The day after Kevin and I went to visit the horse – in October, 2016 – Lauren and Amanda drove the truck and trailer up from Uxbridge while I drove from our home in Arlington. We met up in the Friendly’s parking lot and I hopped in with them. Lauren had brought her one year old baby, Elizabeth, and was pregnant with her second.

When we arrived, the first half hour was filled with pushing the dogs back, ignoring the woman’s protestations about getting the horse out of the paddock if we weren’t definitely going to take her, Lauren threatening to walk away if we couldn’t see her move, my ducking out before getting kicked by one of the other horses and finally, at last, leading the horse into a trot down the driveway. She trotted just fine. She was sound.

Lauren and I had a quick consultation. The horse would need extra board, she was so extremely thin.

I agreed, not even really knowing what I was saying, and asked the woman for the horse’s papers.

“I don’t think I can find them,” she said.

I told her I thought that she could, if she just went in the house and looked for them. I don’t know what possessed me to say that, but it worked. Two minutes later, she’d produced them, protesting that she didn’t want us to have them because she didn’t want us to race her again. We compared the registration number to the tattoo inside the horse’s lip. I wrote the second check for $250. And then she was mine.

We walked her down the driveway. At the end of it she suddenly stopped, slammed a front hoof on the pavement, threw her head in the air and screamed. I thought it meant we were going to have an awful time loading her. But once that was done she threw her head back down, walked right on to the trailer, and began eating the hay hanging inside.

She’s never screamed since, so now I know she was saying goodbye. Or perhaps something a little less polite.

The woman began to get sentimental, calling her “Stella” and telling her she had always planned to do right by her. At last we said goodbye and I climbed up into the back seat of the truck – exhilarated, stunned, overwhelmed.

Amanda said, “Nicole, you own a horse!” and tossed me some mini Milky Ways, in the truck for Halloween. I ate three in quick succession and told them what I wanted to name her.

“Her registered name is She’s Just Business,” I said. “So I thought we could call her Bizzy.”