by Lucy Connors
“Why are you cooking?” Mom looked around vaguely, like she expected Mrs. Kennedy or Rachael Ray to pop up out of nowhere and produce a gourmet dinner.
“Nobody else was here.” I started carrying everything out to the dining room table, knowing better than to ask for any help.
Dad came in when I was filling glasses with water, and he grinned at both of us and then took the pitcher out of my hands and finished the job. His great mood and uncharacteristic helpfulness probably meant that some poor rival had gone down in flames.
“Why don’t you pour me a glass of that wine, Priscilla? I made a deal that smoked Emerald Farms today. Poor fool thought he could take advantage of me because I’ve been away from the horse business for a little while.” His eyes were sparkling, and I wasted a futile moment wishing that once—just once—he could get that excited over something to do with his children.
Melinda sidled into the room and walked, very carefully, to the fridge for a bottle of water. Unfortunately, she knocked Mom’s bottle of wine over. I rushed to grab it before it rolled onto the floor, and Melinda mopped at the puddle, making the mess worse. I finished the job for her and then started carrying the remaining dishes to the dining room table. Everybody helped carry, even Melinda. Setting the table was the one area in which my family could act like a team. That would be over by the time I asked for help with the dirty dishes.
Melinda wobbled a little—just the tiniest bit—as she put the salad bowl on the table. It slipped from her hands, but my dad, old Eagle Eyes himself, caught it. He probably recognized the fumble fingers from his own drunken teen years.
“What is going on here? Is she drunk?” He bit off the words in Mom’s direction, so naturally she looked at me.
I sat down and starting scooping butter on my baked potato. Calm on the outside and shaking on the inside.
“Victoria? What is the meaning of this?”
I shrugged and reached for the salt. “Don’t ask me. I came home from school and started cooking.”
Melinda very carefully sat down on the exact center of the chair. “Why don’t you two ever talk to me? I’m the one who’s drunk,” she admitted quietly. “I’m the screwup, not Victoria. Why do you always pretend I don’t even exist?”
Mom, proving Melinda’s point, ignored her and pointed at me. “You take your sister upstairs right now, and—”
“No,” I said. I plunked a piece of chicken on my plate that my stomach was too messed up to eat.
Mom’s mouth fell open. “What did you say?”
“I said no. She’s not my daughter. Why don’t you deal with her for once? Who handled all this when I was at school, anyway? Or didn’t they give you directions for parenting your addict kid in the Ashford-Hutchinson Academy handbook?”
Mom gasped, and I almost felt bad for the low blow, but the ice in her expression put paid to that. “I don’t know where this attitude is coming from, but—”
Melinda stood up, only shaking a little bit, and turned to face my parents.
“Am I invisible? That must be it,” she said, but she never raised her voice. “I’m invisible to you! You don’t see me at all. Well, that’s great. That’s fucking great. Because nobody misses invisible people when they’re gone!”
With that, she reached for her glass of water and knocked over the bowl of buttered peas. Unbelievably, now both of my parents looked at me.
“Are you kidding with this?” Dad’s face was red with not-very-well suppressed rage.
I shrugged again, almost shaking with the need to start fixing things. Drag Melinda out of the room, clean things up, smooth things over.
Not this time.
“I never liked peas much, anyway,” I said, instead. I reached for the salad.
“My nerves can’t take this,” my mother said, and I finally snapped.
“This is not the eighteenth century. You do not have a nerves problem. You are not going to swoon. You have an addict daughter who needs rehab,” I said.
“And you,” I said, rounding on my father, who was still standing there, frozen, watching peas roll toward him. “You can’t just check out on your family to play business tycoon. Can’t you see that Melinda needs you?”
Melinda shot such a wounded look at me that I felt betrayed.
“What now?”
“You’re doing it, too. Talking about me like I’m not even here,” she said with such quiet dignity that I felt ashamed. “I thought at least you were on my side.”
“I am on your side, Mel. But guess who else needs to take responsibility for your drinking problem? You. It’s not your fault that Caleb died, but it is your fault that you’re using his death as an excuse to act even worse than usual.”
All three of them were staring at me. My mind flashed a visual of what we’d look like to anybody peeking in: a bizarre snapshot of American life, only one step away from our own trashy reality TV show.
Clark High: The Sequel—Watching the Wacky Whitfields.
I’d had enough of them, of the situation, of all of it.
“For once, somebody else can clean up the mess. I’m going to bed,” I said, and then, slowly and calmly, I left the room and walked up the stairs.
Nobody said a word to stop me.
Chapter 14
Mickey
The locker room smelled like stinky feet, overactive hormones, and smelly armpits—that distinct cloud of odor that only a crowd of teenage boys can generate. After the first five minutes, I couldn’t even smell it anymore. After the first hour, the stench of nervous sweat joined the mix, and I yelled at somebody to prop open the door.
“Coach is late. He’s never late,” I said, adding to the Stupid Remark quota of the room, since probably every player on the team had said something similar during the past half hour. It was twenty minutes till kickoff, and we needed to be on the field, warming up.
