Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  Byron was huffing and blowing.

  Daddy chuckled. “Y’all are too much for a couple of old men. Let’s take a break.” He swung down and led Byron off the fire road onto a track that ended in a clearing. I dismounted and followed.

  The pine needles muffled the clop of the horses’ hoofs.

  “I’ll have someone come up with a chain saw to get that tree off the road,” Daddy said. “Well done, by the way.”

  “You, too.”

  Daddy kept the woods free of underbrush, but here and there were fallen trees that would be cut for firewood when they’d aged a year or two. He tied Byron to a branch of a fat pine log. The stallion half-heartedly curled his lips back when Diva and I approached, too tired to make a genuine attempt at intimidation. I looped my reins around a branch. Diva could have freed herself, but with Byron nearby, the suggestion of being tied was enough to keep her there. As nasty as they both were, they preferred company to striking off on their own.

  Daddy came up behind me and put his arms around me. “We’re all right, darlin’.” He pressed up against me, as solid as a wall. “Everything we need is right here.”

  * * *

  WE RUBBED DOWN the horses and put them away, and I walked up to the house while Daddy took care of paperwork in his office in the training barn.

  Upstairs, I pulled off my sweater and checked my back in the bathroom mirror. Blood had beaded and dried where the pine bark had scratched my skin. I hadn’t expected it to happen like that, standing up, and on a chilly day in the woods.

  When the water in the shower hit the raw places, I winced, but I deserved the pain. A few years ago I had avoided bathing, hoping to make myself so disgusting that he’d leave me alone. It hadn’t worked. Now I showered all the time. He could make me give in to him, but he couldn’t do anything about the way I felt afterward.

  I shut off the taps, toweled dry, and dressed. One o’clock. On Sundays Gertrude served dinner at two, our nod to a normal family tradition when we were home.

  I’d wanted to call Will—until now, when I had the opportunity.

  I could still feel Daddy inside me, but Will believed I was normal.

  With him, I thought, I could be.

  Daddy’s room, like mine, overlooked the barn. I kept an eye out for him while I picked up the handset, put it down, and picked it up again.

  On the third ring, Will answered. “Hello.”

  “It’s Roan.”

  “I wondered if you’d call.” He sounded pleased.

  “This is the first chance I’ve had.”

  “Yeah? Where’s your dad?”

  “At the barn.” I watched one of the grooms pushing a manure cart.

  “What have you been doing this weekend?” Will asked.

  As I told him about riding out, the exhilaration of pounding along at thirty miles an hour on horseback, it dawned on me that even if I initially felt awkward and unsure when we talked, Will wound up making it easy.

  “They go that fast?”

  “Faster. We were going uphill. What did you do?”

  “I went for a run, and I tried to work on this backgammon set I’m carving for Dad, but it’s not the same. I mean, the work is the same, but I’m not. Christmas is coming too fast. We need more time before we have to act happy. What are you giving your dad?” he added abruptly in an obvious shift of attention from his family to mine.

  “Mama always helped me pick out something. I don’t suppose…” A plan started to form, more of a wish really, but hanging out with Will wouldn’t come about organically. We’d have to engineer it. “What if I tell Daddy I want to go shopping one day after school? You can meet me in town, and he can pick me up later. I’m done at one and you don’t get out until three, but we’d have an hour or two.”

  “That’s not enough. I’ll cut class.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I do it all the time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’d have been kicked out a long time ago if Mom and Dad weren’t Howard Construction.”

  I’d had the same thought.

  “What day?” he said.

  I didn’t know when I’d stopped paying attention to the road between the barn and the house, but the floorboard down the hall creaked and adrenaline crackled through me.

  “I have to go.” I clicked the phone off, put the handset in the base, hoped Will had the good sense not to call me back.

  Daddy stopped short in the doorway. “What are you doing in my room?”

  If I’d had more than two seconds to think, I might have said something else.

  “Waiting for you.”

