The Hidden Horses of New York: A Novel

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  A few hours earlier, she’d been congratulating herself on figuring out how to live in the city and still be a horsewoman. Falling out with Aidan would risk the most important aspect of all: keeping the job that paid her to write about racehorses.

  “I won’t put myself before the site,” Jenny sighed. She tipped up her bottle and drank the last sweet drops of rum. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “It’s definitely what I’m worried about,” Lana said seriously. “Because in another week, you two are going to Saratoga together.”

  Jenny swung her head around to stare at Lana. “We’re going where?”

  Ever since Jenny was a little girl, she’d heard the stories about Saratoga. Tales of days warm and soft as hugs, nights cool and refreshing as a mountain stream. Such summer weather alone sounded like a legendary wonder to someone born and bred in sultry Florida. Then there was the fairy-tale setting: a historic grandstand and acres of beautiful, doll’s house barns. The graceful Victorian houses lining the streets around the track, with broad shady verandahs and horse racing flags waving. The allure of visiting an entire country town built as a temple to the thoroughbred horse, the intoxicating possibility of walking down a street surrounded by people who were all there because racehorses had brought them together. And of course, there was the dreamt-of prestige of actually running a horse in some of the summer’s toughest races. That was Saratoga, the fairy-tale city of American horse-racing.

  And yet, even though Saratoga Springs was just a few hours north of New York City, after four years of city life, Jenny had still never been there. Saratoga’s racing season was as brief and lovely as a butterfly’s, just a handful of summer weeks in July and August, and Jenny had always gone home for the summer before it even started. A Florida summer, all humid days and stormy evenings and sticky nights, was all she knew. The Wolfe horses had never made it further north than Belmont Park. Saratoga had eluded them, year after year.

  Now, it was going to be Jenny’s.

  She’d have to cancel her first ride with the mounted patrol, she thought fleetingly. But that didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered but going to Saratoga.

  “Are we going for the entire meet?” Jenny asked. She didn’t see Manhattan’s lights anymore; the only thing in her vision was the green fields and rolling mountains of upstate New York, a place she’d only seen in pictures.

  “Six weeks, right up to Labor Day weekend.” Lana grinned at her. “Surprised? Dad said you would be.”

  “Surprised? I almost dropped dead. I’m sure my heart stopped beating. I thought maybe we’d get up there for a couple big weekends, the Travers Stakes weekend, for sure, but six weeks? How on earth did you find us a place to stay?” Jenny’s brows came together. “Wait—we aren’t camping out in the woods somewhere, are we?”

  Lana laughed. “I bet you would if you had to! But no, one of Dad’s friends had a rental come available. They decided to go to Italy this summer instead. I guess Amalfi sounded nicer than Saratoga. Which, I mean, they both have their high points, right?”

  Sure, whatever, Jenny thought. She couldn’t imagine living in a world where the summer vacation choice was an idle discussion of the merits of Italy versus the Adirondacks, so she didn’t even bother considering it. “You’re coming too, right?”

  “On weekends,” Lana said. “But I’ve got plenty to occupy me here, and we’re paying good money for that office. I intend to use it. Hey—do you want to get some ice cream? We’re close to that nitrogen place you like.”

  Jenny trailed Lana down the staircase and back onto the street-level sidewalks. The concrete was crowded and they found it was easier to navigate the swarms of lost tourists by walking single-file, which gave her plenty of time to get lost in a dream: she and Aidan, living together in a snug cottage on the outskirts of Saratoga, going to cover the backside each morning and the races every afternoon.

  Lana had warned her not to destroy the business by making a move on him, but Jenny didn’t see one possible way to get through an enchanted Saratoga summer without trying to turn that city’s magic to her own purposes.

  This was meant to be.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hot Toddy, the bay horse who lived in the end stall of Caitlin Robert’s sweet little Saratoga shed-row, had learned to look out for them.