Victoria hadn’t so much as looked at me that day, which had put me in a foul mood. I knew it was contradictory of me to be ticked off that she’d done exactly what I’d asked her to do—leave me alone—but my head didn’t seem to be talking sense to my gut much these days, especially where Victoria was concerned. Coach’s no-show was making my mood even worse. I didn’t like being worried that he’d been in a car accident or something. He’d been one of the few who’d been on my side after the incident.
Basically, I was no good at being worried, so it always turned into being pissed off.
Sam Oliver sat down on the bench across from me, and he looked as concerned as I felt. “There’s something wrong. No way would he miss this game. And I hate to be a jerk, but there’s a University of Kentucky scout stopping by, I heard. If I miss out on a chance to get noticed, that’s a problem.”
Sam’s dad worked for the Whitfields, but I don’t think he made a ton of money, and Sam had sisters. If any of them wanted to go to college, they were going to have to find their own money to do it, like me. Luckily Sam was a rock star on the field, so he had pretty good chances of getting noticed.
The U of K scouts loved us, since we were called the Wildcats, too. We suspected we got more than our share of attention from their scouts, and this was a fact that Coach took full advantage of. He always knew about their visits in advance, so if he wasn’t here, it was bad.
Maybe really bad.
Just when I was trying to decide if we should move the team out to the field to start warm-ups, the door banged open and Coach stumbled into the room. His face was gray. I didn’t know if he was having a heart attack or what, so I jumped up and grabbed my phone off the shelf to call 911.
“Rhodale!” His voice was wrong, too. Raspy and hoarse, as if he’d been already yelling at us for an hour or two, instead of just showing up. “Get your ass out of my locker room, you son of a bitch. Now.”
All sound and motion stopped as everybody froze in place and stared bac
k and forth between the two of us. Coach was a tough old goat, built like the retired Marine he was—all muscle and no fat. He didn’t put up with any crap from anybody, but he’d never spoken to any of us in that vicious tone of voice before, and he’d sure as hell never called us any names worse than “lazy slackers” or “clumsy morons.”
“What’s going on, Coach?” I was proud of myself for sounding calm, because I wasn’t even in the same ballpark as calm.
He stumbled forward, fists clenched. Sam and a couple of the other guys stood up, whether to help him or stop him, I wasn’t sure.
“My sister is in the hospital, thanks to your lowlife brother. One time. That’s all it took. One time she tried meth at a party, and now she might die. You tell Ethan that I’m coming for him, do you hear me?” He shoved me back with one meaty hand, and my back hit the metal front of my locker, hard.
Fury seared through me, burning restraint to ash, and I got right up in his face. “Tell him yourself. I’m not Ethan’s messenger boy. In fact, I’m not his anything. I don’t run drugs, and I don’t have anything to do with them. How would you feel if people called you a druggie because your sister took some?”
His face contorted and turned from gray to a mottled shade of purplish red and choking noises and spittle came out of his mouth. “Get out! You’re out of here. You’re off the team. I never want to see your ugly Rhodale face again!”
I didn’t bother to argue. I just grabbed my bag and walked out the door, still in uniform, still surrounded by complete silence. Nobody tried to stop me, and nobody stood up for me. It was Little League all over again.
I shoved my way through the crowds of people arriving for the game, trying to ignore the stares and comments from everyone watching me head the wrong way in my uniform.
“Isn’t that the Rhodale kid?”
“Wonder what he did this time?”
I slammed the bike in gear and roared out of there, trying to drown out the whispered echoes of shame and humiliation in my brain. For some reason, all I wanted was to talk to Victoria about it, which would just add more humiliation when she hung up on me.
I had to get out of this damn town. I’d always known I had no future here, but now I was beginning to realize I had no present, either. My entire life was suffocating underneath the weight of the past.
Chapter 15
Victoria
I stared at my bedroom walls as they closed in on me, all but suffocating me with claustrophobia, and called myself a coward. It was true, and it made me mad. Then I said it out loud, and the rusty sound of my own voice, which I hadn’t been using for much, made me even madder.
It had been a horrible week—ever since that horrible dinner. I’d hidden in my room, other than going to school. Nothing had changed, of course. Melinda was still a twitchy mess. Somebody had cleaned up the dining room and kitchen that night, but it was like they thought they’d swept the problem under the rug with the scraps.
Most of all I was aching to talk to Mickey. I had heard what happened—the whole school had been buzzing about how his football coach had gone insane and kicked Mickey off the team for something that Ethan had done. He’d told me we were a bad idea and I should stay away, but I didn’t care. I figured he needed somebody on his side right now. He wasn’t answering his phone, though, and he hadn’t answered my text. So I wasn’t going to be pathetic and keep trying to communicate when he’d obviously slammed a door between us.
I debated going to his job to find him, but the truck didn’t need gas, so I didn’t have a good enough excuse. Mostly, I sat around the house watching Melinda in case she went on another bender, or I escaped to the barn to spend time with the mares, particularly Heather’s Angel, who’d been my special horse since I was a kid.