  He wanted to believe me. In this moment, I controlled what happened next. If he could use my body, I could, too.

  I held his gaze, and he closed the door.

  - ten -

  GETTING DADDY’S PERMISSION to go shopping after school turned out to be easy. I raised the question at Sunday dinner shortly after our encounter in his bedroom, and the next morning he dropped me off at school. “I’ll pick you up on the north side of the courthouse at four. Do you have money?”

  “My allowance.”

  He paid me ten dollars a week for doing chores. It wasn’t much, because he wanted me to learn the value of money, but since I never went anywhere, I never spent anything. I had this year’s entire allowance with me, and part of last year’s, too.

  Will waited by my locker, collar unbuttoned, tie loosely knotted, shirt untucked, hair shaggy and bed-heady.

  “Everything okay at your house?” he asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “You hung up on me yesterday.”

  “Daddy was coming.”

  “Did you get in trouble?”

  “No. He said I can go shopping today.”

  The surprise in his expression made me think I was too eager.

  “It’s your first day back,” I said. “No one will think twice if you leave early.”

  Lame. Will didn’t need me to find an excuse for him.

  “Good idea,” he said. “I parked behind the gym. Meet me there after lit. I’m guessing we shouldn’t walk out together.”

  He was catching on.

  All day I caught glimpses of him—in the hall between classes, heading into the boys’ room with Wedge, and finally in lit class, where I had trouble concentrating on Melville because the back of Will’s head was fascinating. I’d never noticed all those shades of blond—honey and butter, lemon and wheat, a whole bakery’s worth of goodness.

  After class, I dawdled at my locker to give him time to leave first. I waited for the second bell and then left via the doors at the end of the hall.

  He was already in his truck, but he leaned over and opened the passenger door. I climbed inside to a choking cloud of smoke.

  “Ugh.”

  “What?”

  I put my books on the seat between us. “It’s smoky.”

  “Oh.” He rolled down his window.

  “Are you okay to drive?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Aren’t you stoned?”

  “Not really. Would you rather walk?”

  The smoke was clearing, and he couldn’t be any more impaired than Mama had been when she’d taken me shopping, and we were only a few blocks from the square.

  “I’ll ride with you,” I said.

  Stoned or not, he was a better driver than Mama. We left the school grounds via a road used mostly by maintenance staff and reached the square without incident.

  He parked on the south side of the courthouse, pulled his tie over his head, and tossed it on the dashboard. “Want to start here?” He nodded toward the courthouse.

  In the hundred years since the county seat had moved, Sheridan’s courthouse had been reincarnated as an antiques mall. The town was in a post-Thanksgiving lull, but the shops glittered with decorations and reeked of pine-scented candles and cinnamon sticks, and in a few weeks, the rental cabins that dotted the mountains would fill up fo
r Christmas.

  We stood amid a display of Virginia Is for Lovers mugs and burlap bags of extra-large peanuts.

  “You really think we’ll find something for your dad here?” Will asked.

  “No, not here.”

  We wandered into a larger shop. He picked up a pewter chess figure painted with a Confederate army uniform. “Does he like chess?”

  “We have a chess set. A regular one. It’s weird, don’t you think, a Civil War chess set? You don’t see Nazi chess sets.”

  “I bet somebody makes them.” He replaced the Confederate soldier. “Check out the queen. It’s Scarlett O’Hara.”

  I looked at the Union queen. “Who’s she?”

  “Harriet Beecher Stowe?”

  “You’re not nearly as…” There was no good way to finish that sentence.

  Will supplied the rest of it. “Dumb as people think I am? Don’t tell. I like to manage expectations.”

  I bought a set of three tall, fat ivory-colored candles with sturdy wrought iron holders for Gertrude. While the saleswoman wrapped them, Will and I browsed. The shop was like a labyrinth, one room after another of shelves, tables, and display cases crammed with merchandise.

