by Debbie Burke
“Damned if I know.”
Tawny leaned against the wood side of the barn, pondering. What did Mimi really want?
After a thoughtful moment, Tillman spoke again, “You probably still think I was bullshitting but she did ask for you.”
Tawny figured he was telling the truth now that he had nothing else to gain. His previous deceptions still irked her, along with the uncomfortable certainty that he would do it again. “Well, it’s considered bad manners not to thank the person who pounded your chest into pulp. She was just being polite.”
“Tawny, do you know why I offered you a job?”
Where did that come from? “Because I was broke and you felt sorry for me?”
“You really don’t have any idea, do you?”
No, she didn’t. With barely a high school education and dyslexia, she constantly felt out of her league, struggling to keep up with work she often didn’t understand.
Tillman went on: “Anyone can tell after spending five minutes with you that you can be trusted and you’re kind and understanding. You get my clients to open up and tell you the secrets they’d never tell me. You’ve collected more intel on Mimi than all the pros put together. I didn’t hire you for your crappy spelling and typing. I wanted that special talent you have.”
His words surprised her. Through her whole life, people had confided their deepest secrets to her, even complete strangers. She’d never seen that as any special talent, just being a good listener. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and murmured, “Thank you.”
“On top of that, you even muck out my horse stalls. That makes you a key employee.”
His teasing made her chuckle. “OK,” she said, “I’ll be waiting for that superior performance bonus.”
****
When Tawny picked Arielle and Judah up from school that afternoon, both kids were already cranky. Their mood didn’t improve during a forty-five minute wait at Arielle’s orthodontist appointment. A trip to McDonald’s drive-through afterwards hadn’t sweetened their tempers. Arielle complained her mouth hurt too much to eat. Judah sulked even as he forced down a Big Mac, large fries, and a super-size chocolate shake.
Instead of taking them home, Tawny turned off Highway 3 onto the dirt road toward the stable.
Judah whined, “You’re going the wrong way.”
Tawny answered, “We need to take care of your horses.”
“They’re not my horses,” Judah groused. “They’re Mimi’s and Arielle’s.”
“OK, then Arielle and I need to take care of her horses, right, Arielle?” Tawny glanced in the rearview mirror.
In the back seat, the pouting girl sucked the straw loudly in her empty cup to make as annoying a noise as possible.
Tawny wasn’t sure whether the effort was directed at her or Judah. “What are the horses’ names?”
Arielle rattled ice. “Sweet Potato and Moldy.”
“Moldy?” Tawny asked. Was this another attempt to piss her off?
“The gray one. He’s an Arabian. His official name is Molodets of Montana but I just call him Moldy cuz he’s all gray and fuzzy. Makes Mimi mad. He’s her horse. Sweetie’s mine. She’s blind now.”
Tawny recalled the Appaloosa hadn’t bolted into the pasture as Moldy had but instead tentatively clopped outside and grazed. “What happened to her?”
Arielle stretched her arms over her head. “Uveitis. Inflammation in the eye. Nobody knows why, maybe genetics, but Appaloosas go blind a lot.”
“That’s too bad.” In between dodging potholes, Tawny watched the girl in the mirror. “Can you still ride her?”
“Yeah, a little bit, on trails she knows. But I don’t take her anywhere she hasn’t been because she gets spooked easy. Before we knew she’d gone blind, Judah the ree-tard takes her out on this rocky trail and makes her gallop. She threw him off.”
“She busted my leg!” Judah sneered.
“That’s because you tried to make her do something stupid,” Arielle snapped. “A cupful of my horse’s snot has more brains than you do.”
He released the seat belt and turned around, standing up on his knees. His fists thrashed at Arielle in the back. She howled and scooted out of his reach.
“Knock it off, both of you!” Tawny shouted. She stomped the brakes. The SUV jerked to a stop.
Judah tumbled over backwards into the foot well, folded double, knees up to his chin, partly wedged under the dashboard.
“Are you OK?” Tawny asked.
