“We’ll figure out what to do,” I promised her. “It’ll be all right. But right now I need to call AAA and then you need to take me over to pick up the car.”
Chapter 29
Of course, I had no idea of what Zoe should do to turn her life around. So I called Ryan, my go-to for any sort of big life questions. In Palo Alto, he was surrounded by young people with too much money, either inherited or earned themselves for some high tech startup. He had to know about drug problems.
And, in fact, he did. After hearing me describe what Zoe had told me, he suggested an out-patient center. He said it would be less expensive and she could keep riding. He said she would go to the center, probably daily at first, get on a program to fully detox, and get support and counseling. I went online and printed out a list of places I thought would be good for Zoe that were right in Wellington. Of course, the circuit would be over soon and I wasn’t sure what her plans were for where she was going next. Thank goodness Zoe told me she was still on her parents’ health insurance so that would cover some of the costs. I had picked places that specialized in dual-diagnoses, which I’d learned meant substance abuse and mental health issues, and were heavy on the therapy-part. Given the fact that she slept around, was being abused by Donnie, and had helped Étienne with his crimes, she needed more than just detox. I wasn’t going to fool myself. Even if Zoe called one of the centers to find out about their program, it didn’t guarantee she would follow through with going. And even if she followed through and went, it might not work. No matter what, she had a long road ahead of her if she actually was going to get clean and get her life back together.
I also asked Ryan what he thought she should do about being involved in the thefts. “Should she go to the police?”
“I think she has to,” he said. “It’s probably key to her recovery. Facing up to things.”
“Poor Zoe,” I said. “I don’t know if she’ll be strong enough to make it through all this.”
“All you can do is be there for her,” Ryan said. “What about you? Have you figured out what’s next?”
“No, not in the slightest.”
“How’re things with Chris?”
I told him about the 5-star horse and how Chris needed the money to buy it. Chris and I hadn’t ever talked about how dismissive he’d been of me the night Dakota was roofied. I’d decided to let it go and chalk it up to how tunnel-vision he was about getting Athelstane. I had vowed to make myself all about his career so I told myself I had to put aside how he hadn’t been there to help me the night with Dakota. He knew what happened to her, though, and he’d been appropriately horrified, if not as apologetic as I would have wanted him to be.
“I think I’m going to ask Dad. Do you think he might go for it?”
“I don’t know. He did seem kind of intrigued by it all.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, flashing back to Dad asking to watch Chris from the in-gate. My spirits lifted. I had expected Ryan to bring me down to earth and say no way was Dad ever buying a share of a horse. But now I harbored even more hope.
Dad had to have known I would one day approach him about helping Chris. He’d probably thought it would have come a hell of a lot sooner. I had asked him to pay for Logan’s training and entries but I hadn’t asked outright for him to invest in a horse just for Chris. The time had come. After I hung up with Ryan, I dialed Dad’s number.
“You saw for yourself how dedicated and talented Chris is,” I said after explaining about Athelstane and what the horse could mean for Chris’s career. “It’s an investment you’d be making.”
He was silent.
“What do you think?” I asked eagerly.
“I’ll tell you what I think—I want to, I really do, but it’s not an investment, honey,” he said. “There is nothing about buying part of a horse or a full horse that’s an investment. Investments are smart decisions based on the long term viability of a business. Horses have no long term viability.”
“But you have to admit that Chris is amazing, don’t you? I mean, as an athlete.”
“Yes, I think he’s immensely talented and impressively focused. If he was a CEO, I’d back him. I liked the horses, the competition. But I can’t quite wrap my brain around the sport and how much money it takes, how you don’t get any of that back.”
I felt tears pressing at my eyes. My dad always managed to make things so unemotional. He made everything about science and rational thinking. But when it came down to it, he had plenty of money. Couldn’t he make a $250,000 investment in something part-emotional? And I hated that basically he was right. If Chris managed to buy this horse, he would want to keep it, especially if it ended up doing really well and being worth a lot. Why did show jumping have to depend on people having enough money to make non-investment investments? I had to dig deeper, to come up with a convincing counter argument.
“You’ll be investing in an experience,” I said. “In the privilege of watching a human and an animal perform in perfect harmony at the highest level. You will be investing in possibly going to the Olympics, in supporting our country, in giving young riders someone to admire and believe in. You’ll be investing in memories. Memories don’t have a price.”
I paused, breathless, and proud of myself for what I’d come up with.
“I’m just not there yet,” he said. “Maybe someday but I can’t say yes today.”
“But he needs the money now. Horses like this don’t come around at this price.”
“Then he’ll have to look elsewhere. I’ll keep supporting Logan, but that’s it.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. There was no use trying to change his mind. I knew my dad. Until I had some game-changing idea to add to my argument, I might as well save my words.
“It was a good pitch,” he said. “The memories thing. Giving riders a hero. You were very eloquent.”
Any other time I would have been thrilled by his praise. But not now.