  Every morning, Aidan and Jenny sloshed through the wet grass between the stable and the drive, squinting into the orange sunrise as it pierced the sky behind the myriad green barns, their leather bags stuffed and rattling with the tools of their trade.

  Hot Toddy leaned out of his back window, pricking his ears at the pair of them. Aidan slipped a hand into the pocket of his slouchy jeans, and the horse neighed his interest immediately, his high-pitched voice wavering through the damp morning air.

  A few other horses whinnied in reply, their responses echoing through the little barns, growing ever more distant, an equine version of telephone. Jenny wondered what the message became as it reached three, four, five barns away. Their calls joined the early morning bird song, the sound of hose jets hitting water buckets, the whisper of a breeze stirring the tall northern trees.

  Jenny took a deep breath and absorbed the scents on that whisper of wind: of grass and hay and manure and some elusive upstate mountain essence. She let them soak into her soul, fill her heart with gladness, her feet with lightness.

  She loved Saratoga.

  Hot Toddy accepted a peppermint from Aidan’s hand with eager lips, and after this morning ritual was completed they were free to walk around the side of the shed-row, the ground beneath their boots changing from wet grass to thick mulch. A tidy pathway led up to the little stable’s center entrance. The horses looked over their rubber stall guards with interest. Everyone had heard Hot Toddy’s teeth crunching down his mint.

  Jenny smiled as Aidan distributed mints all the way down to the tack room at the far end of the shed-row, where Caitlin was standing where she always was standing at this time of morning: before her white board on the wall, a mug of coffee in one hand, a dry erase marker in the other, going over the day’s plans for her little string of racehorses.

  Aidan stuffed crinkling peppermint wrappers deep into his pocket and set his heavy bag down on a wooden bench. He was, as always, carrying an impressive array of photography equipment: lenses and zooms and bits of camera Jenny couldn’t even name. Jenny’s bag was stuffed with a more eclectic assortment of items: battery chargers, cords, notebooks, a riding helmet, a tightly-rolled rain jacket.

  Caitlin glanced over at them, blinking a few times as if to shake the racing plans from her brain so that she could reenter the outside world for a few stolen moments. “I heard Hot Toddy whinny and knew it had to be you guys,” she said with a grin. “He’s turning into our watchdog.”

  “Aidan always gives him a mint,” Jenny replied, winking at Aidan. “He learned by day three that Aidan’s always good for a treat.”

  “Ah, I thought his breath was fresher. Jenny, if you want to join me on track first thing this morning, I’ve got two works going early.”

  Jenny was already pulling the riding helmet out of her bag. “Perfect, because we have an appointment at the Myers barn at eight thirty for a chat about shoeing. I have a whole blog series planned on racetrack blacksmith work.”

  “That sounds really interesting,” Caitlin murmured, but she was already gazing back at her training board, and Jenny knew her mind was on her horses and their work schedule. Caitlin was an amazing hostess, having generously offered her shed-row as a home base for their Saratoga projects, but she didn’t question what else Jenny and Aidan got up to when they weren’t in her barn. She just didn’t have time for anyone’s day but her own.

  Ten minutes later, Jenny was mounting Caitlin’s older track pony, a plain bay gelding named Martin, while Aidan had already marched off towards the track to set up for morning works photos. He had quickly developed a knack for unique angles, capturing horses as they galloped past the rai
l in ways that somehow highlighted individual aspects of each subject: the kink in a tail, the white sclera around a widened eye, the delicate tracing of bulging veins in an outstretched neck. With just a week’s worth of Saratoga views from his lens, Aidan’s photos were already going viral amongst the horse racing community. Jenny wouldn’t be surprised if he hopped the train back to the city in five weeks with a signed contract for a coffee-table book.

  She was happy for him… happy, and still looking for the angle that would be her big break. So far, her retirement posts were still the strongest content on the website. She was hoping a blog series on racetrack horse care would start to push up her engagement with the sport horse crowd. After all, her goal was to help people understand horse racing life, not just celebrate the moment a racehorse transitioned into retirement. The retirement angle was still positioned about escape; people saw it as relief from a hard life. Jenny wanted, more than anything, to change that perspective.

