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Author notes

I would like to thank my wife and our daughter for showing me that happy endings do exist.

The oven timer beeps, I wipe my teary eyes and close the book. The dog sleeping on my old duffle bag lazily opens one eye even though the meowing coming from the hallway should probably warn him. I take the cake out of the oven and linger at the window as the horses in the backyard lazily raise their heads toward to Californian sun.

Suddenly the cat yowls, the dog barks and they start chasing each other around the kitchen. ’My stars and garters! Toto, Garfield! Enough!’ A startled voice warns from the threshold, but it’s too late.

Mortified I stare at the remains of the Black Forrest cake on the floor as gentle arms wrap around my waist. ’Aww baby. Shall I kiss it to make it better?’ Her smooth voice whispers in my ear.

’Please.’ I pout turning around in her arms,  I nuzzle my nose in her blonde hair and inhale her scent that reminds me of a desert rose. ’But first remind me again why this little fffuc… fuzzy friend is still here. You said he would be good to go after a couple of days, and yet here he still is, annoying Toto and me at every chance he gets.’ 

’You know I have a thing for standend strangers.’

’Tina.’ I moan when her hands find their way under my shirt and her dangerous lips attack my neck.

One day she knocked on my door, skinnier and pale but with determination firing in her eyes, Toto almost knocked me over as she stood there with a suitcase at her feet and Garfield in her arms. Like two violins we automatically tuned in on the same frequency and it was as if no time had past.

The only thing that disturbed our happiness was her health. She was weak and tired. Assuming it was because she missed her horses, I returned to Texas. In broad day light I loaded Pilgrim and Black Beauty. He just stood there on the porch and watched me take away the last traces of her. When the animals didn’t cure her, she finally give in to my pleas and we went to the doctor.

When he told us she was pregnant, she broke down and told me how she had tried to resume her life after I had left. How every day had been a struggle, and how she just couldn’t continue living the lie she had been living for so long. One night, being a man who needed an ego boost after another lost rodeo, he just took what he still thought belonged to him. And she had let him, to punish herself for the promise to her father she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep much longer.

I can’t say that’s how I imagined it, but somewhere deep in me, joy had already started to overweight the anger and jealousy. Maybe the child wasn’t conceived out of love, but for sure she would be born and grow up in love. And right there in the doctors office, I asked her to marry me.

We got married on a Friday and she had never looked so beautiful standing under the apple tree in the backyard of our new house. A few friends from Texas showed up and later told everyone how happy we looked. We couldn’t wait for our guests to leave and made love whole night that night.

She wrote him a letter, but he never replied. And I couldn’t have been more proud, to see my name on the birth certificate next to hers when our daughter was born.

’Mama, mama!’ The pitter-patter of tiny footsteps fills the kitchen and quickly Tina leans back. Her sparkling golden eyes promise me later, just before tiny hands clench onto my jeans. ’Horsey, horsey.’

I pick up the little girl. Strains of blonde hair wave from under a tiny pink cowboy hat when I spin her around. ’Do you like your birthday present honey?’ I ask her as we step onto the porch.

In the field, next to Pilgrim and Black Beauty grazes a small Paint horse, with brown and white. Hildalgo, Tina named him after the eponymous movie about a horse racer who travelled 3000 thousand miles through the desert with his horse.

The End