Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  Her fingers clamped on my wrist and she hauled me toward her. “You tell me right now.”

  She was hurting me, squeezing the bones in my wrist. My hand went numb. I began to talk, at first hoping she’d let go of me, but once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told her everything, even though I didn’t know the right words for some things. The whole time, Mama kept her eyes closed. She looked like she did when her head hurt and her stomach was iffy.

  When I finished, her grip on my wrist relaxed. I took my arm back and rubbed it. The tingle of circulation crept into my hand.

  “Mama.” My voice was small, clotted with snot and tears. “You won’t say anything, will you?”

  She opened her eyes. “What?”

  “If you say anything to him, he’ll sell Roxie and Hank.” More tears.

  Mama looked blank, as if she didn’t know who Roxie and Hank were, or who I was, either. “I don’t know what I’ll do. But you? You don’t say a word to anyone. Not Chelsea, not Sass, and for God’s sake not Gertrude or Eddie.” She breathed out a shaky sigh. “Stay here.”

  She got out of the car, not bothering to close the door. Cold mountain air swirled into the car immediately. With the back of my hand, I wiped my cheeks and watched through the windshield as she walked to the safety rail at the edge of the overlook, her shoulders narrow under her wool jacket. I unclipped my seat belt and crawled across the console, stretching to close her door, but as I reached for the door handle, a full-throated scream made me jump.

  Mama was screaming with her whole body, doubled over, and the echo bouncing off the granite walls of the gorge made me shiver. She straightened, and I shrank back in my seat and fastened my seat belt without closing her door, afraid of what she’d do to me when she came back. But she did nothing except drive us home and go upstairs.

  Over the next two days, we ate silent dinners in the dining room. I had breakfast in the kitchen with Gertrude, who took me to school and picked me up, and I spent as much time as I could with my horses, saving up things I’d need to remember if Daddy sold them: Hank’s silken coat, Roxie’s ripply mane. At night, I fought myself, wanting to run down the hall and crawl into bed with Mama but knowing she’d send me straight back to my room, so I stayed put, bouncing between the hope and the fear that she would say something to Daddy, wishing I’d never told her, dreaming of how life would be if she made him stop.

  Then he came home, and of all the things I’d imagined, the one that happened was a huge relief and a bigger betrayal than I realized at the time. Mama kept our secret.

  “Kid?” The moving man waggled the photo. “Leave it or pack it?”

  “Pack it.” I was sure Mama didn’t want it, but I wanted her to have it. Every time she looked at it, I wanted her to see the ten-year-old girl who’d told her mother—a mother who’d done nothing.

  A scraping sound made me turn. She was pulling a packed box from the closet into the bedroom.

  She took an empty box from the collection by the bed. “Are you helping or standing there?”

  I got another box and went back in. Daddy’s clothes hung on one side, but without Mama’s clothes cramming every inch of it, I could almost envision the closet as the nursery it had once been. There were even windows, which had been shuttered.

  I knelt and started taking shoes from the bottom row of cubbyholes, black stilettos, strappy bronze sandals, black kid boots, all tall. The extra height was slimming, she said.

  “For God’s sake.” She swooped over my shoulder, pulled shoes from cubbies, and tossed them into the box. “I don’t have all day.”

  “Won’t he give you more time?”

  “I don’t want more time. What don’t you understand, Roan? I want out of this fucking house, away from your father, and away from you.”

  One time Eddie had taken me fishing, and I’d watched him gut a fish. That was how I felt, like my guts spilled all over the floor.

  “Finish your own packing.” I stood up and pushed past her.

  “Roan—”

  I stalked across the bedroom and down the hall.

  I’d cried—when I was ten. I wasn’t about to cry now.

  In my room I closed the door and leaned against it. No surprise she didn’t want me. She hadn’t wanted me as a baby, either.

  And she accused me of rejecting her.

  There was a soft knock.

  “Roan? This isn’t how I want to leave things.”

