Lucy groaned. “Because Baby’s Mummy is afraid Teddy Wilkins will hurt sweet Baby. Luckily, Mummy doesn’t know he makes house calls.” She picked up the reins again and walked Mohegan in a small circle. “Thank God there’s only one that serious. But I have seriously seen my farm turned into a rooming-house for emotionally disturbed Thoroughbreds, Alex. And I blame you.”
“Me! Come on, Luce. . . How is it my fault?”
“You talk me up too much to your little trainer cohorts, and they call every time one of their horses trips, wondering if I can take it off their hands. And that interview you did with New Equestrian… Oh, Lucy Knapp is such a whiz with our retirees. Oh Lucy Knapp just understands Thoroughbreds. Oh that Lucy Knapp and her walking on water! Hallelujah! She’s come to save racehorses! She’s a savior! She’s a goddess! She’s a goddamn slow racehorse whisperer! You get me in that magazine and poof… my life is over.” Lucy waved a hand in the air to somehow indicate that she had died and evaporated into thin air.
“Are you done?”
“I think so, yes. Since you’re clearly not going to apologize for turning my life into an equine insane asylum.”
“So can we talk about important things now?”
“Meaning. . ?”
“My problems.”
Lucy went on circling the mare. “Oh, of course! The main attraction. Alex, tell me all your problems. I do hope they’re racehorse problems.”
“Are there any other kind?” I grinned.
“These days?” Lucy could only shake her head. Mohegan did the same, spattering me with foamy saliva. “I heard about that colt from your farm. Too bad.”
“He was a sweetheart. But he was a consignment for the two-year-old sales that year… he never belonged to the farm. And I was just an exercise rider then.” What was I blathering about? Explaining myself as if she thought I was guilty? But I couldn’t help but feel defensive, even to a friend. Who knew what she really thought of me now?
Luckily, Lucy was well-used to the insanity of the equestrian community. She chuckled instead of chiding. “Oh, you don’t need to explain any of it to me. How could it be your fault? You never had a thing to do with this—it’s just the anti-racing maniacs looking for someone to take the blame, and you’re an easy target because you’re their worst nightmare—a racing trainer who actually has a good reputation. They don’t want anyone to know people like you exist. Whatever. We’ll just keep on doing what we do, and let this blow over.”
A gust of wind blew down the solid panel of one of the brightly colored jumps just then, and Mohegan jumped.
“Speaking of blowing over…”
Lucy clapped one hand on her neck to reassure the big mare. “Let’s do what we do inside the barn, yeah?”
Jenny took Mohegan’s reins as we entered the barn, and Lucy steered me into the office. “I need a Diet Coke,” she sighed, heading straight for the refrigerator. I eyed the old fridge’s main decoration: a long whiteboard magnet with the day’s to-do list scrawled on it.
“Lucy, this list has fifteen horses on it.”
She handed me a can of soda and pulled out one for herself. “This is what I’m saying. I only hope once the equestrian world realizes I’m in cahoots with Alex Whitehall, Racehorse Murderer, I won’t get so much business and I can take a freaking vacation.”
“I didn’t murder anyone. I just abandoned a horse in the Everglades to be eaten by crocodiles. Get it right.”
Lucy laughed and sucked down half her Diet Coke. “You’re an evil witch, either way.”
I laughed too, but it was hollow. “The real witch is Mary Archer and her little gang, spreading gossip. I didn’t think she could touch me with words, but this time I was wrong. I know she called the news on me.”
“And the news is gone. You threaten to kill one little reporter, it’s amazing the way they disappear.”
I grinned at the memory. Kerri shrieking, the look of shock on the reporters’ faces when I knocked down one of their own… Accidental, sure, but still satisfying in retrospect. “That part didn’t even make the eleven o’clock news, though. In fact, none of it did. Maybe I did scare them.” Although a few mainstream equestrian websites had picked up on the fact that Market Affair had once spent time in the care of Cotswold Farm, now co-owned by noted retirement advocate Alex Whitehall (their words, not mine), the local TV stations had opted not to air any footage they’d obtained the night that the story broke. I didn’t know why—maybe someone at the station had racehorse connections and had put a stop to the story once they realized how ridiculous it was. With them gone, it was just the CASH death threats. The story had to be blowing over, right?