  “Thanks so much for letting me ride Martin,” Jenny said as they walked along the horse-path towards the track. All around them, thoroughbreds and ponies and bicycles and golf carts were on their morning commutes, silhouetted against the soft light. A thin fog traced through the soaring trees overhead and ran gray fingers along the eaves of the old stables, but the sky overhead was already brightening to blue. It would be another clear, glorious day up here in the springs country. “You’ve been so generous with your time this week.”

  Caitlin shrugged and laughed at the same time. “I like what you’re doing. And if you write about how good Caitlin Robert is to her horses, that’s pretty good publicity for me, right? These trainers should be lining up to host you in their sheds, but most of them are so old-school, they still think reporters are the enemy. This sport is too damn old in a lot of ways. Don’t write that down, I never said it and I’ll deny it.” She grinned at Jenny. “But you know what I mean.”

  Jenny grinned back. Sure, things were getting better… but not with the old guard. Over the couple of weeks leading up to Saratoga, she’d been able to gain in-roads into the stables of other young trainers like Caitlin. The older trainers, her parents’ contemporaries, were still looking at her with suspicion, not willing to give her more than a stiff nod when they met in the track kitchen, and that was only because she was still little Jenny Wolfe to them, no matter what they thought of her current day job.

  Last week, before they’d decamped to Saratoga, had been the best of all. She’d made some serious connections. Belmont had felt like a ghost town as the big-name trainers got out of town early, but the quiet backside had given Jenny the chance to meet some smaller outfits, trainers with just a handful of horses. She’d written a really well-received piece on the work-life balance of part-time trainers—an article which seemed like the first one actually read by people outside of the racing industry.

  She’d gotten a few emails about it from aspiring horse trainers who hadn’t even realized such a thing was possible. Part-time horse show trainers and riders, sure, everyone knew about that! But racing had seemed like an impenetrable secret for so long, to so many people—that was the wall Jenny was determined to break down, and it looked like she was starting to make some dents.

  She thought the horseshoeing blog series would be another democratizer in the sport horse versus racehorse factions. She always thought of the shoe board hanging at the paddock in Tampa. She’d been holding a horse for her father as he saddled up one afternoon, with a group of teens in riding club tees, jeans, and riding boots standing nearby, looking up at the shoes on display.

  “What on earth are those?” one of them asked.

  “Weird horse shoes.”

  “Bends? I never heard of a shoe like that.”

  “God, horse racing is so crazy.”

  She’d cringed, momentarily forgetting the horse at the end of her shank, and just then her father had placed the saddle on the horse’s back and the horse had half-reared and she’d gotten an earful for not paying attention.

  So writing about the way racehorses were shod, and drawing comparisons to the way sport horses were shod? A win-win for her, going back to her teenage years.

  Caitlin and Jenny pulled up their ponies near the gap in the backstretch railing, where a steady stream of racehorses went flowing in and out. Although most of the horses were just jogging along the outer rail and working in a slow gallop down the center of the track, there were already a few horses turning in timed works along the inside rail. They started by standing still at the far side of the track, under the wire, with the empty grandstand rising behind them. Then, one by one, each horse took off, galloped swiftly around the turn and continued up the backstretch past them at racing speed, or something close to it.

  Jenny was constantly amazed by the organized chaos of Saratoga. There were horses every which-way, moving at every pace, at every speed, in every direction. Though it probably looked insane to first-time visitors, there was a dance to it all.

  After all, training hours were filled with time-honored rules. The most basic laws of morning training were based upon speed: trotting horses stayed to the left, often hard against the outside rail, and traveled “the wrong way,” or clockwise, against the flow of galloping horses. Galloping horses traveled counter-clockwise, as they would in a race, with the fastest horses granted the inner rail, and the slowest horses fanning out towards the center and the outer rail. Jockeys and exercise riders were vocal in protecting their galloping room. Wander out of your path and into that of someone faster, and you were sure to get shouted at. There was no room for mistakes during morning training, especially not on a crowded track like Saratoga.