  Then open the door. You know it doesn’t lock. Open it and put your arms around me.

  “I’ve got to take care of myself,” she said, “before I can take care of you.”

  “I don’t need you to take care of me.”

  I sounded cold, but if she loved me, she’d open the door and hug me no matter what I said.

  I looked down at the doorknob. If it moved, her hand was on it. If it turned, she was coming in. If she came in, I would forgive her.

  I waited. The movers’ heavy work boots went up and down the stairs, up and down the hall. Eventually the house became still.

  Mama was gone.

  - eight -

  AFTER SHE LEFT, I wandered through the house. It was remarkably unchanged.

  Daddy, at his desk, looked up when I stood in the doorway of his study. “You all right, darlin’?”

  “I think so.” I wasn’t, but that was what he wanted to hear. “Are you?”

  “Tired. You’ll be okay if I take a nap?”

  I nodded. “I’m going to the barn.”

  I needed to change into riding pants first, so I went upstairs with Daddy. He paused outside my room.

  “We’ll be okay.” He kissed the tip of my nose. If he wasn’t tired from his late-night negotiations with Mama, I thought, it would have led to more.

  In fleece-lined jodhpurs and riding boots, I walked down to the barn in a cutting wind. The trees were bare, the driveway littered with limbs and mushy brown leaves.

  Jasper lay in the straw but lurched to his feet when I pushed open his stall door.

  I’d planned to ride indoors, but as I tacked him, I felt more and more like I needed space.

  The broad grassy aisle that ran as a buffer between the pastures and the driveway made a mindless place for a walk. The boughs of the oaks dipped and swayed, the sharp black branches scratching the sky like witches’ fingers. Jasper whinnied at the broodmares. One of them trumpeted back and thundered toward the fence, keeping us company for a hundred yards or so before wheeling and returning to the herd.

  As we neared the birch grove that marked the corner of the driveway, I glimpsed something white through the trunks. I nudged Jasper into the grove.

  Will Howard’s pickup was on the shoulder of the road. He sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead. Another internal chill went through me. Was he a stalker?

  I tied Jasper to the top rail of the fence, climbed over it, and rapped on the passenger window. Will turned his head. His face was white, his eyes red, his mouth drawn.

  I opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nice horse.”

  “Thanks. What are you doing here?”

  “Can you get in?”

  I climbed in and closed the door. The truck was freezing. Will started the engine.

  “I can’t go anywhere. Jasper—”

  “Just warming it up.” He adjusted the heat. Warm air smelling of ashes blew gently into the cab. “You look cold.”

  “So do you,” I said, embarrassed by my assumption he’d been ready to drive off with me. “Are you okay?”

  “Not really.” He opened the ashtray, took out a stubby hand-rolled cigarette, and pushed the lighter into the dash. “Mind if I smoke?”

  I hated smoking, but it was his truck.

  The lighter popped. He held the glowing end to the cigarette and drew in a breath. A sweet tea-like fragrance filled the cab. Not a stalker. A stoner. Figured.

  I reached for the door handle.

  Will exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Going somewhere?�
�

  “I have better things to do than sit here while you get stoned.”

  “My brother’s dead.”

  I hadn’t even asked about Steve. Mama was right. I did think everything was about me.

  He was looking straight ahead again. “All of them. Amy and the kids. Marley was only eight months old. A semitruck crossed the median. The car was ripped apart.” His voice was so emotionless that it took me a moment to understand what he’d said.

  “My God, Will. Are you—” I was about to ask him if he were all right, but how could he be? Instead I said, “I’m sorry,” and the words sounded inadequate, a grain of sand dropped into an ocean, not enough to displace a single drop of water. “I can’t imagine.”

  “Neither can I.” He slumped forward in the seat and started to rock back and forth, hugging himself. I inched closer and rubbed between his shoulder blades, his denim jacket soft-coarse under my palm. He stopped rocking and began to sob. He wasn’t emotionless. He was in shock. I couldn’t bring myself to say something stupid like “It’ll be okay.”