“Death threats, huh?” Lucy looked appreciative when I told her about the emails. “You are moving on up in the world. To think I knew you back when.”
“I figure most of them wanted everyone in the racehorse business dead already, they just didn’t have my name on their list yet. I’m not exactly famous. It’s bittersweet, really. I thought I’d make the PETA hit-list by training a Derby winner. And here Personal Best doesn’t even have the points to go to Churchill Downs.”
Lucy laughed and threw herself down in a battered rolling chair. “Plus it’s not even PETA. It’s some radical offshoot. Oh Alex, you’re such a nut. And despite all that, you’ll be famous for your training yet, I’m sure of it. Great training doesn’t come to a girl overnight. You have years ahead of you. Take a seat now and let’s talk about your real problems.”
I explained, through much Diet Coke, about my Tiger troubles. “So I guess,” I summed up, “my best-case scenario would be to get him going as a jumper or an event horse, then send him to a trainer who will compete him, take him through the upper levels. Assuming he can get there.” I squirmed in the metal folding chair. “Can he get there?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never seen him, remember? I don’t have time to watch racing. But is this really what you want? I thought this horse was like your pet. Your’s and Alexander’s both, actually. Didn’t you go to New York to get him because he was related to another horse you had?”
Red Erin, I thought. He was Red Erin’s half-brother. A lifetime ago, when Alexander and I had just gotten together, when I was galloping racehorses every morning and questioning the purpose in everything I did, when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’d been wondering if there was a life for me with less heartache, where horses like Red Erin didn’t get a hold on my heart and then die. Then, we’d seen Tiger on TV, and knew we had to have him.
From that trip I’d learned that there was no life for people like us but this one, breaking our hearts regularly in some fresh way. “Yeah,” I said simply. “I went to New York.”
Some things were still too raw and close to the heart to talk about, even with close friends.
“Why aren’t you keeping him for yourself?”
“I explained, he’s too aggressive to be a pony—”
“Not to be a pony, Alex.” Lucy put down her empty soda can and reached for another. “Look, don’t pull that racehorse trainer nonsense where you act like anything outside of racing is some enigma you know nothing about. I mean a show horse for you, Alex. Or even just a fun horse to ride. Don’t you miss just riding for the sake of riding? Or working on your equitation, or jumping a course? You could do all that with Tiger, and you wouldn’t have to send him away to some other trainer’s barn.”
A riding horse. Everyone wanted me to have a riding horse now.
My childhood riding event horses seemed a thousand years ago now. When was the last time I’d even been in an English saddle? Last summer, I remembered, when I gave Luna a basic dressage background in order to give her a working set of brakes.
Oh, it had felt so good. Dangerously good.
If Alexander thought I should keep Tiger for myself, that didn’t mean a whole lot. He still might just be trying to placate me and keep me from hopping in the car and driving off to Gulfstream. If Lucy a
greed, that was another thing entirely.
But who had time for a pleasure horse? Not the owner of a Thoroughbred breeding and racing stable, that was for sure. I was in the saddle all morning as things stood already. I had the horses in south Florida, too, and what if Personal Best did make up the points he needed to get into the Derby? I’d have to go to Kentucky, and then on to Saratoga for the summer… he couldn’t possibly stop me from that… so how would I have a riding horse? As lovely as it sounded… no. “I wouldn’t be able to do it,” I said regretfully. “I wouldn’t have the time to ride him. I don’t see any way around it. I have to have someone else do it.”
Lucy shook her head. “That’s a shame,” she said. “Because I don’t have time to ride him, either.”
“What? Aw, come on Luce—for me! You gotta do me this favor!”