She was retired from breeding now, but she was so gentle that the other mares liked having her around. Since a stressed mare was more likely to have complications with her pregnancy, Pete kept Angel in the foaling barn and let her out into the paddock with the others. Some farms used donkeys or small ponies for what I thought of as “calming companions,” but Angel did the job for us and it gave her a purpose in retirement. I’d always missed her so desperately when I was in Louisville or at school, and now we were both enjoying spending time together while I curried her and gave her special attention and treats.
Our relationship, like mine and Buddy’s, was a simple, uncomplicated one that let me breathe and feel almost sane. Unlike how I felt about Mickey. Or, these days, Melinda.
I found Gran in her study, glasses perched on the end of her nose, going over paperwork. It was a job she hated, so my chances of pulling her away from it weren’t too bad.
“Gran, can I talk to you?”
She glanced up at me, and her shrewd eyes took in my worried expression.
“Absolutely. I was getting tired of all this, anyway. Shall we head out to the barn?”
Gran felt like I did about the horses. She’d always loved them more than was practical, refusing to sell off the nonperformers until my grandfather had complained that she was putting them in financial jeopardy. The problem was that thoroughbreds that couldn’t race weren’t very valuable as breeders, either, unless they had very good bloodlines. Some owners would sell them off to poorer and poorer operations, until sometimes they weren’t being treated right or fed enough, or maybe faced the worst fate of all—being sent to slaughter.
The thought of it made me sick and reminded me to renew my membership in the national group that was working on the issue.
We walked into the barn and down the springy rubber mats that were designed to be gentle for horses’ hooves and legs, and Gran peeked into each stall. One of the grooms passed us, leading Temper’s Folly’s colt, and Gran automatically put an arm out to block me.
“Who are you more worried about, me or the colt?” I teased her, and she rewarded me with a grin.
“I’ll take the Fifth. Remember to be extra careful around the colts’ fronts and the fillies’ backsides, because—”
“Colts usually rear, and fillies usually buck,” I said, completing the instruction she’d given me since I was a toddler. “Because stallions in the wild fight to keep their territory and protect their herd by rearing and attacking, while the mares lash out with their hind legs. I know, Gran. You taught me well.”
She touched a lucky horseshoe that was nailed to the wall near the first stall. She and my grandfather had built this place “with their own two hands,” as she liked to tell us every summer. She missed him, still, I could tell, although he’d died so long ago that I couldn’t really remember him, other than stories Dad told us of how his father had liked to talk about bloodlines—in people and in horses. Gran always said that he’d been the great love of her life, in a way that left no doubt it was true.
Watching the disaster that was my parents’ marriage, I’d wondered what kind of relationship was in my future. Or relationships. Not everybody married her college sweetheart and then spent the rest of her life stuck with him, like my mother had done. For a second, my mind danced around the idea of Mickey Rhodale. What would his dark intensity become in five years? Ten?
Forget that. What would he be like in five weeks? And why did the prospect of finding out intrigue me so much?
I followed Gran down the aisle and watched her watch the horses. The intimacy of the quiet darkness, the only sound the soft snuffling of sleeping horses, helped me center my thoughts.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ve already tried to talk to Mom and Dad about this, and they shut me down, so don’t tell me to talk to them first. It’s Melinda.”
She nodded. “Her drinking problem.”
I’d wondered if she’d known, although she’d have had to be in denial or stupid not to figure it out, and Gran was neither.
“It’s drugs, too, Gran,” I said quietly, almost whispering, although there was nobody around to
hear me.
She made a little sound of distress. “Oh, no. That’s—I don’t know why, because drinking is equally bad, but drugs always feel worse to me. I guess it’s my generation.”
“We need to help her. We need to get her into rehab. This is not something she can kick at home on her own, or even with our help.”
Gran slowly nodded. “I think you’re right, but it’s a matter of getting your parents to agree. I don’t have any authority over you kids, you know.”
“She’s eighteen,” I reminded her.
“There is that, but I can’t imagine your sister having the strength to do this if your parents actively oppose her on it.”
We headed back to the house in silence, looking up at the spill of stars in the night sky and listening to the sounds of nature that I’d never heard at night in the city. The cool autumn November air carried the faint scents of Gran’s flower beds and the stronger one of horse, but then again, no matter where I went on the ranch, I could always smell that unmistakable aroma.
I’d always heard the pounding of hooves in the sounds of thunder, too. My childhood dreams, like those of so many little girls, had all been about horses, but unlike most of those girls, I’d had actual horses, riding lessons, and races in my life, whenever I’d been here at the ranch, and I’d been bereft when I’d had to leave.
“I’m glad you’re my grandmother,” I said suddenly.
Gran laughed, but I could tell she was surprised and pleased. “I’m glad you’re my granddaughter.”
I wasn’t quite sure how to articulate the emotion that had been behind my words, but I tried. “You listen to me, and you actually hear what I’m saying. You gave us a safe place to land when Dad screwed everything up.”
She sighed. “That’s my son you’re talking about, remember.”
