Nealy stared at the statue of Flyby out by the front gate and thought about Hunt, of how happy they’d been those first few years and how miserable they’d been later. She sipped her coffee.
“Do you think Grandpa will ever come back?” Nick asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. But be sure you call him every few days to let him know we’re thinking of him.”
“I will.”
“What would you say if I told you I’ve been thinking about taking a vacation?” When she saw her son’s mouth drop open, she couldn’t help but laugh. “I know I’ve shocked you, but I’m serious, and what I want to know is . . . if I decide to go ahead and plan the trip, do you think you and Emmie can handle things here?”
“Ma, I’m not even going to answer that. You should know better than to ask. Where are you going?”
Nealy leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other. “I have no idea. But somewhere. The only time I went anywhere was when I left Virginia to come here and when I took Flyby to his races, but I didn’t even get to see New York the way a tourist would. Hawaii maybe,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. The idea of palm trees and warm beaches sounded very appealing at that moment. “Your dad always wanted to go there, but we never could find the time. He wanted to go to the Orient, too. But that was in the early days of our marriage, and it was always someday.” She stared into her empty coffee cup, thinking of all the things that should have been, could have been but for . . . “Maybe I’ll just go into town and do some shopping,” she said, pulling herself out of her melancholy. “Smitty has a birthday coming up. What do you buy for someone who has everything?”
“Ma, I don’t have a clue. I saw an advertisement in the paper last week for some gift shop in Lexington that sells monogrammed toilet paper.” At Nealy’s look of surprise, he said, “Honest, Ma. Do you think people actually buy stuff like that?” He guffawed. “You could give her a trip to some faraway exotic place. Maybe send her on a cruise. I bet she’d like that. Better yet, why don’t the two of you go together?”
Now it was Nealy’s mouth that dropped open. “That’s a wonderful idea, Nick!” How come she hadn’t thought about that?
Nick scrutinized his mother. “Something’s wrong, Ma. What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I just feel . . . I have this feeling . . . I can’t explain it. I know something bad is about to happen, but since I don’t know what it is, the feeling spooks me. Flyby is all right, isn’t he?”
Nick knew not to discount his mother’s feelings. She had an uncanny knack for predicting things before they happened. “He’s fine.” Nick stood up and clapped his mother on the back. “My mother the seer.” He looked to the east and saw a snip of pink sky showing through the clouds. “It’s going to rain. That’s probably what’s bothering you. I gotta get down to the barns. Let me know if you’re going into town.” He took the porch steps in two strides.
“Why?” Nealy called after him.
He turned around and regarded her with a sideways look. “Because you’re my mother, and I want to know where you go and what you do.”
“That’s my line,” Nealy laughed.
“You know what, Ma? I bet if you went into town and got yourself fixed up, you could probably scare up some good-lookin’ guy to take you dancing.”
“Go!” Nealy thundered.
“You have gray hair!” Nick shouted over his shoulder. “You’re too young for gray hair!”
Nealy sighed. Gray hair. A sign of impending old age. Was forty-eight old? Obviously her son thought so. At twenty, she supposed forty-eight sounded ancient. That meant Rhy was fifty-two and Pyne was fifty. And her father was over a hundred. She wondered if he’d ever had his cataracts operated on.
If she went into the house and called SunStar Farms, who would answer? Damn, why was she suddenly thinking about her family? Were they the reason she was feeling spooked? She hadn’t thought about them in a long time. Why today? Maybe Nick was right, and it was just the impending rain. He always said she wigged out when a storm threatened. Of course it wasn’t true. It was just Nick’s way of teasing her.
“Gray hair, indeed!”
“Nealy!”
Nealy turned to see Smitty at the screen door. “What are you doing up? I thought you said you were going to sleep in today. It’s Saturday.”
Smitty came out on the porch, her expression tight. “Your bad habits have rubbed off on me. I can’t sleep past four-thirty anymore. Nealy, I . . .”
