Chapter 3

The next day found Faith in the barn. Her aunt owned a huge property that had once been a farm but hadn’t been farmed in years. Now it was a rolling combination of meadows and forests. The property came complete with a barn and several other out buildings in addition to the manor house.

The family’s four horses were kept in the barn. Faith assumed that the fourth one was for Jane’s ex-husband. They had been divorced a year earlier. Faith did not know why the divorce happened and it seemed that her parents were clueless about the cause also. She had always liked Uncle Frank and thought that he and Jane were a perfect couple. Apparently, they weren’t.

The twins were supposed to clean out the stalls daily but had not done it at all this week. Jane had pointed this out to Faith and instructed her to do a better job with the children’s chores. Faith said that she would see to it that they were done.

She decided that she would do it the fist day. That way, she could not be accused of assigning things that she would not do. And she would pitch in occasionally to clean them in the future.

She did not mind cleaning the stalls. She had been around horses her entire life and this was just one aspect that people get used to in the horsey life. The horses were in the field at the moment and she was working on the first stall.

It was hot in the barn. She opened all of the doors to get a breeze blowing through it. That helped, but it still didn’t cool her off enough to be comfortable.

She thought about taking off her top and shorts. That would help but she hadn’t planned very well for the day. She was wearing panties under the cutoff jeans so that would work. But she had worn a halter top and removing that would have left her naked from the waist up. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have done that but she knew that she couldn’t risk having the twins find her so exposed. And she also didn’t want to go back into the house. The twins were happily watching TV and she didn’t want to risk drawing their attention by walking through the house and having them follow her out to the barn. She would just suffer in the heat.

She got the stall cleaned out and spread some fresh straw on the floor before starting on the second one. By the end of the second stall, however, the heat was unbearable. She went to the door and cooled off for a moment. She looked around and saw that the twins were nowhere to be seen. They were obviously still watching their favorite shows. What had seemed like a risky act earlier now became a necessity. She peeled her shorts down her sweat covered legs and then pulled her top off, hanging them on hooks in hopes that they would dry before she had to put them back on to return to the house.