He looked like a dumpling that had overflowed its pan. His arms flailed, trying pull his squashed body out of the trap. Round cheeks puffed with rage. “Get me out of here!”
Arielle leaned over the front seat to see his predicament and burst into giggles.
Once she’d made certain he wasn’t hurt, Tawny tried to suppress her own laughter but failed. The poor kid looked ridiculous.
After several more seconds, Judah himself started to laugh. The SUV rocked with his struggles and their merriment. Finally, he gasped, “Get me out of here before I wet my pants.”
Tawny came around to the passenger door, opened it, and grasped his hands. “OK, on three. One…two…three!” She yanked hard while he heaved himself forward, popping out of the trap. He tried to clamber from the SUV but his foot stuck under the seat. He landed on his butt in the dirt road, one leg still inside the car.
That brought on a new round of giggles.
At last, he struggled to his feet.
Tawny brushed the dust off his hoody. “Did that cure you from trying to hit your sister?”
He made a face. “Maybe.”
Arielle swatted Judah’s bottom from behind then danced out of reach.
“Hey!” he protested.
She grinned, braces sparkling in the sun. “Just trying to clean the dirt off your fat butt.”
Tawny stepped between them, an arm around each kid, keeping them separate but friendly. They hiked the last quarter mile to the stable.
Moldy and Sweet Potato grazed on spring grass in the paddock. Both horses lifted their heads and whinnied. The blind Appy clopped toward the fence, ears twitching to pinpoint the location of the humans.
“Over here, Sweetie!” Arielle called, climbing up the fence rails. She made a clucking sound with her tongue. The horse approached and nuzzled her outstretched hand.
Tawny joined her at the fence and stroked the Appy’s cheek. “She’s so gentle.”
“Yeah, even that chicken Judah could ride her if he wasn’t such a dipshit.” Arielle tossed a look over her shoulder, obviously hoping her brother heard the insult, but he’d wandered away. He perched on a bale of hay at the side of the stable, ear buds in, thumbing his cell.
“It’s a shame she went blind,” Tawny said.
“Yeah, Dad wanted to put her down. Said horses cost too much to keep and, if you can’t even ride her, what’s the point? But Mom wouldn’t let him.”
That was first sign of compassion Tawny had heard about Tillman’s ex. Score one for Rochelle.
“I don’t know much about horses,” Tawny said. “I gave them some hay. Do they need any other food?”
Arielle jumped down from the fence rails and swung the barn door wide. “Yeah, alfalfa pellets.”
Tawny followed her inside where Arielle opened the lid of a metal trash can and filled a large scoop with green pellets. She dumped some in the feeding trough of each stall. Sweetie clopped into her stall and started to nibble.
“Don’t you have to groom them?” Tawny asked. “Like curry them?”
Arielle lifted one shoulder. “Fausto does that.”
“Yeah, but he can’t work for a while. If you show me what to do, I’ll help you.”
“Nah, they’re good for now.”
Tawny figured that was just her excuse to avoid the chore.
Arielle clucked at the gray horse, still chomping grass in the pasture. “Come on, Moldy, get your alfalfa.” The gray lifted his head, shook his mane, and moved to a fresh patch. “Damn
stubborn horse,” Arielle muttered. “Mimi doesn’t want Moldy to have too much so he doesn’t get fat. She’d be pissed if she knew he’s eaten a bunch of new grass. He might founder.”
Uh-oh. In her ignorance, Tawny hoped she hadn’t harmed the horse. “I saw Mimi’s trophies in her room.”
“Yeah, she’s won lots of competitions. She’s really amazing. But don’t you dare tell her I said that.”
“OK.” Tawny suppressed her smile. “You and Mimi fight a lot?”
“All the time. We were fighting at school the day she tried to kill herself.”
At last, an opening. Maybe Arielle knew something that might explain the suicide attempt. “About what?”
