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departure was as swift as it was stealthy. She received none of the syrupy cobbler and liquid ice cream at the outdoor dessert table, though she could have been the first in line. Garner tried not to fret over this. It seemed no one else had noticed. Except Cat, whose eyes alighted on Nova’s tiny form for mere seconds as the bookseller left alone via the dirt trail that led back into town.
    It was the only time Garner had ever seen Cat scowl.

4
    J ava Java Go Joe died the night of her undoing, as Beth came to think of it. She was unconscious or sleeping or some combination of the two until the moment that the beautiful broken stallion was put down, after he’d suffered for more than five hours.
    While she was unaware of her surroundings—while Phil and Fiona searched for her in the blackness, found the unspeakable devastation, and then waited to get help almost as long as they’d waited to treat Marigold—Beth developed a vivid memory that could only have been a dream, except that there was physical evidence of its reality. In this state, she understood that the hundred-plus-pound wolf took the collar of her shirt in its teeth and dragged her around Joe’s groaning, heaving body. Somehow, the rein that had held her wrist captive during the fall released it.
    The wild dog dropped her close enough to Joe’s shattered leg that Beth could smell the blood that seeped out of the Thoroughbred’s broken skin. She rolled away, confusion gradually suffocating her mind. In her dream, the wolf’s muzzle worked under her hip like a pry bar under a boulder, leveraging her toward the fallen horse. She resisted the force until the delusion ended.
    It was the gunshot ending Joe’s agony that brought her around, the burst so close to her head that she thought the bullet had split her own scalp in two. There was no wolf, but Mr. Kandinsky was bent over her throbbing, rigid body, his face a mixture of anxiety and fury.
    Joe’s owner, whom she soon came to know as Anthony Darling, was poised to insert his rage into the Borzois’ life the way a climbing ivy invades every fissure in an established brick building and reduces it to dust. The retired champion jockey had an ego ten times the size of his own body and a net worth that could seduce any money-hungry attorney.
    Near her head, Mr. Darling waved the gun he’d just discharged into Joe’s ear, spewing curses at her. She would suffer long in the misery he was about to create for her, he promised her that.
    Phil tried to put distance between Mr. Darling and the scene, perhaps trying to prevent the mercy killing from becoming an act of revenge as well. Mr. Kandinsky noticed this intervention as if he was noticing Phil for the first time since the drama had been exposed. He fired Phil on the spot.
    The sun rising behind the eastern Sangre de Cristos caused long shadows to fall on them all. Beth wished the very mountains would collapse and bury her before she was forced to rise and face her parents’ disbelief and try to make amends. She had faith that the mountain could move. She told it to. The mountain refused.

    It took less than a week for the wealthy breeder to level his promise against Beth in the form of a lawsuit. This was the same as saying he had leveled his ire against her family and her family’s livelihood, because she was a co-owner of the Blazing B, which all Borzois became at the age of eighteen.
    The claim outlined damages for the lost horse, the lost progeny of the horse, the lost progeny of the progeny, and the reduced reputation of the breeder, who might have to wait untold years until he owned a stud of Java Java Go Joe’s value once again. The demanded sum was staggering, including emotional damages for all of these real and projected losses, which had allegedly caused Mr. Darling’s latent alcoholism to rear its head, which led to further damages and losses.
    Blood ties spared the Kandinskys from similar litigation.
    A separate suit was filed against