  Jenny took it all in for a moment, feeling deep satisfaction that this was her life, and then put on her reporter face and turned to Caitlin. “So tell me a little about this work this morning? The horse, what you’re looking for, why today, that kind of thing?” She held out her phone, capturing Caitlin’s voice as well as the backdrop of hoof-beats and whinnies and the shouts of exercise riders, as the trainer gave her the pieces she needed to construct a story which helped explain what horse racing life really was all about.

  Aidan and Jenny went back to the house and hunched over their laptops through lunch, picking at paper-wrapped sandwiches from a deli that delivered during the racing season, the manager correctly surmising that New Yorkers were deeply attached to having their food brought to them.

  Their workstation was a vast cherrywood dining room table, positioned in the center of a formal dining room of imposing grandiosity, wrapped all around by tall windows. A towering china cabinet and an ornate cherrywood buffet frowned at them from the corners of the room. The walls were lined with dark chair-rails and covered with wallpaper the rich color of crushed blackberries. The dining room made Jenny feel like she had fallen into a Gilded Age time warp, and the rest of the house had a similar effect.

  The rental house Mr. Farnsworth had acquired for his fledging turf-writing outfit had not been the cozy cottage of Jenny’s imagination, but a grand cream-colored Victorian with a wraparound porch scattered with rocking chairs and wicker sofas, a turret in one corner which housed a second-floor hideaway of custom bookshelves and every mid-century pony book ever written, buttercup-yellow shutters trimmed with dark red, and a front garden of glorious, rigidly-controlled chaos which was manicured twice-weekly by a tan-faced gardener who spoke to no one and smiled only at her flowers.

  It was entirely too big for the two of them: there were five bedrooms upstairs and downstairs an impossibly elegant drawing room, a vast modern kitchen, a cozy breakfast room, the grand dining room, and a casual television room. There was enough space in this place for a dozen offices, Jenny thought, but the point of renting a summer house, for most people, was to leave work behind, so there wasn’t a single desk or workstation, not even an antique roll-top lined with tantalizing pigeonholes. This left the dining room table, protected by a linen table-cloth, as the only reasonable location for their midday and l
ate night work sessions.

  Jenny loved it: loved the white curtains lifting in the breeze from the tall windows, loved the summer light that splashed around the room, loved the high ceiling and the prints of famous old racehorses galloping along the walls. This ridiculous mansion was all part of the Saratoga fairy tale.

  “My photos are ready,” Aidan announced, lifting his head and rubbing his neck. His brow settled into a tired frown. “They’re on the drive, so use whichever ones you want for the story.”

  “Okay,” Jenny murmured, not ready to give up her concentration. She was on the last few lines of her day’s story. The backside report had gone from once weekly to five days a week now that they were in residence at Saratoga, and making certain she didn’t write the same sort of story two days in a row was already a challenge. Today she wrote about the planning behind timed works, tomorrow would be the first shoeing article, and what would the next day be? She hadn’t been able to think that far ahead yet; she’d already outpaced her content calendar.

  She had just finished and started copying the story over into the site to format for publishing when her phone buzzed. She looked at it and immediately felt butterflies come to life in her stomach.

  “It’s Lana,” she reported, glancing at Aidan, who gave her an exasperated look in return. Lana and Mr. Farnsworth had come up with them the first weekend, to settle them in and laugh at their faces when they saw the massive house they’d be living in, and then went back to Manhattan on Sunday evening. She expected they’d be back tomorrow, to stay for a long weekend, and despite the trouble she was having with Lana The Editor, she wouldn’t be disappointed at the prospect of a third wheel, someone to help keep some safe distance between herself and Aidan. Contrary to everything Lana had predicted, Lily hadn’t broken up with Aidan. At least, not yet. And their constant close proximity was driving Jenny crazy.