  I studied some old books in a glass-fronted case. Daddy liked to read. If there were a rare first edition… but these were only old schoolbooks.

  “What do you think?” Will, modeling a conquistador’s helmet, struck a pose.

  “Definitely you.”

  He pulled it off and ran his hand through his hair. “It weighs a ton. Imagine wearing it in Florida in August—sun on steel.” He hung it on the rack he’d taken it from and removed a broad-brimmed picture hat. “Try this.” He placed it on my head and pointed toward a gilt-framed mirror.

  I grimaced. “Talk about Scarlett O’Hara.”

  “Not your style? Try this one.” He whipped the picture hat off and replaced it with what looked like a top hat, but then I saw the netting.

  “It’s an old riding habit.” I pulled the veil over my face and wrapped the end around my neck.

  “That looks cool.” He unwound the netting and lifted it from my face. “But I like it better this way.”

  He was standing right in front of me. I kissed him.

  He closed his eyes. I touched the tip of his tongue with mine. He sucked gently on my lower lip. I was melting, right down to my core. I wanted more, and suddenly afraid of how much more, I started to pull back.

  He broke the kiss. “I’m not apologizing for that one.”

  It had been a sweet kiss, but the other sensations flooding through me were anything but sweet.

  He removed the hat. The net snagged on my hair and pulled a strand of it across my face. My nerve endings sang as he tucked it behind my ear. He returned the hat to the rack and took my hand.

  For a moment, I tried to figure out what to do with my fingers; I hadn’t held hands with anyone since I was about six.

  Will twined his fingers with mine. “Like this.”

  A tingle ran all the way from my fingertips up my arm into my shoulder and halfway across my back, but as we walked to the front of the store, I pulled my hand free and picked up a heavy glass paperweight, round and clear and smooth, a kaleidoscope of colored glass trapped inside as bright as hard candy. I bought that for Eddie, and a pair of dangly amethyst earrings for Chelsea.

  On the street, Will’s hand brushed mine, but I ignored it. In the back rooms, though, lacing our fingers together eventually became less like the world’s stupidest thumb-wrestling match. I decided I liked holding hands.

  Three gifts down and one to go. What did I give a man who always got what he wanted?

  We left another store where I’d rejected half a dozen possibilities. The afternoon had taken on the pale light of early winter. I shivered.

  “Let’s get something warm,” Will said.

  We went to Murphy’s Coffeehouse, which had once been the corner drugstore. The soda counter was now a coffee bar. A few people sat nursing oversized mugs, and at a table, a man in a knit cap pecked away industriously on a laptop. Christmas music played on the sound system.

  “Grab that table,” Will said. “I’ll order. What would you like?”

  “Hot chocolate.”

  I claimed the table he’d pointed out, a tall table in the back corner with barstools instead of chairs. I put the shopping bags on one stool and took gunslinger’s corner so no one could sneak up on me. I gazed out the window at the storefronts twinkling with Christmas lights, the massive Virginia pine glittering with ornaments on the courthouse lawn, Mama’s green Jaguar gliding by.

  Instantly I was on my feet. She’d come back for me.

  Then I saw Mr. Dashwood in the passenger seat.

  And then they were gone.

  Will joined me, bearing a tray that held two big mugs and two spoons.

  I stared out the window. “That was my mother.”

  “Where?”

  “She drove by with Mr. Dashwood.”

  I turned away from the window and slid onto my barstool. Gunslinger’s corner wasn’t foolproof. Someone had sneaked up on me after all.

  Will set a mug crowned with whipped cream in front of me. “You okay?”

  I nodded, rattled but trying to get a grip.

  He put a mug of tea on the table and returned the tray to the counter while I collected myself.

  When he came back, his face was thoughtful. “When Steve died, you said the most profound thing to me: ‘I can’t imagine.’ That’s exactly what I needed someone to say, because that kind of loss is unimaginable, and you weren’t pretending it wasn’t. I wish I didn’t have the opportunity to say it back to you, but I can’t imagine how it feels to be abandoned by your mother.”

