Chapter 1

I first saw her teaching some pre-teen/tween female riders basic riding skills and thought “Wow she’s not much older than the students”. I found her to be visually extremely pleasing and her voice was a smooth contralto - not sultry or sexy but clearly happy as in keen and eager. Her students were all very attentive which meant she had to have a good personality as kids spot posers/losers in seconds. I was married to my first wife at the time and we were starting a new tack shop on this horse ranch. If I had known how many hours this second vocation would consume and the cost to my personal relationships I would never have started. It ended up contributing to the end of my marriage, the death of a child and the estrangement of the surviving child - my son.

Anyways I poured my heart and soul into that tack shop only to have it fold and vanish when the divorce came along. I will tolerate many things from a spouse but an STD followed by a knife attack just pushed me out the door and down the road.

We split the few funds in the bank, sold the house and only broke even on it when the real estate company manager went to bat for us with the bank to get the early payment penalty removed. In the end, she got $114 and I go $113. The real estate agent who we thought was working for us, lied and got us to accept a much lower price than we first asked. The poor retired couple from western Ontario promptly drove the new British green Jaguar into the driveway the day after we moved out.

Did I mention that the house was the original house area, was poorly renovated over the years, and was built with 3 courses of bricks in the walls as well as rough 2x4 studs with no insulation - at all. We had decided to renovate the house to be what we wanted in a house. Our general contractor told me after it was all said and done that before we started, he thought we were very foolish to spend more on the renovation than we paid for the house, but upon completion, we really had rescued the house. As a result, we had the best house in our small town but it was way over-priced for the local market.

Meanwhile back at the horse ranch, we had been taking riding lessons for some time and then the ranch owner developed cancer and died. His widow was agreeable to us putting a tack shop into the upstairs area at the end of the indoor riding arena. It wasn’t until a few years later that her newly teenaged daughter starting coming upstairs and spending a lot of time wandering around the shop but not buying anything and I twigged to just how vulnerable I was. So ... I went to talk to the widow about it and asked if she could keep her daughter out of the shop unless the mother was there - she agreed.

Remember that riding instructor back at the beginning of this tale? Well, she used to come up now and then to browse for herself between lessons. I had a coffee maker set up in the back as well as an Apple II+ that was used for inventory control. It was during these visits that I found out that genetics had greatly blessed her and she was actually older than she appeared and married with two children already - a boy and an older girl with a couple of years between them. We got along well and often had a coffee together in the back. I never got any sense of anything sexual with her, just a need for a friend, so I never made a pass at her. My previous life experiences had taught me that getting involved with married females inevitably leads to pain and suffering, plus I was still married at the time and took my vows seriously -even if my wife was less enthusiastic. As an aside, during the first decade of the marriage, I found out that my first wife had expected to marry a local boy who was an artist - a very good artist to be sure. He had real skill and creativity in several mediums such as oils, watercolours and sculpture.

Sorry about jumping around a bit on the timeline but it’s how my mind works!

19 years roll by and I am single again - oh joy, not! I rented a ranch near to my son and proceeded to spend myself into some serious debt trying to maintain a lifestyle that included him. When my credit cards ended up maxed out, I took stock and moved to a new county into a country house bedroom as that was all that I could afford. Meanwhile, my friendship with the riding instructor was still ongoing and while we met occasionally, they were never dates ... at least until one summer day when we went to a local beach. Partway through the day, as we were walking in the small sand dunes of the beach, she turned to me and boldly asked me if I loved her. I thought for a moment or two and realized that in fact, I did feel as though I did. I should do some backfill here and mention that the two of us, as well as her husband all, worked for the same company at the same location. I had become aware of the physical treatment that she endured at his hands, and others who knew as well advised me not to confront him about this as there was no real proof and she was not willing to leave him or involve the police - it would be a “he said vs she said” scenario and would likely result in him becoming more violent with her in retaliation as all bullies do. So I tried to be as supportive as I could while trying to be as invisible as possible.