Luckily, I hadn’t told Chris I was asking my dad so I didn’t have to disappoint him. I couldn’t tell him how upset I was either, though. How all of a sudden I felt like I’d been knocked to the ground. How after the call I had put my pointer finger in my mouth and nibbled at the nail just a little before stopping myself.
The only place I wanted to be was with Logan, so I went over to Chris’s barn, knowing that he was at the show with Lily anyway.
Logan and I had a different relationship now. I didn’t toss him his morning grain, I didn’t groom him every day, I didn’t climb on his back and try to learn how to ride him. I missed those days. Especially right now they seemed so much simpler and I yearned to be back in Vermont, where I was consumed only by trying to find a way to get along with Logan and trying to figure out whether a guy like Chris could actually be interested in me. Now there was Zoe and her very serious real-life problems. There was Chris and the fact that he might not be able to get the last 250K and Athelstane would be sold to another American rider and he’d have to watch him win and witness on a regular basis what he’d lost. There was Dakota and the fact that she’d nearly been raped, and also the fact that her bleeding heart parents didn’t seem to care about her at all. There was my dad, who refused to see what buying part of the horse for Chris would mean to me. I didn’t want him to do it for Chris, really. I wanted him to do it for me. Would it be so terrible to make a less than wonderful business decision because it would mean a lot to his daughter?
Even though I wasn’t taking care of Logan every day, we always picked up right where we had left off, like some people said about reuniting with old friends after years have passed. I pressed my face against his neck and inhaled. When life was getting too much horse people felt solace in the smell of horse. I rubbed my cheeks against his fine coat. I put my nose to his mouth and inhaled his sweet, grassy breath. The stubble of his trimmed whiskers felt nice against my cheek. He chewed a remnant of hay and I listened to the oddly comforting grind of his teeth.
I could have stayed there for a very long time, seeking harbor from the real world. I had come to Wellington to make life easier and clearer and it had only made everything more complicated.
I’m not sure if he was trying to sneak up on me and make himself seem even more intimidating or whether Dale just did everything stealthily, but my breath caught in my throat as I saw him looking over Logan’s stall door.
“Did Chris tell you he could go to Europe with the team if he had a number one horse?”
So much for hello. So much for how’s it going, Hannah? So much for, what are you doing pressing your face into your horse’s muzzle and looking like you’re never going to move again? Was Dale incapable of any sort of small-talk warm-up with everyone, was he just socially inept, or was it just with me that he refused to engage in the kind of niceties that make humans human? Even dogs seemed more subtle than Dale, the way they barked a hello or walked circles around each other when they met.
I decided I wouldn’t try to be delicate either. “No, who said that to him?”
“The chef. He wants to see Chris on the team. Arkos is going well but he wouldn’t be ready to jump solid 5-star classes this summer. It would be great if he could be Chris’s second horse for the smaller international classes.”
“What do you want me to do?” I snapped at Dale. I was tired of trying to be nice to him. “What can I possibly do? Can I break up with him? Will that somehow get him a horse? I don’t think so. I already asked my dad to buy the last share and he said no. I don’t know what you want from me.”
Dale’s expression didn’t change. This guy seriously should have been a professional gambler or a politician. “Just wanted you to know.”
“Okay, thanks, now I know.”
Dale disappeared to whatever fastidious task he had been engaged in before, leaving me with Logan. Logan blew out through his nose and I swear it seemed like it was in response to Dale, like he was saying, “Jeez, that guy!” I laughed a little because it was the perfect response. But inside I still felt all tangled up with everything. It felt like everyone, now Dale included, was looking to me to figure things out, and I didn’t have the answer to any of them, least of all myself and the question of what I was going to do at the end of circuit.
Chapter 30
“Holy shit. No way.”
I was filling out the entries online for Kentucky Spring for Dakota. I had filled out plenty of entries for her and I suppose I’d seen her birth date many times before but this time my hands froze on the keyboard right after I’d typed it. February twenty-second. We had missed her birthday.
Chills ran through my body and I found myself crossing my arms and rubbing myself like I was standing outside on a freezing day and couldn’t warm up. No one had known it was her birthday. As far as I knew, her parents hadn’t even called her. Perhaps they had, or at least texted her. But there had been no birthday dinner, no presents, no cake, nothing. For a girl that people would say had everything, she hadn’t even had a birthday.
I minimized the screen and rolled back from the computer. Of everything lately, this one had shaken me to the core. I didn’t want to run to Logan this time, though. I wanted to tell Chris. I wanted to hear him say how awful it was. I wanted to commiserate and plan what we could do to make it up to her. Maybe throw an end-of-circuit birthday party for her. Or buy her a really meaningful present.
