Love Story

by Jennifer Echols

  “Boo-boo,” I said impatiently. “High and Mighty. By Rocky Mountain High out of Might Is Right.”

  “Oh!” As he realized he was not in trouble, his shoulders relaxed. He pointed with his grooming brush toward the other end of the back stable. “Rock Star has taken a shine to her. We moved her next to him because she calms him down. Want me to saddle her up for you?”

  “No thanks,” I said, hurrying toward my horse. The new guy had not gotten the memo that nobody saddled horses for the old lady’s granddaughter. Tommy had seen to that. He’d taught me that if I wanted something done right, I had to do it myself.

  Relief flooded me as Boo-boo poked her head out of her stall to see who was coming, ears pricked up. When she saw me, her ears moved forward. If I’d been twelve, I would have sworn to anyone who would listen that Boo-boo recognized me and loved me. However, I was eighteen. I knew better. I was holding the apple out in front of me.

  The time in the stall was always the hardest for me. My body tensed, waiting for the horse to rear, and my brain kept replaying the accident I hadn’t seen.

  Boo-boo was a thoroughbred, looming and nervous like all of them. But she was relatively sweet tempered. Tommy had picked her for me when my grandmother insisted that he put me back on a horse a week after my mother died. Boo-boo’s soft, surprisingly nimble lips plucked the apple out of my palm. As she chomped, I stroked the side of her head firmly, as Tommy had taught me. Cooing “Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo” to her, I squeezed the terror out of my brain. The way to stay safe was never to let a horse know I was afraid. I wiped the apple juice on my jeans and put up my hand to make sure I was wearing my helmet before I ventured farther into the dark stall to find the tack.

  Riding was dangerous, with the constant threat of being thrown and trampled, but ironically, once I was up in the saddle and away from Boo-boo’s legs, I felt safe. I directed her out of the stable—she was in great spirits today, kicking up her heels and shaking her head as if bragging to the other horses that she was going for a run and they were not, ha ha, so there—and I trotted her across the paddock to the back pasture. Then I loosened the reins and let her go. She loved to run.

  Normally I loved it, too, the green grass flashing past, the bright fall trees, the cold wind in my face, the always foreign feel of a huge animal galloping underneath me. Today I was sore. Every step of the horse jarred my hip and sent a ripple through my back. Even my fist gripping the reins was sore after grazing Hunter’s hard jawbone. After a few minutes of riding I grew used to the pain and settled in for a long ride. Usually Boo-boo and I dashed out for a gallop after school, and then I had friends or homework or reading to occupy me. Today I decided we would explore every corner of the farm. I had nothing else to do besides study history and calculus, and I might never be back.

  Something inside me died that long afternoon while Hunter was at the races. I finally lost all hope in my dad. He was not coming for me. He did not harbor a secret wish to become reacquainted with me. He was not dying to complete our family but was prevented from doing so by foreign spies. He had left me to bury my mother and my grandmother to raise me, and he had moved on with his life. If he had anything to do with it, I would never hear from him again.

  But more likely, he would die before me, and I would receive the news just when I was about to get married or give birth or embark on my national tour for my best-selling novel. I had looked forward to my dad’s return as the climax of my story. Now I knew he would ruin my happiest day for me, an unexpected plot twist.

  Boo-boo chomped through the reins as I pulled her up short out of a canter. We had reached a far pasture, many rolling hills away from the house and the barn. Standing on a limestone boulder under the golden canopy of an oak was the horse that had killed my mother.

  She’d been two at the time and there had been talk of trying her in the Derby the following spring. After the accident, my grandmother never raced her, though she potentially lost millions of dollars with that inaction. She just put the filly out to pasture. If the decision had been mine, I would have shot her myself. But as Tommy had explained, horses bore no malice. They were skittish herd animals escaping danger.

  They were not, however, mountain goats. Boo-boo danced impatiently as I gazed toward the black horse on the gray rock under the yellow tree. How had she gotten up there? The back of the boulder sloped more gently, I remembered. That was the explanation. But my heart did not slow down.