“Shoes. She refused to let me try on her new Miu Mius. We’re only a half size apart. It wasn’t like I was going to stretch them out and wreck them. I just wanted to see if I liked them enough to bug Mom to buy some for me. Mimi got all pissed off, saying I was trying to dress just like her and shit. She says no matter how much I try to imitate her, I’ll always be ugly with my braces and African hair and no one’s ever going think I’m beautiful like she is.”
Sounded like a normal sister fight to Tawny, except for the price of the shoes. “Did you settle anything?”
“Nah.” Arielle patted Sweet Potato’s rump, raising dust. “But then she did something really weird.”
“What was that?”
“She handed me her keys and told me to drive her truck home after school.”
“That’s weird?”
“Yeah, like once-in-ten-millenniums weird. She never lets anyone drive her truck, especially not me.” Arielle ducked her head with a sheepish smile. “I don’t have my license yet, so Dad would shit if he knew. Don’t tell him, OK?”
Another secret the girl expected Tawny to keep. “Did you drive it home?”
“I’m not great at the clutch, but yeah, no problema.”
“Why did she want you to drive?”
Arielle spread her hands wide. “I don’t know. I think she was meeting someone. Guess she was going to catch a ride with them.”
“Did you see who she met?”
“Not really. I mean, she shot out of school as soon as the bell rang. Went running across the faculty parking lot. I think she might have gotten in a rig over there.”
Faculty parking lot?
Mimi had mentioned boys her own age were lame. And she’d seemed awfully interested in the fifteen-year age difference between Tawny and Dwight. Could she be involved with a teacher? But what teacher would be foolish enough to be seen with a student in his car? Let alone get her pregnant?
“Does Mimi have a favorite teacher?”
“How would I know? She never talks to me, except to tell me how ugly I am.”
Tawny placed hands on Arielle’s shoulders. “You don’t believe her when she says that, do you?”
Dark eyes lowered. “Nah.” Which meant yeah, it hurts.
“Arielle, you have your own style. It’s different from Mimi’s but that doesn’t mean you’re not beautiful.”
Her lip quivered. “I’m sick of these braces.”
Tawny hugged her. “I know, honey. I had braces for three years and hated every minute. How much longer does the orthodontist say you need them?”
“Another year. I’ll probably still have them when it’s time to get my senior pictures taken. Gross.”
“It’s hard now but the results will last a long time. You’ll have beautiful teeth for the rest of your life.” As if a teenager could look ahead farther than the next weekend.
Arielle leaned back from the hug. “You think, while Mom’s gone, we could do something different with my hair?”
Tawny remembered their earlier conversation. “Like cornrows?”
“There’s a couple of black girls in my trig class with really radical braids. I asked them where they got them done. There’s this salon…”
Tawny forked her fingers through Arielle’s soft fluff. “Let’s make an appointment.”
The girl’s face lit up. “Cool!”
“First, though, let’s take care of the hair on these horses.”
“Awww.”
****
Tillman called at ten as Tawny watched the TV news in his giant bed. She muted the sound and asked, “What’s going on? How’s Mimi?”
“Still giving everyone the silent treatment. I took her for a hike today—not her idea. Asked if she was pregnant.”
“Tillman, you just blurted that right out?” His insensitivity grated on Tawny.
“Works with hostile witnesses. Catch them off guard.”
“This is your daughter, not a lying witness you’re trying to expose.”
“Well, you probably already guessed the reaction. She belted me across the mouth then ran back to the lodge. Refused to come down from her room for dinner or the rest of the evening festivities.”
“Festivities?”
His sarcasm dripped like battery acid. “Yoga, Tai Chi, meditation, being fully mindful of our breathing. I’ve manifested so mindfully, I could puke. What a waste.”
“She’s still not talking to any counselors?”
“Not a word.”
“What do they say about her?”
“That every attempted suicide wants to talk. You just have to find the right pathway to reach them. What garbage. I should’ve left the two of you in a room together. You’d find the pathway and save me sixty grand.”
God, please no more responsibility.
“Are the kids giving you shit?”
