“I just— I can’t believe you’re helping me,” she said quietly.

“Why wouldn’t I help you?”

“Because,” Gilly said, mostly to her stomach, “they were terrible to you. I mean, we were terrible. The sign-up sheet? I honestly didn’t know what they wrote. But I knew they were doing something. I shouldn’t have, you know, helped them.”

I didn’t want to say, “Yes, you were mean,” because I didn’t want Gilly to feel bad, but I didn’t want to say “No,” because it wasn’t true. I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “This is your place?”

It was a ranch just beyond the meadow. The house was big and beige and had a paddock and a barn in the front, with loads of different machines parked, and maybe forgotten, on the front lawn. There was one of those lawn mowers you ride. Two bicycles. A wading pool that was cracked up the center.

“That’s all my little brothers’ stuff,” Gilly said. “They’re at some sports thing.”

George moseyed past the house and through another gate toward what looked like a barn.

“He okay?”

Gilly sucked in a sliver of air. “He’s fine for now. I’ll get my dad to—”

Oh, right, my caution sensors clicked on. A dad.

On cue, as we opened the door, a big voice boomed from inside, “GILLY?!”

Gilly’s dad was a giant silver-haired man in a flannel shirt. He bounded over, eyes filled with worry, a dishrag in one hand. “Where have you been? What happened?”

As he stood in front of us, I had to actually tilt my head back to take him in. He looked like a muscular Santa. He was as wide as Gilly was thin, with hands like baseball mitts. The cloud of silver hair on the top of his head was distinct from the mostly cropped hair I’d seen on other men in Greenville.

“George bolted,” Gilly explained as her father paused to, I imagine, take in the fact that Gilly was in her bra. I smiled a smile I hoped communicated that I was not necessarily (although I was) responsible for the lack of shirt. “Also this is. . .Anne. She found George in the woods and basically saved me.”

“Hi.” I waved. “I mean. I found Gilly. I wouldn’t say sa ved.”

“That damn horse!” her father boomed. Then, resetting, he turned to me and said, “Thank you, Anne, for saving my daughter from her horse, who I’m going to go shoot.”

“Dad! That’s not funny,” Gilly huffed.

“Not meant to be,” her father said as he reached out to take his daughter’s arm.

“Also don’t let Anne see the blood on my leg,” Gilly noted.

“Or I’ll barf,” I added.