  In Hunter’s most recent story, the girl he looked down on rode a black filly. I wondered again what his story had meant.

  I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF dishes clanking in the kitchen and the scent of bacon. Untangling myself from Hunter’s bedclothes and sliding my history book off my face, I squinted at the dark window. Dawn had not broken. In the dimmest light glowing from under the bedroom door, I could just make out the planets stuck to the sun above Hunter’s dresser.

  “Tommy!” I exclaimed at the overflowing kitchen table. “You didn’t have to cook all this. I hardly eat anything in the morning. I’ll just have some coffee.”

  “Coffee,” he repeated in exactly the Long Island accent Hunter used when he said coffee. Turning with a skillet of eggs, Tommy jabbed the spatula toward an empty chair at the table. “Eat. Hunter told me you’re living on peanut-butter crackers. Eat or you’re walking to Churchill Downs.” He flopped eggs onto my plate. “Or are you hiding here all day?” He sat down at his own place and handed me a platter of biscuits.

  Hiding sounded like an excellent idea, but it wasn’t what I’d had in mind. “I need money,” I said.

  He stopped eating and eyed me from across the table. The look he was giving me … I had never seen this look from him before. I wondered if, for the first time, I was seeing that father from Hunter’s story. I had thought Tommy was a happy-go-lucky old soul who would give me the shirt off his back, but perhaps I’d gotten that impression only because I’d never asked him for anything.

  Quickly I clarified, “I want to work for you today. Could you use an extra stable hand? Pay me what you used to pay Hunter.”

  He raised his eyebrows, chewed and swallowed before he responded. “It’s your grandmother’s money, you know.”

  “At least I will have earned it.”

  In his grunt I heard acquiescence but also impatience at humoring the poor little rich girl. I might have told him never mind, he didn’t have to satisfy my whim. But I did want to spend the day at Churchill Downs. And I did not want to spend it in the owner’s box with Hunter and my grandmother.

  In the darkness I helped Tommy load a brown stallion and a dun filly into the trailer. We drove back up the empty interstate and through the neighborhood of nineteenth-century houses in the style of my grandmother’s. At the orange stain of sunrise across the gray sky, we pulled slowly through the gate at Churchill Downs, all white-painted wood with twin spires towering over the grandstands.

  Then we started work. I fed horses, watered horses, groomed horses. I didn’t exercise them because this close to their races, the trainer wanted specific experienced people riding them, sensing problems. I did, however, lead horses to and fro, and when a stallion reared up and kicked in protest at going back into the Blackwell Farms trailer, I was the one who leaped forward to grab the reins and talk him down. I acted automatically. It was only fifteen minutes later, when the truck leading the trailer pulled away and Tommy squeezed my shoulder, that my heart pounded at the danger I’d been in. An hour after that I realized I hadn’t been wearing a helmet.

  Groups of agents and buyers and my grandmother’s assistants wandered into our farm’s section of the stables and out again, talking business over bourbon in clear plastic cups, lighting cigars after they’d walked away from the hay. I used to be part of these groups. I would hang at the periphery with other tipsy teenage heirs to horse farms, often Whitfield Farrell. I expected to see my grandmother in one of these groups. Repeatedly I peeked under a horse’s belly to look for her without looking like I was looking. I n
ever saw her. Around noon I did, however, see Hunter.

  He grinned with a middle-aged agent and my grandmother’s elderly lawyer, both powerful men, handy to know if you were pretending to take over a venerable business that had been in someone else’s family for five generations. They stood in the warm sunlight that had finally burned through the clouds. He took a sip of bourbon and watched me over the rim of his cup.

  And then he was laughing at something the lawyer had said. He’d joined the boys’ club with a great personality, good looks, and no effort at all. I wasn’t sure anymore that he’d been watching me over his cup. He was in the sunlight, after all, and I was in the darkness. He couldn’t see me.

  Staying on my feet and taking care of horses all day would have hurt enough, but my bruised hip started to throb, and my shoulders ached from holding the spooked horse steady. I noticed other stable hands sipping sodas and smoking cigarettes beside the vast parking lot, but I never asked for a break, and Tommy never suggested I take one. I suspected he was giving the princess exactly what he thought she wanted.

