My Gentle Barn (19 page)

As soon as Jay left, I headed straight for the phone.

“Chantelle,” I said, “I need you to do a reading for me.”

“Sure,” she said. “I have time Thursday.”

“Is there any way you can do it sooner?”

“This sounds serious,” she said. “Can you come by tomorrow evening?”

The next evening, when I got to Chantelle’s house, I’d barely made it through the door before I’d blurted it out: “I need you to tell me if Jay’s the guy.”

“The guy?”

“Yeah, the soul mate you said would come in seven months. The man who was going to run the Gentle Barn with me.” How could she have forgotten such a prediction? Then it hit me. I stood right there in Chantelle’s kitchen and counted forward on my fingers from February 2001, the month Chantelle had done the reading.
March, April, May, June, July, August, September
. “Seven!” I said. “Jay first showed up in September, I’m pretty sure.”

“But you’re not really into him, are you?” she asked.

“I
wasn’t
.” It was true I had never thought of him that way. But in that moment in the bunny pen something had changed.

Chantelle took out a deck of tarot cards and said, “OK, sit down.”

There at Chantelle’s kitchen table, the cards confirmed what I felt now in my bones.

Before I left Chantelle’s house I called Jay and told him I needed to talk to him. He was out with some friends not far from where I was. “Can you meet me at Coco’s?” I asked.

Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Jay’s
car in the Coco’s parking lot. I was nervous and didn’t know how to begin. Here was this person I had come to rely on for help with the animals and in the office and with fund-raising. He’d also become a good friend. If he didn’t feel the same way I now felt, he might pick up and leave and I’d never see him again. I could lose the best support I’d ever had with the Gentle Barn. But something told me I had to take that risk.

I took a deep breath and said, “I have this crazy story to tell you.” And I told him about Chantelle’s prediction and how I hadn’t believed it, but that sometimes, when things were bad with Scott, I had wondered where that prophesied soul mate was. “Do you know what month you first arrived at the Gentle Barn?” I said.

Jay nodded. “September.”

A flutter of adrenaline shot upward in my chest. “Well, that was seven months after Chantelle’s prediction.” Then I told him about the tarot card reading she’d just done for me. And most important, I told him that the day before, as we’d sat together in the bunny pen, I had started to feel feelings for him that I’d never felt before. “My heart just kind of opened up,” I said. Then I stopped and held my breath and half looked at him, and half not—with no idea whatsoever how he might respond.

Jay’s gaze was steady on me. “Come here,” he said, his voice smooth as silk.

I scooted closer to him, and he touched my face with those large, soft hands of his. Then he drew me to him, and when he kissed me, my whole body felt electric.

We were like teenagers sitting in that car, after-hours in a restaurant parking lot. I ended up squeezed into the spot between the two front seats so we could sit as close to each other as possible. And just like teenagers, for the next three hours we hardly came up for air.

I had always wanted to know a man first as a friend, to slowly learn all about him and have him slowly learn all about me, before getting into a relationship with him. But it had never worked that way; my relationships had always started with a spark and turned quickly to romance. Finally with Jay I got to follow my plan. We’d come to know each other well, and I had liked him more and more as time went on. But the waiting had nothing to do with willpower. I’d just never seen him as anything other than a friend.

Now that the veil had been lifted we were making up for lost time. When we took the dogs for walks, we held hands. We made each other laugh, and I marveled at the beautiful sound of his laughter; I told jokes just so I could hear it. We walked the horses, too; we’d take them to a nearby field and sit in the tall grasses and talk for hours while the horses grazed. Everything in my world seemed to have suddenly come more alive. Colors were more vibrant. Flowers smelled sweeter. The air seemed fresher. And when we would come back to the house, we’d turn on the music, and Jay would sweep me up onto my feet and start dancing with me. If I could have dreamed up my perfect fantasy life, this would be it.

Just a short time after our night in Coco’s parking lot, Jay and I decided he and Molli should move into my house. By then, Jay was spending every night with me anyway, and was at the Gentle Barn constantly.

We sat Molli down to tell her the news.

“Molli,” Jay said to her, “Ellie and I have decided something.”

Molli nodded, her eyes unblinking. Sitting on the dining room chair, her hands were folded on her knees like a little lady, but her feet didn’t touch the floor.

“I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about this …” I said, “but you and your dad are going to move in here with me and Jesse.”

Molli jumped to the floor, abandoning her ladylike pose, and threw her arms up in the air. “Yes!” she shouted. “I knew it. I just knew it.”
She jumped up and down. “I knew we were going to move in here, and I knew you were going to be my mommy!”

I could see we weren’t going to need much of an adjustment period.

It was just as easy for Jesse. On the surface nothing really had changed; his pal Jay and his best friend Molli were always around anyway. We’d just made it official. And for me it was heaven. Living with Jay felt so comfortable it was as though we’d been doing this our whole adult lives.

Jay not only tolerated my fixation on animals, he joined me in it. I taught him how to trim hooves, bottle-feed newly rescued babies, and test for dehydration. When an animal was sick he’d be right there in the barn next to me, taking temperatures and administering supplements. When the barnyard overflowed with visitors on Sundays, he worked beside me to greet people and tell the animals’ stories. He even began watching me lead groups of at-risk and special-needs kids so he could take over some of the sessions.

