Fences: Smith Mountain Lake Series - Book Three

by Inglath Cooper

  Hearing Jillie’s unquestioning certainty, I couldn’t find a sarcastic response that didn’t make me sound like a complete jerk. “If it’s so great, what do you do for fun around here?” I asked.

  “Ride horses. Hang out at the lake. What else?”

  Despite my attempt at indifference, I was intrigued. “You have your own horse?”

  White teeth pulled at her bottom lip. “No, but someday I will.”

  “So whose do you ride?”

  “The Mason’s. My dad manages their farm. It’s—”

  “Cross Country. Yeah, I’ve seen it. Some place.”

  “Come out some time, and we’ll go for a ride. They won’t mind.”

  I shrugged, as if the invitation was no big deal. I’d been in a half dozen different foster homes since the age of seven. Had long ago chosen the route of loner. It was easier. That way you didn’t miss anybody too much when you were gone.

  Jillie got up, scuffed the toe of her paddock boot in the dirt and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jeans. “If you change your mind, come on by. I’ll be riding on Saturday.”

  I nodded again. No big deal.

  “Well. I’ll see ya, Tate Callahan,” she said.

  “See ya, Jillie Andrews.”

  I watched her walk away, wishing with a sudden fierceness I couldn’t explain that she would turn around and come back. But she kept walking, shoulders hunched forward a little under the sting of rejection.

  I glanced out at the mountains in the distance. So maybe they weren’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

  Jillie was halfway across the playground when I jumped to my feet and ran after her. “Hey! Jillie, wait!”

  She turned then and smiled, as if she had known I was coming all along.

  8

  Jillie

  I LET MYSELF in the front door of the house without turning on the lights.

  “Midnight rendezvous?”

  Angela steps into the strip of light shining through the window from the outside porch. Still dressed from the day in a gray suit, she says, “Corey woke up calling for you. Mother was upset when we couldn’t find you.”

  “Is she all right?” I ask quickly.

  “I stayed with her until she fell asleep,” she says, not bothering to hide her criticism. No one blames me for Jeffrey’s death as much as his sister Angela, and she welcomes any opportunity to point out my shortcomings where my daughters are concerned.

  Refusing to let it get to me, I run up the stairs, part of me wanting to tear into her about the photo that had mysteriously gone missing from my album. But I don’t because I need time to get my thoughts together first.

  At the door to the girls’ room, I slowly turn the knob and go inside, tiptoeing across the wood floor. They are both asleep. Since Jeffrey’s death, Corey refuses to sleep in her own room, and will only go to sleep curled up next to Kala.

  Moonlight shines through the part in the rose-print curtains covering the window, casting shadows across their angelic faces. Regret gnaws at me for having left them tonight.

  It’s been a while since Corey woke crying, and I hadn’t planned to be gone so long. But then I’d never imagined the night turning out as it had. Still, I feel incredibly guilty.

  I sit on the side of the bed, smoothing a hand across Corey’s silky hair.

  She stirs, her eyes opening slightly.

  “Mommy?”

  “Shh,” I whisper. “It’s okay, honey. I’m right here.”

  “We couldn’t find you,” she says, her voice trembling. “I thought you left. Like Daddy did.”

  “Oh, baby, I’m not going to leave you,” I say, my voice cracking in half.

  “I just went out for a little while. You go back to sleep. I’ll stay right here with you until you do.”

  “Promise?” she asks, her eyelids heavy.

  “Yes, sweetie. I promise.” I tuck the cover around her and kiss her forehead. I reach for her hand and clutch it between mine.

  I sit with her until she drifts off again. Once I’m sure they are both sleeping soundly, I go to my own room, closing the door on a heavy sigh.

  It’s almost three in the morning. I feel exhausted, and at the same time, wide awake.

  I run a hot bath, shrug out of my clothes and sink into the sudsy warmth of the water. I think of the look on Angela’s face at the foot of the stairs.

  Had she sent the picture to that tabloid? If so, why? What could she possibly stand to gain?

  I think of Tate then, still feel his touch on my skin.

  So many years. And yet when he had looked at me tonight with his see-everything eyes, all that time dissolved into nothingness. Just nothing.

  As if I’ve been holding my breath until the day he returned, and now I can finally breathe again.

  Crazy.

  But then it had always been that way with Tate.

  My feelings for him weren’t something over which I’d ever had any say. I had never been able to turn them off at will. And they led me to do things I came to regret.

  More than once.

  A few minutes later, I climb out of the tub, drying off with quick, frustrated swipes. In the bedroom, I stare at the closet door before crossing the rug-covered floor to open it.

  Inside, I drop onto my knees and pull the key from beneath the trunk where I left it earlier that afternoon. I unlock it and open the lid, pulling out the yellowed envelope I’d refused to look at before.

  My name is scrawled across the front in Tate’s familiar handwriting. I smooth my thumb across the letters, then turn the envelope over and pull out the crinkled paper. I unfold it, my gaze following the words, even though they are long committed to memory, each and every one.

  Dear Jillie,

  I thought you were the one person who saw me as I am, who really knew me. I realize now how wrong I was about that. I think we both know things can never be the same between us.

