Warm Nights in Magnolia Bay by Babette Jongh (best summer books .TXT) 📗

At least here at the farm, the animals kept Abby from burrowing under the covers and staying there until her body petrified. The farm, Abby decided, was a place of healing, not just for the animals who found their way here, but for people, as well.

Georgia stretched out with a groan and snuggled up close. Abby turned out the lamp and stared at the moon through the guest-bedroom window’s sheer curtain. The animals were all snug in their paddocks, stalls, coops, and cages, with full bellies and plenty of companionship.

Abby sighed, expecting the usual feeling of contentment that followed a full day of hard, satisfying work with the animals on the farm.

But instead, she felt sadness. Loneliness. Betrayal. Abandonment.

Sadness, yes of course. Abby was still learning to live with despair over the child she’d had to leave behind in order to save herself. When faced with the decision of being a whole person alone or a half person with someone else, Abby had looked to her parents’ example and chosen to be whole, even though she’d had to cut her heart in half to do it. So now, she was walking around bleeding but whole, except for the part of her heart she’d had no choice but to leave behind.

Even though she knew that Emily wasn’t in physical danger, Abby mourned the loss of a child she’d come to love as her own. Knowing Blair’s self-centered tendencies, she feared for Emily’s tender spirit. Abandoned first by her birth mother at the age of two, and then by Abby at the age of five, what chance did Emily have to form a concept of motherly love, of compassion, of belonging? Abby had struggled with those concepts herself, though her mother had never divorced her father or physically abandoned Abby.

Abby had hoped to do better by Emily but had fallen woefully short.

And because she had no legal claim on Emily, Abby had no recourse, no way of making things right. She had no choice but to let Emily go and hope—pray—for the best. The despair she felt over being banished from Emily’s life would never leave her. As Aunt Reva said, that kind of sadness never goes away; it becomes a part of you that gets easier to bear over time. So when Abby explored the feeling of sadness the way the tongue explores an aching tooth, she had to conclude that the sadness she was feeling right now wasn’t her own, but someone else’s.

What about the feeling of loneliness? Did that feeling reflect her own emotion? No, not at all. Who could feel lonely surrounded by all these animals that asked for nothing and gave everything in return? Animals provided good company without infringing on Abby’s need to retreat from entangled human relationships. Aunt Reva’s gift was a place of solitude and connection, where Abby could heal and build a foundation of strength to launch a new beginning.

Betrayal? Well, yeah, but she’d put that pain behind her when she accepted responsibility for choosing an untrustworthy man with a charming smile.

Abandonment? She’d been the one to abandon Emily to her father’s indifferent care, though only after two years of trying to make a relationship work when it had been wrong from the beginning.

So where were these feelings coming from?

An image flashed through her mind like a movie reel on fast-forward. An image of the big dog escaping without the chicken he had grabbed from its roost. He had run past Georgia, when he could have killed her with one bite on the scruff of her neck and one quick shake of his big, wolflike head. He had run past Abby, past Quinn, wanting not to harm, but only to flee.

Some predators, given the opportunity, would break into a chicken coop and kill for the sake of killing, leaving the carcasses and eating nothing. This dog had plucked one chicken off the roost without biting down hard enough to break the skin.

The dog hadn’t taken Biddle out of meanness or mischief. Starving and alone, he killed only what he needed to survive. And now, somewhere in the dark, he waited for another chance to feed himself, a chance Abby had denied him.

She felt his hunger and loneliness as if it were her own.

Was this what it was like to communicate with animals? After all the summers that Reva had tried to teach Abby to trust herself, was she finally opening the door to her own telepathic abilities? Was she feeling the emotions of the big dog, or just imagining things? Abby glanced at the digital clock’s readout projected on the ceiling. Ten p.m. here meant it would be eleven in south Florida. Too late to text Reva—who’d surely gone to bed by now—but Abby knew what Reva would say: “Trust yourself. Trust your instincts. Your heart knows more than your head does.”

Abby shivered and pulled the covers over her shoulders while her thoughts returned to the hungry dog she’d chased away. How many lost chances stood between a homeless dog and death?

Should she get up and take a bowl of Georgia’s kibble out to the road? “No.” Abby flopped to her other side and tried to relax. “Go to sleep, stupid.” Getting out of a warm bed to traipse down the driveway in the dark would be the height of foolishness. She’d be eaten alive by mosquitoes for her trouble over a dog who had certainly run several miles from here by now.

But when Abby closed her eyes, an image of the cat’s-claw forest bloomed in her mind, and she realized for the first time what Georgia had been barking at yesterday. The gold eyes, the feeling of being watched… Of course.

Why hadn’t she figured it out before?

“Fine.” She sat up. “Mosquitoes, here I come.” If she didn’t take food out to that stray dog right now, she wouldn’t be able to sleep. She patted her aunt’s good dog who snuggled on top of the quilt, warming