I got in the golf cart and motored over to Chris’s barn. I didn’t text him first. I just wanted to see him. I figured he would be there since it was a Tuesday. I wanted to find him alone in the barn and fall into his arms and let him hold me and tell him everything. I wanted to tell him how complicated everything had become and how I hated it and that I just wanted it to be perfect again, like it had been between us in Vermont. I could see the scene I had in mind playing out in the movie in my head. He’d hold me tight and kiss me and tell me he loved me. He’d say, yes, things were harder than we imagined they’d be, but that love was what really mattered and that it would all work out. Maybe he’d ask me to come back to Pennsylvania with him after circuit. He’d say he needed help running his business now that it was taking off.
The barn was quiet. No Chris. No Dale. Just Eduardo.
“Where are they?” I asked him. I felt unfounded anger rising inside of me. How could Chris not be here right now when I needed him?
“I don’t know where Dale is. Chris went over to MB’s.”
My face felt hot and I could feel my pulse in my neck. I threw myself hard back into the golf cart, banging my hip against the steering wheel, and drove, this time as fast as the cart would go, back to Grand Prix Village. Just the way Eduardo had casually said MB killed me. I couldn’t believe Chris was over there and hadn’t at least told me he was going. I expected to see them out in the field or the ring. Mary Beth riding and Chris helping her. But when I pulled up, I could make them out leaning against the fence of one of the paddocks. MB was smiling radiantly, her hair loose, half over her shoulder, the sun shining at the perfect height in the sky. Chris was standing close to her and looking at her like she was the only thing he cared about in the world. They weren’t kissing or touching but somehow it looked more intimate than if they had been. There was more feeling in the look Chris was giving her than there might have been in a kiss.
I felt like I wanted to drop to my knees right there. I could actually see myself collapsing. I had fought this and fought this all circuit and maybe it was impossible to keep fighting it. It was like a super-powered enemy force that could not be beaten back. There was too much still there between them.
Instead of collapsing, I walked numbly forward. I wasn’t sure yet what I was going to say or do. Then there it was: the truth, but not as I had expected. A photographer stood with an expensive camera pointed at them. A woman next to the photographer said, “Mary Beth, try looking at him this time. Kind of over your shoulder.”
The scene came into focus for me. A photo shoot for Animo. I waited to feel silly and relieved at the same time. But instead I felt hollow and angry.
I turned and ran back to the cart, my feet feeling to my own ears like each step was letting out a giant thud that could have been heard for miles. I wanted to scream and it was all I could do to keep my feelings bottled up.
Chris must have seen me because he came after me. He caught me just as I was getting back into the golf cart.
“Where are you going?’ he asked. I saw him take in my expression and I knew he was realizing how upset I was. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this was happening. I didn’t want you having to even think about it. I just thought it would be over and done and—”
“And then I’d see the ads all over with you looking adoringly at her?”
“I couldn’t say no. They’re a sponsor.”
“I didn’t ask you to say no.” As I said it, I knew I would have wanted him to say no. If I had known, I might have even asked him to say no. “Couldn’t it have been anyone else but her?”
“They sponsor both of us.”
“Well, isn’t that perfect.”
“What does that mean?”
I held my head in my hands. “I don’t know. The way you were looking at her… it was like it was real. Like you still have those feelings.”
“Oh my God, Hannah, do we have to go through this again? I was acting.”
“I didn’t know you were such a good actor.”
He shook his head, exasperated. “I don’t know what else you want me to do. I have to do these things for my career.”
“Because you can’t buy your own breeches?” It was the meanest thing I’d said probably yet in our relationship but I was sick of him making everything about us also about his career. It was like the one thing he could always fall back on to trump any feeling I had, no matter how legit the feeling was.
“It’s more than the breeches. It’s the exposure. It’s making me a recognized figure in the sport.”
I wondered what the photographer and the person from An
imo and Mary Beth for that matter were doing while we were having this fight. Our voices were loud and they could probably hear every word we were saying. Mary Beth was likely enjoying every minute of it, hoping that it spelled real trouble for Chris and me.
“If it was no big deal, why didn’t you tell me?” I said.
Chris held his hands up in front of him, like he didn’t know what else he could have done. His voice turned quieter, more serious, and sad. “You know what, I think we both need to do some thinking.”
My stomach dropped. We had been arguing about a photo shoot, and I had been really upset, but I hadn’t thought it would lead to this. “What are you talking about?”
“I just don’t know that our relationship is working right now. I think we both need some head space.”
“Head space? Are you breaking up with me?”
“I just think we need a few days, a week. I don’t know how long. But something’s not right. Maybe I should have told you about the photo shoot but the fact that I was scared to tell you, should tell us both something. This feels like more work than it should be.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening and I couldn’t believe it was happening here in Mary Beth’s driveway. My worst nightmare come true. He could turn from me and run into her arms with the sun perfectly aligned behind their shoulders. I knew he didn’t mean to break up with me here but he’d clearly been thinking about it before now and that hurt me more than anything.
I didn’t cry, though. Not until I had started the golf cart and was driving away. Then, I sobbed. Tears gushed out of my eyes, soaking my entire face and dripping onto my shirt. I made horrible mewing sounds—it was the kind of crying you only really do when no one can hear you.
Winter Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 2) Page 21