  Tate

  I refold the last letter I ever received from him, rubbing my thumb across its time-worn surface and swallowing back the knot of emotion in my throat. Amazing that it had all ended with that. Just that. Even now, the words have no less power over me than they’d had the first time I read them.

  For a long time, I told myself that he would change his mind, that he would come back. It wasn’t possible that he could leave and I would never see him again.

  But I had been wrong. So very, very wrong.

  When It Could Have Been Forever

  I MADE IT MY goal to make Tate see the lake and our county as a place he didn’t ever want to leave.

  My reasons were entirely selfish. I wanted him to stay. So I took him to all my favorite places, showed him my favorite things. The top of Smith Mountain where you could see for what looked like miles when the leaves were off the trees. The best cove for swimming. Carl’s Place off Route 40, where the homemade coconut pie was the best around. And Smith Mountain Dock, where the carp got fed year-round and greeted customers like old friends.

  And eventually, they became his favorite things, too.

  But the best thing by far that I had to share with him was Cross Country Farm.

  My dad was the manager, and it was owned by Dr. Mason, a cardiologist with a practice in Washington, D.C. The horses were his wife’s hobby, but she’d turned it into a business. She had an eye for a talented horse, and many of the yearlings from Cross Country went on to become world-class jumpers.

  I lived with my dad in the small, white house close to the big barn. I grew up helping him clean stalls, put out hay, or exercise the horses for Mrs. Mason. Whatever it took to be around them.

  It was on a September afternoon that Tate rode the school bus home with me, intent on asking Mrs. Mason for a part-time job. We got off at the top of the long driveway, backpacks anchored on our shoulders, each of us carrying a half-eaten candy bar.

  The house sat a quarter mile or so ahead, two enormous old oaks in the front yard, the big, white barn just to the right of it. The far end
of one of the pastures sloped down to the lake’s edge. A fishing boat buzzed in the distance. I had seen the view too many times to count, but I never grew tired of it.

  “I could spend the rest of my life here,” I said, looking out at the horses grazing behind the white-board fenced pasture.

  “But you don’t own it,” Tate said.

  “No. I never will, but I’m still lucky to live here.”

  “Don’t you want something of your own?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I guess I don’t see it that way. Dr. and Mrs. Mason have been good to me and my dad.”

  Tate kicked at some loose gravel on the asphalt drive. “Maybe I should come back another day.”

  I whacked him on the shoulder. “No chickening out!”

  “They probably don’t need any more help,” he said, making a less-than-convincing display of indifference.

  “If I didn’t think they needed the help, I would never have suggested it.”

  And that was true. What I didn’t add was that having Tate work here at Cross Country would be that much more time I got to spend with him.

  And next to riding, being with him was my favorite thing. During the past year, we’d become best friends. He came out to the farm on weekends. I taught him how to ride on Goldie, a Hanoverian school horse as kind and gentle as she was pretty.

  Before Tate, I’d never really had a best friend. I’d had friends, but no one who liked to do the same things I liked to do. No one who liked books the way I liked them or didn’t think it was dumb to talk about them.

  For me, Tate was like finding lost treasure, or some other unexpected discovery whose worth had no measure. He was smart and funny, not to mention all the girls acted ridiculous around him.

  Especially Angela Taylor. Angela, who was used to the world being served up to her on a silver platter. And in whom Tate wasn’t the least bit interested.

  I went to church with my dad every Sunday morning, so I’d learned long ago that it wasn’t right to take pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.

  But wrong as it might have been, I wanted Tate for myself. Even if it was amazing that he would want to hang around me, when Angela had all but put out billboards announcing her feelings for him.

  Tate stopped in the driveway now, his eyes clouded with uncertainty.

  “I’ll come back another time,” he said.

  I put a hand on my hip, gave him a level look. “So what’s this really about?”

  “I think I might need to practice some more before—”

  “You ride nearly as well as I do, and I’ve been riding my whole life!” I grabbed his hand and pulled him down the road. “Come on. Once it’s over, you’ll be glad I made you.”

  My dad met us outside the big barn doors. In one hand, he held a pitchfork, a wide smile on his face. Tall with long legs and skin browned by years in the sun, he had a way of instantly putting others at ease. I’d always been proud of that about him.

  Whenever Tate was there, he followed my father around like a puppy, asking question after question. Tate liked to know the how and why of everything, and so did my dad. Sometimes, I wondered if Tate came to the farm to see him as much as he did to see me.

  “Hey, kids,” my dad said. “How was school?”

  “Good,” I said. “Is Mrs. Mason around?”

  “She’s in the ring out back riding that hellion she calls Sweet Pea.”

  “Great! Come on, Tate.” I grabbed his arm again, guiding him around to the other side of the barn.

  “So where’s the fire?” my dad called out after us.

  “Tate’s going to ask her for a job!”

  “About time he started doing some work around here,” he said with a chuckle.

  Sonya Mason was one of those women who looked like she’d been born to ride.

