As we are saddling up, they search for the words, just as they search my face for bruises. We didn’t know. You never told us. He seemed nice enough. I thought you had everything, girlfriend. Wonderful husband. Beautiful children. Beautiful home. They look around my just-north-of-Santa Fe piece of real estate, now up for sale for more money than I think any house ought to be worth, the sprawling adobe main house and guest house. Then the truth comes out in starts and stops. Although, I’ve got to tell you, frankly, I never felt welcome here when he was around. They had no idea. Their words gain momentum. I wondered why he got so mad when we got you home a little late from that trail ride up in the barrancas last spring. I am too ashamed to tell them that most of the time, I hadn’t been allowed to go.

My friend Kaitlin, who has arranged this day, digs around in her tack box, extracts a tell-tale shaped box wrapped up in red tissue paper with a silver bow, and I am starting to feel embarrassed now. The horsewomen wait expectantly while I open up the box of new riding boots. Thank you, I say, fighting back the tears, admiring them, turning them over in my hands. They are sleek. An sturdy. And lace up. Good soles for the rocky places. We thought you could use these, she says.

How did she know?

We ride fast to the Rio Grande, approximately six miles of trotting and cantering interspersed with a few walks. Kaitlin leading on her black Arabian, who I think would canter the whole way if she let him. My Andalusian horse Caprichosa plays in the quick brown water once we get there, sitting back on her haunches, splashing it up around us in silver shards with her front hooves just like her father enjoys doing the few times I ride the magnificent stallion. I am drenched. We laugh. And laugh. Afterwards, we drink ice-cold Pacifico, listen to Mexican music on the radio, and polish up our saddles in my big front room with its bare mud and straw walls.

When we all attend Kaitlin’s wedding weeks later on the movie set ranch where her fiance is working, I am as surprised as anyone to find that the professional horse trainer in our group, the one whose horses are as light as feathers, the one with the liquid black hair to her waist and ancestors stretching all the way back to Coronado, isn’t allowed by her husband (an ex-sharpshooter and 20+ years her senior) to speak to any of us as we sit primly in the orantely carved pew behind them, all dressed up for church in our rayon floral dresses and cowboy boots.

After they leave, I groom Cap until the sun sinks down below the horizon, then build what I have gotten into the habit of building these weekend evenings on my own—a big campfire. In the front yard.

Cross-legged on the ground, hugging my old yellow dog close, I can almost feel the eyes of my neighbors, the Romeros, whose house perches on the hill just above mine, kitchen windows at a strategic vantage point, wondering just what in the hell I am doing. Eeeeee, that girl is going to burn the whole place down?! I half expect them to come down and join me. Mr. Romero likes to get as drunk as a skunk on the occasional Saturday night and sing verse after verse of long Spanish ballads (often composed on-the-fly) in the middle of his horse corrals, arm swung companionably around the neck of Caprichosa’s father, who looks just like Pegasus himself, but without the wings, of course. Some nights I sit in the guest bedroom of my house, listening to his dark, melodic voice wafting through the lace curtains of the deep windows, and smile to myself. Perhaps he will serenade us tonight.

I poke a stick in my campfire. Sparks crackle and fly. The pungent aroma of aged piñon drifts up into a jet black sky sprinkled with stars. This is the season of controlled burns. Time to get rid of ten years’ worth of dead and down.

Caprichosa whickers softly across the yard to Mr. Romero’s horses. He’s not singing. Yet.

I rise slowly from the ashes.