Allyson's Beau

Allyson watched from the stairs of her little cottage as the tow truck pulled her ’78 Dodge wagon out of the driveway and down the road.  Tears rolled down her cheeks as the dust from the tow truck filled the air.  Selling that three-year old wagon would give her enough money to pay the mortgage for another month; but with no way to make the payment after that, she was soon to be without a home.  The wagon had been her father’s, and she’d had it only about a year.  What a fix I am in, she declared to herself.

Her fondest dream had always been to train and show great horses, and she’d taken her first step or two in that direction.  But here she sat instead, beaten and broken by her husband and contemplating divorce.  Her hopes were falling to pieces right in her lap, on the cottage stairs.  All she wanted to do was die.  Gently touching the tape on her nose, she winced from the pain—and she felt rejected and as helpless as a child.  She sobbed, pondering, how could God let something like this happen to me?  My life is not supposed to be this way.  My parents always have been successful—how did I end up in a situation where I feel like I’m a loser?

Now nineteen years old, blonde and attractive, she could have had anyone she wanted.  So, she tried to figure out why it had been this man who harmed her.  Yet, deep inside, she knew why, even though it was hard to admit: she had been afraid of what her parents would think.  In the heat of the moment, after dating for almost six months, she had given in to her hormones.  Feeling guilty about having unmarried sex was what led her to the altar with John.

I guess that’s what comes with being a teenager.  No, no, I’m a young adult, she argued with herself.  That was how she felt others should think of her, as an adult.

Nearly two years had slipped by since she and John were first married, in New Jersey, where they both grew up.  Soon after, they moved to Tennessee.  As far back as she could remember, she wanted to move to Kentucky—the mother of the horse industry—and to take the horse-show world by storm.  When they tried to settle in Kentucky, they wound up settling in Tennessee instead.

Horse crazy, that’s what her mother called her.  She had been happy as a child, although she never had a lot of friends, and both her parents had told her she would outgrow her love of horses.  In fact, when she was fourteen years old, her mother found her a job at a small farm where she was responsible for the upkeep of three horses.  Every afternoon, Allyson would go and clean the barn, with no pay, an arrangement her mother had made to discou