  After a while he wiped his face on his sleeve. I patted his back in a “there, there” gesture and put my hand in my lap.

  “Steve was my best friend. I hang out with Rico and Wedge, but Steve got me.”

  I glanced out the window. Jasper stood unperturbed by the clatter of branches overhead.

  “The cops came to the door around six this morning. Mom knew before they ever said a word. I can still hear her: ‘Not my son. Not my son.’ I’ll never forget that as long as I live.” He relit the joint. “Carrie’s, like, a sponge, saturated from crying. And Dad’s just dealing. He said he’s doing the last thing he can for Steve.” His voice got unsteady on the last few words.

  “What about you?”

  “I’ve lost my best friend. How would you be?”

  I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Losing Gertrude? Jasper?

  “I drove around and started thinking about giving you a ride the other day, and I wound up here. I’ve just been sitting here.”

  “How long?”

  He looked at the dashboard clock. “Couple of hours.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Does it bother you?”

  I’d never be able to explain it to Daddy if he found out, but I shook my head.

  Will tapped some ash into the ashtray. “I saw your mom leaving. You look like her.”

  “They’re splitting up.”

  “I figured. I saw the moving van, too. So you’re staying with him?”

  “Yeah. They worked all that out.”

  “Without asking you?”

  He was shrewd for a drug addict.

  “It’s what I want. Mama won’t stay in Sheridan, and my horses are here. Even if she supported my riding, which she doesn’t, I couldn’t leave Rosemont—my horses, my training.”

  “You could.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  That was the simple fact of it. I wanted to stay.

  I nodded toward the joint. “Can I try some of that?”

  “Don’t you have better things to do?”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  “I’m not,” I said, “but what the fuck.”

  He looked startled. “For a good girl, you have quite a mouth on you.”

  “Good girl” sounded like a title, the same way “bad boy” did. Maybe we were wrong about each other. He was wrong, anyway.

  He lit the joint and gave it to me, his cold fingers brushing mine.

  “What do I do?”

  “Draw in your breath, but don’t inhale all the way into your lungs or you’ll cough. Hold it here.” He tapped his upper chest.

  “Is that how you do it?”

  “I’m hard-core. I inhale.”

  “Then that’s what I want to do.” Suddenly I wanted more than anything else to be a normal hard-core what-the-fuck pot-smoking teenager. I put the joint to my lips.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Will said.

  The smoke hit my lungs like a kick in the chest. I started coughing.

  “Told you,” Will said.

  “Why,” I wheezed, “would anyone do this?”

  He said something I couldn’t hear over another lung-shredding coughing fit. He took the joint from me.

  “You’ll see,” he repeated when I finally stopped. My chest ached. “Want to try again?”

  I glared at him.

  “Don’t be pissed at me. I told you not to inhale.”

  That was true.

  “Okay.” My voice was raspy. “I’ll try again. I guess people wouldn’t do it if there wasn’t something nice about it.”

  “This time, don’t inhale.”

  He lit the joint again. I drew in the smoke but not too deeply.

  He replaced the lighter in the dash. “Tell me when you’re ready to exhale. I want to show you something.”

  I was afraid I’d start to cough again, so after a few seconds I pointed to my chest.

  “Ready?”

  I nodded.

  He leaned toward me. I started to pull back, but he said, “It’s all right. I’m going to put my mouth over yours, and then I want you to exhale. It’s called shot-gunning. Two hits for the price of one.”

  Wait, what? I didn’t have the makings of a normal hard-core what-the-fuck pot-smoking teenager after all, but whether it was the effects of the pot or the fact that I liked him—and I did like him—I let him place his mouth on mine.

  Lightning struck me. His lips were unexpectedly soft. I breathed out, and he breathed in, robbing me of air. Then he was kissing me, his eyes closing, his tongue touching mine, his hands on either side of my face. Only Daddy had kissed me like this.

  I lurched back. “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. “Didn’t mean to do that.”