“What’s wrong, Smitty?”
“Wrong? I don’t know whether you’ll think what I have to tell you is wrong or if you’ll think it’s right.”
“Wrong, right, what are you talking about?”
“I woke up to the news on my radio. You know how those jocks like to give every bit of horse news there is. They said . . . what they said was that Josh Coleman suffered a stroke. Then they gave a rundown on his farm, his family, his career. . . . I thought . . . I thought you might want to get in touch with your brothers or something.”
Nealy uncrossed her legs and sat forward. “Now why would I want to do a thing like that?” The fine hairs on the back of her neck started to prickle.
“Probably for the same reason you kept up with your family these past years by reading everything I put in front of you. If you want, I can find out more.” When there was no response, she said, “It wouldn’t hurt to make a few inquiries to find out what his condition is. After all, once he’s gone, you may not be able to collect on that check of his you never resubmitted after payment was refused.” When Nealy gave her the evil eye, she backed off. “Okay, okay, forget I mentioned it.”
Nealy felt something like relief. Her intuition had been right. Smitty’s news was the reason she felt so spooked. “What would you rather have for your birthday gift, a cruise or a roll of monogrammed toilet paper?” she asked, sidestepping the subject altogether.
“Yes to both, but it won’t do you any good to try to change the subject on me. This is serious business. I think that if it’s not already too late, you should pay your father a visit. Either make your peace with him or damn him to hell and eternity. Whichever makes you happy. Death is final. You won’t get up to bat again.” She looked Nealy straight in the eyes. “Do people really wipe their rear ends on monogrammed toilet paper? That seems so . . . decadent.”
Nealy guffawed and stood up. “I’m going shopping.”
“Shopping?” Smitty echoed, a stupid look on her face. “In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never gone shopping. Shopping?” she repeated.
“I’m going to get my hair colored. Nick doesn’t like the gray. He said if I fixed myself up, some man might latch on to me and take me dancing. When my own kid tells me something like that, I think it’s time I paid attention.”
“I’ll be damned.”
“That about sums it up,” Nealy said, heading for the house. “While I’m out, I think I’ll go by the animal shelter and see about adopting a dog. I didn’t have the heart to get another dog after Charlie crossed the Rainbow Bridge. But I think I’m ready now. How about you, Smitty? I know you love cats. Do you want me to get you a cat?”
“Why the hell not? Sure, get two. Get the least likely to be adopted ones, the ones they would put down first.”
Nealy nodded. “Come with me, Smitty, and pick out your own cats. It’s not like you can’t get away from the office now and then. With that mess of people you hired, you don’t have anything to do but stand around looking over their shoulders. One of these days, one of them is going to take a poke at you.”
Smitty appeared to consider the idea. “I suppose I could . . . But first I want to know, are you going to think about what I told you?”
“Yes, but only if you go shopping with me.”
“That’s blackmail.”
Nealy closed the screen door behind her. She knew Smitty would do as she asked. She always did. Nealy felt positively brittle as she walked up the steps to her second-floor b
edroom. How was it possible that after all these years thinking of her family could make her feel like this? She didn’t give a good rat’s ass about her father or her brothers. No, that wasn’t true, she amended. She did care some about her brothers.
She felt incredibly old when she sat down in Maud’s rocker. All the old hatreds she thought she’d overcome long ago rivered through her. Maybe Smitty was right, and she should pay her family a visit.
The memory of her father coming up to her on Derby Day all those years ago still haunted her. Only now did she understand that what she’d felt was fear, pure and simple. Was she still afraid?
Both Smitty and Hunt had told her that if her father really wanted to find her, he could have, without any difficulty. “Blood,” Hunt had said, “always wins out. Good, bad, or indifferent, family is family.” She’d lost count of the times he had goaded her to go home and confront her family. He’d begged, cajoled, and pleaded. But she’d always turned a deaf ear.