  Neither the kiss nor the tingling had shot a bolt that directly to my heart. Daddy had asked if I were all right, if I missed Mama, but he expected a yes and a no, in that order; he wasn’t inviting me to tell him how I felt.

  I was about to cry. I was an awesome date.

  “It’s not like I’m a baby.”

  “Still hurts, doesn’t it?”

  I liked Will’s lack of pretense, too. I wasn’t used to that. Even Eddie and Gertrude and I had our pretenses. They pretended my family was normal, and so did I. I realized I’d have to do that with Will, too. People expected normal.

  “I don’t want to talk about her,” I said, and I led her into a stall and closed the door.

  “I get that.” He dipped the tea bag in his mug a few times.

  “So you’re a tea drinker,” I said after six dips.

  “Steve thought it was funny, too.” He stirred in some sugar. “It’s weird, you know, all of them gone—like someone flipped a switch and a river stopped running. Like a river stopped being.” He put his spoon on a napkin. “You wouldn’t believe how fast Wedge and Rico change the subject whenever I mention him.”

  “I’m not changing the subject.”

  “Thanks, but right now, I don’t want to talk about things that hurt, either. Tell me about the horse thing.”

  “You really want to know? Once I get started, you can’t shut me up.”

  “I don’t want to shut you up. You ride giant horses. You’re really good at it. You go fast. You like to ride on. What else?”

  I described the three phases of eventing, avoiding the dizzying detail the sport entailed. Will drank his tea.

  “Are you an Olympian?”

  “Not yet. But the year after next is an Olympic year. Since I’ll be eighteen before the end of the calendar year, I’ll be eligible for the eventing team. It can take years to make the team, but I want to do it when I’m seventeen.”

  “You’re serious.”

  No one else had ever doubted me on that point, not even Mama. “You don’t think I can?”

  “I absolutely think you can. I’ve just never known an Olympian.”

  “Daddy.”

  “What?”

  “He’s one of the most decorated Olympic equestrians ever
. Three golds, two silvers, and a bronze.”

  “And he’s training you to follow in his footsteps.”

  “He’s a great coach, and he says he’ll get me there. I don’t know that anyone else could. He wrote The Book on Eventing. That’s not an expression—it’s the title of his book. He’s a god in our world, and that’s our bible. People would sell their souls to work with him. The other day, when I said I can’t leave Rosemont, that’s why.”

  He absorbed that without comment. “Tell me about your horse.”

  “I have three. Vigo is fearless and a good jumper but a little dim. Diva’s psycho.”

  “Which one did I see?”

  “Jasper. Jasper and I can read each other’s thoughts.”

  “I didn’t know horses had thoughts.”

  “They’re like us, except more honest.”

  He asked me about my training schedule, and after I described it, he said, “You really don’t have time for boys, do you?”

  “Not a lot of boys. Maybe one.” I said it to be funny, like when I’d told him dozens of boys were calling me, but it didn’t sound like a joke. I reached under the table for his hand and encountered his knee. His leg jerked so hard that it banged my knuckles into the underside of the table. A tiny wave of cocoa slopped over the side of my mug.

  “I was going for your hand.” I started to pull back.

  He put his hand over mine. “Sorry. Did I smash your fingers?”

  He had, a little, but I shook my head.

  “It didn’t seem like you wanted to hold hands in public.”

  “I don’t want Daddy to find out.” I glanced around the coffeehouse. No one was paying attention to us, but if they had been, they couldn’t have seen our hands under the table.

  Will rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. More tingling. “He keeps you on a short leash, doesn’t he?”

  “He’s afraid I’ll be distracted.”

  “Maybe you could use a distraction,” Will said, which was so cheesy that we both laughed—but what was the point of jeopardizing my future for a distraction? And if Will turned out to be more than a distraction, that was an even bigger problem.