  “Well, don’t do it again.” My hand was back on the door handle.

  “I won’t. You don’t have to go.”

  I didn’t want to leave, but I couldn’t sit around smoking pot and kissing boys. Maybe other girls could. Not me.

  “I have chores. I’m sorry about Steve.”

  Showing me how to smoke, kissing me, had diverted his attention. My words brought back reality. His face was bleak, stunned, struggling.

  “I should go, anyway,” he said. “I left the house without my phone. My folks’ll be worried. They’ve got enough—” He took a few seconds to compose himself. “See you around.”

  “See you.” I opened the door and slid out of the cab.

  I climbed the fence and untied Jasper. When I was mounted, I looked back at the truck. Will watched me through the window. A freezing rain began to streak down. I turned Jasper toward home and touched my heels to his sides. He leaped forward, and as we cantered up the hill, somewhere behind me Will’s truck rumbled into gear.

  * * *

  AFTER I GROOMED Jasper, I got an early start on mucking my stalls, trying to sort out what had happened.

  Since Wednesday, I’d had the idea some things might be possible, but as Daddy said, I didn’t have time for boys. I especially didn’t have time for a boy who heard me say, “My father says I’m too young to be getting calls from boys”—and then showed up at the end of my driveway. Was he high or stupid?

  Not stupid. Definitely high. Grieving. Ignorant of how carefully I had to engineer my life.

  I doubled down on my cleaning efforts and had just finished when the grooms began trickling in for evening chores.

  “I’ll take that.” Mateo nodded toward my rake. The wheelbarrow was only half-full, so he commandeered it, too.

  “Thanks.” I unclipped Vigo from the crossties. “Did you have a good Thanksgiving?”

  “Yeah. Fernando cooks a killer turkey. You?”

  As soon as he asked the question, his face took on a dismayed expression, as if he’d said something wrong. He knew about Mama. That meant everyone knew.

  “Fine,” I
said.

  I returned Vigo to his stall.

  On the way to the house, I met Daddy. He peered out from under the hood of his rain jacket. “Go take a hot bath. I don’t want you getting sick.”

  In my bathroom mirror, pale pink rimmed my eyes. If Daddy noticed, I’d blame it on crying, but I hadn’t shed a tear. It must have been the weed. My mouth was a desert. I gulped a handful of water before I stepped into the shower.

  I dressed in sweats and took the back stairs down to the kitchen, where I started reheating leftovers.

  So, Will Howard smoked weed. That wasn’t a big deal, even if it hadn’t done anything for me. That kiss, though, had done plenty. The memory sent a current of energy through me.

  I was wrapping dinner rolls in foil when Daddy came in. He’d left his jacket and boots on the screened porch, so he was in rain-spotted jodhpurs and socks, as he had been yesterday. He hadn’t shaved, but he looked more rested than he had earlier, straight from the pages of Horse & Hound, tousled and masculine, the successful horseman at home. In fact, he’d been profiled in that very article a few years back.

  He smiled, and I remembered who he was.

  “You’re making supper. Good girl.”

  There it was again. Good girl. Me.

  “Leftovers.” I put the rolls in the oven.

  “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

  I set the table. The extensions had been removed, so it was back to its normal size, still big enough for twelve. I put the Maker’s Mark and a pitcher of water at his place.

  He returned in jeans and a polo shirt, his hair damp, and sipped his drink while I served our plates in the kitchen and brought them to the table.

  “Good,” he said. “You have an appetite.”

  We ate in silence for a while.

  “You know, darlin’, in a practical sense, your mother’s being gone won’t matter.”

  “I don’t want to talk about her.” All she’d needed to do was open the door.

  “We don’t have to, but I want you to know, we’re all right. You are. I am. She is.”

  Almost unwillingly, I said, “She is?” I didn’t know how Mama would make it on her own. I reminded myself I didn’t care.

  He splashed more bourbon into his glass. “She has plenty of money to do whatever she wants.”