“I don’t have time! You see my schedule. How do you think I can fit sixteen horses into a day? Are you crazy? Do it yourself, Alex. You know how to ride. Throw a dressage saddle on Tiger and teach him to carry himself. I’ll lend you a French link snaffle if you need one. He can’t lean on that as hard as he can a regular loose-ring. Really comes in handy with the racehorses.”
I chewed at my lip. A part of me wanted this very badly. Of course I did! I loved riding Tiger! But… what if I just loved galloping Tiger? I hadn’t shown a horse in years. Take a racehorse fresh off the track and retrain him to do something I myself hadn’t done since I was a teenager? Please. She had to be out of her mind. Everyone was out of their minds. I was the only sane person left. I opened my mouth to say so, but Lucy spoke up first.
She leaned back in her chair and regarding me with a lazy smile. “Alex, you don’t want to give up this horse. And you don’t want to send him to some big-name trainer, either. You’re just afraid you can’t do right by him yourself. You’re afraid you’re going to let him down.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Well, what did she say?”
“She said she wouldn’t take him, and I should do it.”
“Poor you, forced to ride your own horse. Are you upset?”
“No… no… it’s fine, really.” I swerved around a squirrel that was determined to end its furry life under the wheels of my truck. “Whoops, that was close. I’m sure you guys are all right about everything, as per usual—”
“What was close? Where are you? Pay attention to the road.” Alexander’s voice through the truck speakers was somehow more British, more imperious, more demanding than in real life. “I don’t like this damn Bluetooth. It’s more distracting than they say. Wait until you come home to talk to me.”
“It was just a squirrel. Relax.”
“So you say. I’m hanging up now. Be careful.”
I looked at my phone on the passenger seat. The screen went dark. Well, I was half an hour from home. Half an hour alone with my thoughts, something I had been trying to avoid. Now I would have to come to the same conclusion everyone else already had.
Lucy was very convincing; it was one of her more annoying characteristics. It helped her sell horses, which I liked, since I sent her so many retirees to train and sell on. It helped her train horses, too, or so I figured. You had to be very convincing with some of these horses, when they wanted to gallop and you wanted them to learn a medium walk or something similarly mundane and boring.
And so she had found it a simple matter to convince me that I was only so hellbent on sending Tiger to a new trainer for his retraining work because I was so disappointed in myself—in my own failure to make him a racehorse worth his salt. “In all fairness, he was a winning allowance horse, which is no mean accomplishment,” she’d reasoned. “But you wanted more for him, didn’t you? You wanted at least a stakes win for him before he retired. You wanted to prove that you were able to do more for him than his old trainer. And maybe he was supposed to be the champion that you had thought your old horse—what was his name? Saltpeter, that’s it. He was supposed to be a champion in the place of Saltpeter.”
“That’s not it,” I’d said feebly, because that was it, and I hadn’t known it before she said it, and I found the whole situation alarming. “And it doesn’t have anything to do with Saltpeter, that was a long time ago, that’s water under the bridge—”
“Some trainers might be over the death of a young horse that they loved,” Lucy cut in. “But not you.”
Of course she was right. I still thought about Saltpeter, often in the middle of the night, wide awake and staring at the ceiling, at that special hour that seemed reserved for waking up and thinking over every bad decision you’d ever made, and every regret you’d ever harbored. I still thought about Red Erin, too, and how desperately Alexander and I had mourned him. I thought about every horse I’d ever lost, and there were more than a few, but the soulmate horses, the ones that really clicked with you, those were the ones that continued to gnaw at your heart, years after they were gone and the rest of the world had forgotten them.
I never wanted anyone to forget Tiger, I realized now. That was my motivation and my fear. I didn’t want his name to fade away the way the others’ had. I didn’t want him to disappear like the others who hadn’t been fast enough for the record books. No one would ever remember Red Erin, and Saltpeter who had never even gone to the races, never even had a lip tattoo or a gate card or a published work, no one but us. Unless I did something about it now, no one would ever remember The Tiger Prince, an allowance horse who managed to bring home a few purses in New York and Florida before he vanished into obscurity.