  Nearly as tall as my father and skinny as a fence post, she could eventually convince even the most uncooperative of horses to come around to her way of thinking. Sweet Pea ranked high on the uncooperative list. She liked to change her mind about taking a jump the moment you thought she was all set to sail over it.

  Tate and I stopped at the ring fence. We planted our arms on the top board, quietly watching. Mrs. Mason cantered the young horse once around, then directed her to the jump. The mare’s muscles stiffened in refusal. Mrs. Mason reached down, rubbed her neck as if to say it was okay, and over they went. I began clapping wildly.

  Mrs. Mason stopped the mare at the other end of the ring, reached in her pocket and leaned over.

  “What’s she giving her?” Tate asked.

  “A peppermint. It’s her reward.”

  He grinned. “So she’ll jump for candy?”

  “Everybody has their weakness, I guess.”

  Mrs. Mason trotted the mare over, coming to a stop at the rail. “So what’d you think?” she asked, directing a smile at the two of us.

  “That’s the highest I’ve seen her jump,” I said.

  “Best yet. For a second there, I thought we weren’t going.”

  “What if you run out of peppermints?” Tate asked.

  Mrs. Mason laughed. “I guess we won’t be jumping that day.”

  I elbowed Tate. “Mrs. Mason. Tate has something to ask you.”

  She unbuckled the chin strap of her helmet, pulled it off, and let it rest on one thigh. “What is it, Tate?”

  He dropped a glance at the ground, then looked her in the eye. “I wondered if you needed some extra help around here.”

  My heart started pounding hard. I’d been nearly certain Mrs. Mason would say yes, but what if she didn’t? I crossed my fingers and said a silent please, please, please!

  Mrs. Mason studied him for a long moment, and then said, “We can always use another pair of hands. That is, if you’re willing to do whatever needs to be done.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tate said, a kind of quiet pleasure on his face.

  “After school and on weekends?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said again.

  “As long as you don’t let it interfere with your schoolwork, you can start today.”

  A huge grin broke across Tate’s face. “Thank you, Mrs. Mason.”

  “Why don’t you help Jillie get her horses worked this afternoon? Then maybe on Monday, I’ll add a couple more to the list.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Mason,” we said in unison.

  “Better get busy,” she said.

  For the next two hours, we rode in the ring, giving each horse the workout Mrs. Mason had taught me, from warm-up to cool down.

  On the last two horses, I called out to Tate, who’d just cleared a jump on the other end of the ring. “Let’s hack out for the cool down.”

  He waved a hand in agreement, then trotted to the open gate.

  The sun was sinking fast, but the air was still warm. A dirt road led along one of the fenced pastures. We walked the big Warmbloods on a long rein.

  “So what’d you think?” I asked.

  “I can’t believe I’m actually going to get paid for this,” he said.

  “I know. Sometimes I feel like I should be paying her.”

  We walked on a bit, silent.

  “Why didn’t the Masons ever have children?” he asked after a while.

  “I think they tried, but couldn’t.”

  “Why is it that people who want them can’t have them and people who don’t end up with half a dozen?”

  I heard the disgust in his voice, knew it came from some painful place inside him. “I guess it’s not always like that.”

  He gave me a look that said he knew infinitely more about the subject than I did.

  I’d never asked him about his parents. It always felt as if he kept a wall around the subject, but I wondered now if he might need to talk about it. “What happened to your mom and dad?”

  He was quiet for a long time, and then, “When I was six, they went out partying one night and never came back.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, touching a hand to his shou
lder.

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  A knife of empathy sliced through my chest. From the first day I met Tate, I somehow knew he didn’t easily let people in. For whatever reason, he had let me in, and I never wanted to give him reason to regret it.

  A creek lay at the bottom of the next hill. We stopped there, got off, let the horses have a drink.

  “My mom left when I was little,” I said softly, surprising myself with the admission.

  He looked at me, surprised. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not. The way I see it, I’d rather her be gone if this wasn’t where she wanted to be. My dad still hurts over it, though. I’d change that if I could.”

  “Some hurts never go away, I guess,” he said.

  “I guess not.” I reached out then and took his hand. We stood there for a while, the fading sun throwing shadows through the trees by the creek.

  And I knew a sudden grounding sense of happiness. Felt as though the holes inside both of us might have lost some of their depth for the simple fact that we had found each other.

  9

  Angela

  IN THE OFFICE off the main living room, Angela sits in front of the flat computer screen, staring at the list of e-mails she has no desire to open.

  Work and more work. That was what Jeffrey had left her. A legacy she had not asked for. Did not want. But it is what her mother expects, and so she’s taken over where her brother left off.

  What her mother expects.

  If her life has a through line, this is it. Mother’s expectations. No getting around them. They surround her like fencing in a maximum- security prison.

  “What are you doing up?”

  She starts at the sound of her mother’s voice, feeling instantly guilty for her thoughts. Sometimes, Angela believes her mother deliberately sneaks up on her. Sometimes, she wonders if she can read her thoughts.

  Angela clicks on one of the e-mails, lifting her shoulders in a casual shrug. “Just getting a head start on tomorrow.”

  Judith sits down in the leather chair angled at one end of the desk. “Where did Jillian go this evening?”