“We’re fine. They’re doing their homework.” Arielle’s description of Mimi running to meet someone came back to her. “Something else, I’d like to talk to Mimi’s teachers tomorrow, see if maybe one of them can give us a hint. You’ll probably have to clear it.”
“Yeah, fine. I’ll call the principal in the morning.” His tone shifted to curiosity. “What are you on the trail of?”
“Nothing solid. Just an idea. Maybe she has something going with a man.”
“A man?”
“She was seen running through the faculty parking lot that afternoon, apparently catching a ride with someone.”
“You’re thinking a teacher?”
“It’s a really thin hunch, Tillman. I just thought I’d ask around a little and see if I could dig up anything.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Finally his deep baritone rumbled, “You’ve got a better chance than anyone.”
“Maybe it’ll turn out to be nothing,” she said.
“That’s where we are right now.” He sighed. “Damn, I wish you were here.”
She imagined his wide shoulders sloped, one hand pulling on his jutting chin, the obsidian eyes glittering in thought. She wanted to hold him, to pull him down on the bed, and let him pump his worry, frustration, and grief into her. Maybe that would give him a moment of peace.
But she couldn’t.
Chapter 11 – Old Soul
The next morning, after Tawny dropped Judah at middle school, she and Arielle parked at the high school and walked in together. While the girl headed down the hall toward her first class, Tawny went to the administration offices and asked to see the principal, Pamela Gibson. She was a plump woman in her sixties with a warm smile who beckoned Tawny into her office. A wide headband held soft, gray-blond curls off her forehead.
As they shook hands, she said, “Tillman called me this morning and gave permission to share with you any information that school personnel has regarding Mimi.”
Tawny noticed the principal called Tillman by his first name, as if she knew him personally. “Thank you for seeing me. Did he tell you the situation?”
“That Mimi had attempted suicide and he and Rochelle were with her at a therapeutic facility. Tragic. Mimi is the fourth student this semester.”
“Really?” The grim statistic shocked Tawny. “Are the others all right?”
“Two overdoses didn’t make it. One was found in time but is no longer in school.”
“That’s so sad. Why do these poor kids do it?”
“A hundred different reasons. Drugs, alcohol, bullying, alienation, eating disorders, low self-esteem, disengagement, homelessness. It’s a litany of tragedy.” Pamela shook her head as fluffy hair fell forward over her shoulders. “When I was in school, we ducked and covered under our desks in case the Soviets started a nuclear war but that seemed like a game, a fairy tale. Now, these poor children practice active shooter scenarios.” She twisted a turquoise ring on her middle finger. “I’m retiring the end of this school year. I shudder to think what my successor will have to deal with.”
Tawny appreciated the woman’s concern. “Do you have any idea why Mimi did it?”
Pamela toyed with her computer mouse. “I’ve known the Rosenbaums for years, since my daughter was a student of Rochelle’s at Rocky Mountain College. Mimi’s in International Baccalaureate. She skipped two grades but still far surpasses her peers. She’ll be the valedictorian when she graduates next month. She’s the last one I’d have predicted would to try to kill herself.”
“Did everything seem normal with her?”
“Frankly, I have nearly two thousand students to keep track of. There are only so many hours and my days are full of dealing with the ones in crisis. Not much time left over for the honor roll high achievers.” Behind bifocals, Pamela’s eyes looked moist and she blinked hard. When she spoke again, her voice quavered. “If there were warning signs, I missed them because I was too busy putting out fires.”
Tawny felt for the principal. She seemed like a caring, conscientious woman overwhelmed by too many students with too many grave problems. “Would it be possible to speak to her teachers?”
Pamela handed over a print-out. “These are her classes. I’ve emailed each teacher to expect your visit.” She rose. “Tillman said you’re taking care of the other children. Any trouble?”
Tawny smiled. “Just the usual teenage stuff. Thank you for your help.”
A half-hour later, after speaking with three teachers, Tawny wondered if her idea had been a pointless exercise. Mimi’s history, literature, and physics instructors shed no light on hidden problems.
