The turning point

After the veterinarian’s truck rumbled down the gravel drive, I stood in the barn’s parking lot, holding the lead rope of my very first horse.

Reality did not match my childhood dreams. Sirocco, a 6-year-old Arabian, fleabitten gray with bloodmarks splashed on his ribs and hip, didn’t look like the horse I wanted when I was 12. To be fair, I was no longer the girl who pined for the Black Stallion, either. I was middle-aged and—unmoored by my mother’s sudden death—I had just done what all the books tell you not to do while in the throes of grief: made a big, potentially consequential decision.

I’d fallen in love with Sirocco based on an online ad. Under his trainer’s watchful eye, I’d worked with him for a few weeks of lessons and at a weekend clinic. But, I could count