The one major fight they’d had during their married life was about her father. Hunt said Nick deserved to know his grandfather and uncles. Emmie too. He said SunStar Farms was part of their heritage.
Nealy leaned her head against the back of the rocker and let the tears come. She could still remember every awful detail of the night she’d taken Emmie and driven away from SunStar Farms. She remembered the rain slashing down on her when she stopped at the end of the drive to dig up the bucket of SunStar soil. She remembered being so sick she thought she might die . . .
The morning of the day Hunt died, he’d asked her when she was going to shed the bitterness in her heart so she could be a real woman, the woman he thought she was when he married her. She’d given him a flip answer and told him if he didn’t like her heart, then maybe it was time for him to move on. The look on his face . . . like he’d just been stomped on . . . made her feel ashamed, but she hadn’t apologized. How she regretted that.
She cried until she couldn’t cry anymore because there were no tears left to shed. She was wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her shirt when Smitty came into the room with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“That bad, huh?” she said, holding out the coffee cup.
“Yeah. That bad.” She took the cup from Smitty’s hands and sipped the steaming brew. “Tell me something, Smitty, did you know things weren’t right between Hunt and me those last couple of years?”
Smitty sat down opposite Nealy in Jess’s old chair. “Everyone knew.”
Nealy nodded. She supposed she’d been fooling herself to think it was a secret. “I still don’t know what he wanted from me, Smitty. I really think he fell out of love with me when he realized that the horses were my first love.” Her breath shuddered as she let it out. “I never hid that from him. He knew who and what I was when he asked me to marry him.” She looked away and waited until she could be sure her voice would be steady before asking, “Just out of curiosity, do you happen to know how many affairs he had?”
Smitty drew up her knees and wrapped her arms around her legs. “Three that I know of.”
“Did his father know?”
She nodded. “They had more than one row about it. I was never sure if you knew, and I always wondered if I should say something, but it wasn’t my place, you know?”
“Yeah, I know, and you’re right, it wasn’t your place. I suspected,” she said, then shook her head. “No, that’s not true. I knew, but I never confronted him. I suppose because I was gutless and didn’t really want him confirming it. I didn’t want to have to deal with it because once I did that I would have had to make decisions. I guess he died thinking I didn’t know. I suppose that’s for the best.”
“Did you love him, Nealy?”
She took a few moments to gather her thoughts. “If you mean that bell and whistle stuff, no. He didn’t rock the ground under my feet. I loved him in a different kind of way, and I never would have cheated on him, Smitty.” She looked down into her coffee cup. “He said I had a bitter heart. One time he even said my heart was black. I wonder if Nick feels that way about me.”
“That boy loves you with all his heart. Whatever his father was or wasn’t, it has nothing to do with him or you. You know what you’ve always told me, get over it and move on.”
“I know but . . .” A look of guilt crossed her face. “Smitty, I didn’t grieve for Hunt the way I did for Maud and Jess. When they died, I thought my world was coming to an end. I remember when it was Maud’s time, Jess wanted to lie down and die right alongside of her. I didn’t feel like that when Hunt died. Good God, what’s wrong with me? Maybe I’m not capable of loving anyone except my children, dogs, and horses.”
Smitty jumped up, went over to Nealy, and pulled her out of her chair. “Come on. I made an appointment for you at the beauty shop. You have an hour. We’ll get the cats and dog another time. Oh, and by the way, I also called your old home and pretended I was a reporter. I spoke to your brother Pyne. He said the doctor said your father isn’t going to survive very long. You probably shouldn’t drag your feet on this, Nealy. By the way, didn’t you tell me you have no other family?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Your brother said the family has been notified, and they’re coming from all over the country.”
Nealy stopped dead in her tracks. “Family? Are you sure you called the right number?”
“Of course I’m sure. I don’t make mistakes, Nealy.”
“Then Pyne was either drunk or delirious. We don’t have any other family.”
“Should I make plane reservations for this afternoon ?”