So I’d sat quietly while she’d nodded vigorously and worked her way through another Diet Coke and explained all the ways in which I was going to start Tiger as a riding horse. “And once you’ve gotten him going nicely at all three gaits, relaxed and starting to stretch into the bridle, you can add in a few little fences, just for fun, and see how he likes it. And you’ll know real quick if he has a nice jump, or if he’s just falling over the fences. Then you’ll know if you’re aiming for dressage or a jumping career for him. Does he have the gaits for dressage?”
“He does.” I’d pictured his big floating trot, his long swinging stride, his sloping shoulder and matching croup that made his conformation so pleasantly symmetrical. “But he’s so impatient, I don’t know if he can stand the discipline.”
“Maybe he’s an event horse,” Lucy suggested. “The jumping and the fitness work will cut into the tedium of the dressage. I know a girl, Jules Thornton—she’s got a real nice hand with the OTTBs, and she exclusively events. If I’m still too busy in a few months and you want someone else to take a look at how he’s going, I’ll give you her number. But you have to start him first. This is your battle.”
Now I slowed the truck as I passed a field full of cross-country fences. There was a triangular jump made of logs close to the road, a hanging log between two trees further away, and in the distance I could see a water complex, the jump down into the water looming like a cliff. I hadn’t evented in years. I wondered if I still had the nerve to do it on any horse, let alone on a cheeky bastard like Tiger. What would it be like galloping Tiger in a huge open field? Probably like riding a runaway rocket-ship. I had to be honest with myself—if I was going to do this, I was going to have to allow an enormous amount of time.
So there it was. I had pretty much decided that I was going to do this.
I pulled off to the side of the road and studied the cross-country field a little more closely. Besides the water complex and the hanging logs and the hog’s back, there were plenty of other obstacles to send a galloping horse hurtling towards, if you were so inclined or possibly had a death wish. There was a treacherous-looking ditch-and-wall at the bottom of a gentle slope, a massive coop at the top of a rather steep hill, and that more innocent-looking earthen bank in the center of a flat stretch would probably trick a few horses into hopping onto the top of it rather than jumping all the way over it. I was considering the way the fences would ride, tackling them in my head, when the sunlight sudde
nly vanished and the field was cloaked in gloom. There was a rumble of thunder that shook the land beneath the truck, and the dashboard vibrated with a plastic rattling sound.
My phone, on the seat beside me, started chirping with weather alerts.
Alexander was standing in the farm driveway, his unbuttoned Barbour overcoat flapping in the gusting wind, looking with an expression of amazement at the northwestern sky, which was rapidly turning a particularly threatening shade of gray. When I pulled in from the county road he turned slowly, saw me, and lifted a white handful of mail in the air. A massive gale was on its way, and Alexander had decided to take a stroll down for the post.
I stopped the truck next to him and he climbed in. “I wish you’d take the little car,” he grumbled as he settled himself. “This monster is a gas-guzzler.”
“No one takes me seriously in the little car,” I replied unrepentantly. “This is Ocala. A girl needs a truck. And don’t change the subject with me. Why are you wandering around in your raincoat like a mad housewife? Didn’t you notice the world’s about to end?”
The sun was gone, and the white ripple of clouds signaling the gust front was rapidly approaching in the rear-view mirror as I gunned the engine. A gust of wind slammed into the truck and physically shoved it to one side. A tire dipped into a hole alongside the driveway. I pulled the wheel straight again and the truck lurched back onto the pavement. “It’s like a hurricane out here.”
Alexander peered at the trees, massive oaks along the perimeter fence that were swaying in the gusts. It wasn’t exactly fun to drive through; branches were crashing down and twigs and leaves were pelting the truck like hailstones. I drove much faster than usual, rushing through the trees and into the pastures on either side of the drive, which were conspicuously empty of life. “I had everyone that could be brought in, brought in,” he said. “If we lose one of those trees that could mean a whole section of fence goes too.”
Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4) Page 12
