to the right. She had taken two steps when she immediately tripped over a shovel that she had left lying on the ground from her mucking duties earlier in the day. Falling forward, Ava landed on both her hands and knees.

“Shit, shit, shit”, Ava muttered as she pushed herself up off the ground and wiped her dirty hands on the legs of her sweatpants.

Way to go Grace Kelly.

Grabbing the shovel, Ava stomped off along the side of the barn toward the house. Being careful to watch where she walked, in case her stupidity had caused her to leave any other farming implements lying around, Ava reached the end of the barn. From the corner of her right eye, she caught a bit of movement.

Bing! Ava turned with a smile on her face although she fully intended to give him a little tongue lashing for making her work this hard to find him. Instead, Ava came face to face with what she could only describe as a monster straight from a nightmare.