  Just before the last race of the day, after we’d sent our best horse to the paddock to be shown off, Tommy jerked his head toward the track, telling me to follow him. In the sunshine I shed my Blackwell Farms jacket and tied it around my waist. We found a space at the white fence where we could see the track—nowhere near the finish line, which was in front of the grandstands, but with a great view of the fourth turn. He bought us both a hot dog at a cart. I bit into mine immediately, giving him my thanks with my mouth full. I hadn’t eaten since he’d fed me that morning.

  As I ate, I watched him down huge bites. The whole hot dog took him four. Hunter did not eat like this. Hunter could eat a hot dog with a knife and fork and make you think everybody ate it like that on Long Island.

  “What is it?” Tommy asked me. A dab of mustard clung to the corner of his mouth.

  I handed him my napkin as a hint. “Were you in love with my mother?”

  The half smile stayed in place on his lips. He and Hunter were both good at smiling through anything. But I saw his reaction in his eyes. He winced a little, crow’s-feet deepening and then relaxing in a split second.

  “I didn’t have time,” he said, wiping his mouth.

  “So it was lust,” I said.

  He squinted at me. “Nnnnnn … Maybe. She was beautiful. She was also very funny. Like you. And your daddy didn’t treat her right. Like he doesn’t treat you right.”

  It was my turn to wince. I hadn’t forgiven Hunter for dragging me down here on that pretense.

  “That was a lot of it,” Tommy said. “She needed me. She said she needed me. The drive to rescue the damsel from the dragon is real strong, and real hard for a man to resist. That story never ends well, and I knew that going into it.”

  I looked out over the track. We faced the back of the starting gate. Grooms were leading horses into it one by one. Our farm’s horse did not want to go. Nose inside, he braced his back feet outside the gate so they couldn’t close him in. Two of our grooms put their shoulders against his ass and pushed. I asked Tommy, “Why didn’t my grandmother fire you?”

  Tommy watched the show at the gate, too, or seemed to. “Why didn’t she ship that filly off for dog food?”

  “Because the filly meant no harm.” I recited what Tommy had explained to me when I was older and ready to listen.

  The grooms managed to shove our horse inside the gate and snap the doors in place behind him before he could kick their heads off. They walked away mopping their brows with their sleeves as other grooms approached the gate with the next horse in the line-up.

  “Honestly,” Tommy said, “I think she kept me on because of Hunter. She knew this was a good place for him. She’s always liked Hunter.”

  “She sees herself in him,” I said. “They’re both manipulative and crazy like a fox.”

  “There’s that,” he said flatly, staring out over the track, as if my grandmother and Hunter did not bother him at all. Or as if they bothered him very much. Both emotions looked the same on Tommy.

  I asked, “When Hunter and I lived here, did you tell him to stay away from me?”

  Tommy turned quickly toward me. By the time I looked over at him, surprise was gone from his face, but I’d seen that sudden movement.

  He said carefully, “I did. Your grandmother would not have wanted to see the two of you together.”

  “But you said she likes Hunter,” I pointed out. “She’s giving him her freaking farm.” At least, that’s what she thought.

  Tommy nodded. “Hunter has brains like I’ve never seen. He’s smart, like his mother. He’ll do right by this farm, since you don’t want to. But it’s one thing if he gets your grandmother’s business. It’s something entirely different if he gets you. He’s not—”

  Good enough is what Tommy didn’t say. The unspoken words hung in the air between us. I wondered whether he thought this was what my grandmother believed, or if he believed it himself.

  “Why are you pushing Hunter and me together, then?” I asked in exasperation. “You sat there in the truck yesterday and asked us if we were hooking up.”

  “I wasn’t pushing you together,” Tommy said calmly. “I was commenting on what I saw, which is that you’ve already been together. I could see it all over his face.” Tommy fished a toothpick out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.