“All right, Smitty.”
“What about Emmie, Buddy, and Nick?”
“Make them for three. Buddy mentioned having to go out of town. And hire a car service to pick us up at the airport and drive us around.”
“You’re doing the right thing, Nealy.”
Nealy laughed. “I hope you’re right.” She closed her eyes to ward off the dizziness she was feeling.
I’m going home.
Her heart fluttered in her chest.
Home.
The two brothers watched from the window as a black stretch limousine crunched to a stop in the middle of the gravel driveway. In silence, they watched a uniformed driver get out and open the rear passenger door. Their jaws dropped when they saw a slender woman dressed in brown-leather boots, well-cut jeans, and white shirt emerge and look around. She reached a sun-darkened hand up to adjust her tinted glasses, then tipped the brim of her pearly white Stetson to reveal a mane of thick sable brown hair.
“Who the hell is that?” Rhy Coleman demanded of his brother Pyne.
Pyne’s face screwed up. “How the hell should I know? But whoever she is, she’s coming up to the porch. I think you should open the door.”
When his older brother made no move to greet their guest, Pyne started toward the door, but it opened before he could reach it, and the woman blew in like a gust of wind. Without so much as a glance at the brothers, she headed straight for the stairway leading to the second floor.
“Hey! Just a damn minute!” Rhy shouted. “Who the hell are you to walk in here like you own the place?”
She turned to face them and grinned as she lowered her glasses. “Why, I do own it, Rhy, at least a third of it. Don’t you recognize me, big brother?”
Rhy’s eyes widened with shock.
Pyne walked toward her. “Nealy! Is it really you?”
“In the flesh,” she said, thinking it funny that neither one of them had recognized her. She’d recognized them the second she’d seen them, not by the family resemblance but by the slump of their shoulders. Her grin vanished as she glanced back at the stairs. “Where is he?”
Pyne’s head jerked upward.
Nealy nodded. “You two stay here,” she ordered. “I have something I want to say to him, and I don’t want either of you interfering. Understand?” When there was no response, she repeated her question. This time both brothers nodded. Nealy stared at her broth
ers and realized they were strangers to her and that she felt absolutely nothing for them—not love, not hate, nothing.
After all these years, here she was on Coleman land.
Shoulders stiff, back straight, she mounted the stairs with the same mix of confidence and caution she used when mounting her horses. At the top, she stopped and looked down at her brothers, who appeared to be debating whether or not to follow her. “Go about your business while I take care of mine.”
Nealy hesitated only a moment outside her father’s bedroom, then opened the door and walked in. The room was just as she remembered it, dingy gray walls, a few pieces of battered pine furniture and worn-out, roll-down shades covering the two windows.
Her nose wrinkled at the smell of dust, mold, and medication. Hearing a groan, she turned her gaze toward the bed and saw a mound of quilts . . . her father, the man who had sent her fleeing from this very house over thirty years ago.
A frail voice demanded to know who was there. Nealy stepped up closer to the bed and heard a footfall behind her. Rhy or Pyne? she wondered. Pyne.
“Hello, Pa. It’s Nealy.”
The voice was stronger when he spoke a second time. “There ain’t nothin’ here for you, girl. Go back where you came from. You don’t belong here.”
“I don’t want anything, Pa,” Nealy said looking down at the load of quilts on the bed. They looked dirty or maybe it was just the lighting. Clean, dirty . . . what did she care? She pushed the pearly white Stetson farther back on her head so she could get a better look at the dying man.
“Then what are you here for?”
Nearly felt a hand on her shoulder and glanced back to see Pyne. The hand was to tell her to take it easy.
Like hell she would. Her father had never taken it easy on her. Not even when she was so sick she couldn’t stand up. She removed his hand with her own and gave him a warning look. More than thirty years she’d waited for this moment, and neither Pyne nor Rhy was going to take it away from her.
Kentucky Rich Page 20
