Shadow Horse Read Free Page B

up the dirt driveway, the car bouncing through ruts and exposed rock. Jas had to grab the door handle to keep from banging her head. A canopy of maple branches shaded the drive, and brambles scraped the sides of the car. Beyond the trees, Jas could see electric fence wire.
    She wrinkled her nose.
Electric fence? Tacky. What kind of a horse farm is this?
    Rolling down the window, she stuck out her head to get a better look. She couldn’t tell if there were horses in the field or not because the weeds in the pasture were so tall.
    “Here we are.” The car jerked to a stop beside the trunk of a tree.
    Leaning forward, Jas peered out the front windshield. When she saw her new home, her eyes widened in disbelief. Okay, so she hadn’t expected the Robicheaux mansion, but the clapboard farmhouse in front of her was so old that the roof sagged like a swaybacked horse.
    “The house could use a little TLC,” Ms. Tomlinson said as she opened her car door.
    “More like a bomb,” Jas murmured. Barking sounds then made her glance out the side window. A pack of dogs careened around the corner of the farmhouse. A woman strode behind them, her right leg swinging stiffly.
    “I hope you like dogs,” Ms. Tomlinson said. Jas stared at the four mutts barking and leaping at her car door. “Uh, I actually do.” Besides Old Sam, Hugh had purebred Jack Russell Terriers.
    “Reese, sit. Tilly, sit,” the woman commanded as she came up to the car. “Angel, sit. Lassie, sit.”
    The four mutts consisted of a big tan one, a fat black one, a longhaired pointy-nosed one, and some kind of hound. They all sat immediately.
    Jas’s gaze shifted from the dogs to the woman standing behind them, her thumbs hooked in the deep pockets of her overalls. She was as tall and broad-shouldered as a man. Her black hair was laced with gray and pulled back into a ponytail.
    “Hello, Miss Hahn,” Ms. Tomlinson greeted as she walked around the front of the car. “I’d like you to meet Jasmine Schuler.”
    “Jas,” Jas said through the open window.
    “Hello, Jas.” Miss Hahn smiled. Her eyes were nut-brown, her skin tan, her face a road map of wrinkles. Straddling the dogs, she pulled open the car door.
    Jas swung her legs out. The dogs quivered in excitement but didn’t break their sit command. Jas held out her hand for them to sniff, and they then burst into a wiggling mass of tails and tongues.
    “Once they get a good whiff, they’ll leave you alone.” Miss Hahn peered into the backseat of the car. “Got any things to bring in?”
    “Just a bag of clothes.”
    “Jas isn’t allowed back on the farm where she was living before,” Ms. Tomlinson explained. Grabbing a tissue from her purse, she sneezed. “Allergies,” she apologized. “Before I leave, I’ll get a list of things that need to be picked up at her grandfather’s trailer. Anything else will have to be bought from her clothes allowance.”
    “Clothes allowance. Right.” Miss Hahn nodded. “I’m new at this foster-parent stuff, Jas, so you’ll have to bear with me.”
    I’m new at it, too
, Jas thought,
and already I don’t like it
. Her gaze dropped to the dogs. The black sausage-shaped one licked herfingers while the yellowish retriever thrust a soggy tennis ball at her.
    The retriever’s gray-sprinkled muzzle looked just like Old Sam’s. Jas began to wonder if her longtime buddy was waiting for her and her grandfather to come home. If he was, he was in for a letdown.
    Jas closed her eyes and forced back the sadness. What if she never saw Old Sam again?
    Suddenly, she pictured her grandfather lying on the ground, the medical technicians hovering over him. What if her grandfather died and she wasn’t there to say good-bye?
    No, that won’t happen. It can’t
. Jas blinked back tears.
    Until then, Jas would make sure that Miss Hahn, Ms. Tomlinson, and Mr. Eyler understood that she had to see him. And soon. Not only did she love him unconditionally, but he was all she had