That June, Jay and I did our first rescue together. We took in an eight-week-old calf who had started out his life on a beef ranch in New Mexico. Lucky for this little calf, the farmer’s wife had taken pity on him because he’d been born blind. She’d bottle-fed him and fallen in love with him, but her husband did not believe in having a cow as a pet and gave her one week to get rid of the calf. When we received her desperate e-mail, we said, “Absolutely, we’ll take him in.” She then made the three-day trip to bring him to us. Because he’d been raised by a human, and was clearly loved by her, he was sweet and trusting with us right from the beginning. He happened to arrive on World Vegan Day, so we named him Vegan (the irony being that he was the only species who was
supposed
to drink cow’s milk).

Knowing he’d been separated from his cow mother at birth, we couldn’t wait to introduce him to Buddha. Now full grown and weighing about six hundred pounds, she’d become the matriarch of the barnyard, nurturing all who came anywhere near her, no matter the species.
But she’d never had a calf of her own. We led Vegan into the barnyard and walked him over to where Buddha was lying in the shade. She got one look at him and jumped to her feet, her tongue at the ready, prepared to give him his first proper bath. She got one lick in, and the little red calf jumped in the air and ran from her, pulling the lead straight out of my hand.

I looked at Jay; he was as surprised as I was. We’d expected the calf to be thrilled to have a mother. But apparently he’d forgotten what a cow was. Buddha was not one to give up easily, so she followed after him and tried again to groom him, and again he fled from the enormous, frightening animal with the huge sandpaper tongue. We saw we were going to have to keep them apart until Vegan became less afraid. We kept him in the grassy yard next to the house, separated from Buddha by a chain-link fence. Each day we led him into the barnyard to try again, leaving him with Buddha for longer and longer periods. It took five days for Vegan to finally submit to whatever it was this strange animal wanted from him. When I came out to feed everyone on that fifth evening, I found Vegan sopping wet, head to toe, and a triumphant Buddha hovering nearby.

After that Vegan submitted to daily tongue baths and Buddha held her head just a bit higher, a proud new mama. If she could have nursed him, I’m sure she would have.

Two months after Jay and Molli had moved in, we heard the sound of hammers and power tools coming from next door. That property had sat vacant for the last three years, so the noise was unexpected. Someone must have bought the place and was renovating before moving in.

Uh-oh
, I thought,
my rabbits
. By then the rabbits’ warrens were so elaborate they not only had dug under the chicken-wire fence—and were now hopping freely around the barnyard—they also had dug
their way under the wooden fence that separated the barnyard from the property next door. The bunnies loved hanging out in that overgrown yard, and sometimes even the chickens followed them over there. Since the property had been vacant, I’d never bothered with filling the holes.

I hurried over to the house to explain, and a tall woman answered the door and smiled at me.

“Hi, I’m Ellie,” I said. “I’m your neighbor.” And I pointed to my house. “I’m so sorry that my rabbits and chickens are in your yard. I didn’t know someone had bought this place. It’s been vacant for so long.”

Her name was Paige, and she in turn apologized for all the noise.

“No problem,” I said. Then I told her I could come right over and round up the chickens and rabbits if she didn’t mind my coming into her yard. “Then I’ll get right on it and fill those holes so the animals don’t bother you.”

“Oh, please don’t,” she said. “I’d love to have their company. I don’t have other plans for the yard, so if they want to come visit, that’s great.”

“OK,” I said. “Fantastic. But if you get tired of them, please just give me a holler.”

“They won’t bother me,” Paige said. “I’m a big fan of the work you’re doing. I love the Gentle Barn.”

As it turned out, Paige had been following the Gentle Barn since the beginning. She’d bought the house
because
it was right next door to us. I couldn’t believe how lucky we were to have someone like her as our new neighbor.

Once Paige had moved in, if we saw each other we always said hi. She sometimes came over, not just to see me and the kids but to spend time with the animals. If she had friends visiting, especially if they had children, she would call to me over the fence to see if she could bring them over for a tour of the barnyard. “Sure,” I would say each time, happy they were all so interested in what we were doing.

With Jay now in my life, and a great new neighbor, that summer I felt surrounded by a love and support unlike anything I had ever experienced.
It seemed like the universe was saying yes—finally yes—to my dream, and the Gentle Barn came into its own in a whole new way. We were now thriving, not just surviving on crumbs. The Gentle Barn was beginning to make a name for itself, and people were now seeking
us
out in order to bring their groups of kids or give us donations or have us host a birthday party.

Late that summer I hosted a moms’ club, who brought their young children to the Barn for a playdate. After a tour of the barnyard, everyone sat down at the picnic tables in the smaller grassy yard to have lunch. When the children finished eating, we moved down onto the patio to make chalk drawings on the concrete. As the kids and I covered the patio with pink cows and purple goats, Paige came in through the side gate, which I always left open when I hosted a group.

She walked right up to me and said, “Hi, Ellie. Listen, I really want to put up a brand-new fence between our properties.”

I looked around at the kids drawing and the moms sitting and talking at the picnic tables. Didn’t Paige see I was hosting a group?

“I’m doing some remodeling,” she continued, “and I want to make some changes to the backyard.”