  “Really?” I asked, wishing it were true, hoping against all logic and good sense that Hunter had fallen for me and his dad had sensed this. “I’ve always found Hunter’s face unreadable.”

  Tommy rolled the toothpick to one side of his mouth and talked around it. “He’s got my face.”

  “Right,” I said as the starting bell clanged and the doors on the gate banged open.

  15

  Several hours later, Tommy and I unloaded a couple of horses at the farm, unhitched the trailer, and drove down the hill to his house. He headed right back out to a celebration with the other stable hands. My grandmother’s horse had won the last race at the Breeders’ Cup. Whenever she received a five-million-dollar purse, it was her custom to send a case of fine bourbon to the stable hands. You’re welcome.

  I was done with being a stable hand, I decided, and I did not want any bourbon. My muscles ached to the point that I could feel the individual fibers scraping against each other every time I moved. All I wanted was for this horrible trip to be over. I stumbled into Hunter’s bedroom and tossed the bills Tommy had given me for my work onto the bed. They landed beside Hunter’s anatomy note cards, stacked neatly and secured with a rubber band.

  I picked them up and turned them over curiously, as if I had never before seen such an exotic prize. He definitely had not left them for me to find for some reason. He might do that with his dorm room key or his wallet, but he would not play fast and loose with his homework. He must have stepped in to look for something—surely he’d left something he’d meant to take to college with him, even if I hadn’t—and he’d forgotten them.

  He needed them back.

  Slipping the stack into the pocket of my farm jacket, I shut the door of Tommy’s house behind me and trudged up the lane toward my grandmother’s house, taking care to stay in the long green grass, well off the road. Everybody coming to and from her party was driving drunk.

  I slowed as I approached the mansion towering over me, three white stories pointing straight for a full moon in the starry sky. The driveway was full of expensive cars. I would be recognized even in my stable-boy clothes if I went through the front door, dragged from group to group of ecstatic old people, until I was forced in front of my grandmother. I waded through the cold grass around the house, across the patio, and tiptoed through the side door.

  Hunter stood in the hallway, with both hands on a marble-topped eighteenth-century console table, taking a hard look at himself in the enormous mirror. I stopped. I knew he hadn’t heard me come in because he hadn’t moved. I could present him with the note cards and t
hen … I wasn’t sure what.

  I didn’t dare. He stared at himself, leaning forward as if inordinately concerned with the dark circles under his eyes.

  But he stayed that way for so long that I finally took a few steps toward him. I passed the back entrance to the kitchen, which leaked dance music from the live band in the ballroom, and kept walking until I saw him from a new angle.

  His eyes were closed. He was not staring at himself. He was steeling himself, and as I watched he took a final deep breath and pushed off from the console.

  I skittered into the kitchen before he saw me. I walked backward until I bumped against the island—ouch, granite countertop gouging my barely healed skin—and spun around at a clinking behind me. A dark-haired figure straightened with his hands around a bowl of potato salad. Whitfield Farrell was going through my grandmother’s refrigerator like he lived here.

  “Erin!” he exclaimed. “Guess what I heard.”

  Whitfield and I had not parted on good terms. The last time I’d seen him was the Derby party, when Hunter had told him to get his hands off my ass—the inspiration for my unfortunate stable-boy story. But if Whitfield had been sober, we would have pretended to forget all about that. For the sake of our families getting along and doing business, we would have embraced, backed off, and conversed politely, as we’d both been trained.

  Whitfield was not sober. “I heard that you told your grandmother you didn’t want her fucking farm,” he slurred. “You ran off to New York City”—ran was a jerk of the potato salad bowl hard enough to send the plastic wrap flying off the top and sailing down to the granite top of the island—“and she gave her farm to Hunter Allen.”

  “You’re kidding,” I said.

  “And …” He held up his finger for silence, nearly dropping the bowl.

  I rushed around the island and caught the bowl before it dropped, then set it on the counter.

  This was a mistake, because now I was only a foot from Whitfield. He took off my cap and tossed it to the high ceiling. It rang a huge pot hanging from the rack over the island. “I heard you were playing stable hand today. I don’t understand you at all.”