Two Strides (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 30)

by Claire Svendsen

  I worked her on the flat, going round in boring circles until she finally got it right. Keeping her focused kept my mind off Esther. What was she doing over the hill? Was she going to open Sand Hill back up as a lesson and boarding barn again because if she was then that meant she was going to be our competition and I had to admit that all the work they’d put into the farm made it look a lot better than ours did. Esther had the covered ring, the jump field, the pretty barn. She had new fences and shiny equipment and people to help her. We had Dad and Jordan and that was it. Things were falling apart faster than we could put them back together. And I knew that I should have felt happy about Esther’s return but I couldn’t be, not yet anyway.

  That didn’t mean that I didn’t want to talk to her though. After lunch I slipped away from Dad and Jordan, who were discussing how to fix the tractor, and walked back up the hill. I’d decided not to ride this time because I did want to look in her barn and say hello to her horses. I wanted to hang out like the old days when I took lessons there in exchange for mucking stalls and then rode my bike home feeling tired and dirty and happier than I’d ever felt in my whole life. Things had been so simple then. I wanted to go back to that time but I couldn’t. No one could turn the clock back and even though Esther was here now, that didn’t mean she’d be the same old Esther.

  Walking up the hill was more of a work out than I’d expected and by the time I got to Sand Hill I was winded and hot. I clutched my side and wished I’d brought a bottle of water. Esther was in the barn. She saw me and beckoned me over.

  “Water,” I managed to gulp, my throat parched like I’d just trekked across the desert.

  Esther went into the office and took an ice cold bottle of water out of a refrigerator and gave it to me.

  “Thanks,” I squeaked.

  I gulped the cold water and looked around. The barn had undergone a complete overhaul. The fronts were sleek wood and shiny black metal. The floors had been leveled, the fans were new. In fact, everything was new. There was not a trace of the old barn that I’d known so well. I looked at Esther, not sure how she’d managed such a feat.

  “Did you win the lottery or something?” I asked her.

  She just put her arm around me and laughed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I told Esther as we stood in her fancy new barn. “I never expected to see you back here.”

  “I told you I’d come back again one day,” Esther said. “So how have you been?”

  “It’s complicated,” I told her. “Can you just show me around first and we can discuss the big stuff later?”

  “Sure.” She laughed. “When did you get to be so serious?”

  I wasn’t sure. I wanted to tell her that it was all the stuff that had happened to me but then again Esther had a lot of bad stuff happen to her too and she still managed to have a smile on her face. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was doing life wrong.

  “Well, all the stalls are new,” she said, pointing out what I could already see. “Basically everything is new. I don’t know who was here while I was gone but the place had really gone to the dogs.”

  “I know,” I said. “I snuck over here a couple of times but it was always empty. I could tell people had trashed the place though. But now it looks amazing.”

  “Thanks,” Esther said, beaming.

  I didn’t like to tell her I was jealous but I was. I wanted my barn to look like that instead of the run down shack it really was with our second hand stall fronts and mismatched everything else. We walked past the wash racks and the tack room. I could almost see the ghosts of Mickey and myself sitting in there cleaning tack before a show, laughing about something stupid and tossing wet sponges at each other. We’d been so happy then. It was sad that we’d grown up and grown apart.

  For one moment I imagined now that Esther had returned, maybe things could go back to the way they used to be. Mickey could bring Hampton over and I could have a stall for Bluebird. We could ride in the ring and go to shows together and Esther could teach us just like she used to. But deep down I knew that you could never go back to who you were. Life didn’t work that way and besides, even before Esther had left, she’d told me that I’d outgrown her as a student.

  “We’ve re-fenced all the paddocks,” Esther carried on as we walked out the back of the barn. “And put in a few small ones in the shade back there for layups and difficult horses.”

  The paddocks were where Bluebird’s used to be back when I first got him and he wouldn’t go into a stall. Now they were lined up in a row in the shade, four small neat paddocks with water troughs and large bins for hay. A horse was in one of them now, a pretty Paint with blue eyes and a lot of white.

  “You always did have a soft spot for Paints,” I told her, walking up to the mare. “She reminds me of Saffron.”

  “She reminds me of her too,” Esther said softly and I knew that she had ghosts in her past as well.

  Horses she’d had to let go of and people that she’d lost. No one got through this life unscathed but Esther seemed to be making the best of it so why couldn’t I?

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  Esther showed me around the rest of the farm. She had new jumps and plans for a proper jump field, not like before where we’d just galloped around one of the fields and gone over a few jump standards that we’d dragged out there.

  “Your farm is going to be amazing,” I told her.

  “Thanks,” she replied, putting her arm around me. “And I want you to help me with it. You know that you are welcome to come over here and ride anytime.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I will but I also have to help my dad. We’re supposed to be making our farm great again too.”

  “So your dad huh?” Esther said. “You want to talk about it now? I’ve got sandwiches in the office and some iced coffee.”

  Esther always did have a thing for coffee. It was her one addiction. That and horses. She’d taught me so much, all about good horsemanship and sportsmanship. Without her guidance I could have turned out like Jess but I’d hit my speed bumps along the way too. I thought about poor Grace and her broken leg. Judy had kept me updated. She said that the mare was progressing well and was bearing weight on her leg now. She had a long road ahead of her but things were looking up. At least now I could sleep without the nightmares crowding my dreams.

  Esther and I sat in her office with the door closed and the air conditioning running. As we ate, I told her all about how my dad had come into my life, my time living at Fox Run and how now we had our own farm. I tried to make it sound like it was a great thing when really returning to Fox Run to drop off Hashtag had just made me miss it all the more. I liked living on a proper working farm where people were always there riding, the ring had always been dragged and there were trailers going to shows every weekend. Living on you own small farm sounded glamorous but it wasn’t. Not really. Instead the days were full of blood, sweat and tears.

  “I’m sorry about your mother,” Esther said. “That must have been hard.”

  “She really took us for a ride,” I said. “I hope I never see her again.”

  “She’s your mother,” Esther said gently. “She’ll always have a place in your heart no matter what she’s done.”

  I thought about my father and how I grew to hate him over the years as my mother told me repeatedly that he left us because he didn’t love us anymore. Now I knew that wasn’t true but the things my mother had done were real and wouldn’t easily be forgiven.

  “I’m sorry about your dad,” I told her.

  “It was his time,” Esther said, sounding wise. “In the end he was glad to go and it was hard to watch him suffer. The good thing was that I was able to get a job over there working at one of the best barns in the country.”

  “You didn’t?” I said. “Really? That’s why you didn’t come back?”

  “I needed some time,” she said, looking at her feet. “I wasn’t ready to just jump back i
nto this life again. I threw myself into working horses and learning all I could and it paid off. They started letting me compete and I won quite a few classes on the Grand Prix circuit.”

  “You never did,” I cried, jumping to my feet. “Esther, that’s so great. Maybe you could teach me again!”

  “Well I don’t want to step on your father’s toes,” she said. “Or your team trainer, he sounds pretty nice.”

  “He is,” I said, thinking that Duncan was expecting me to be ready for the team show and I’d hardly been practicing at all. “He’s really helped me a lot.”

  I didn’t tell Esther about Grace and the fact that I’d lost my nerve. I wasn’t ready to tell her yet. Besides, she was being so nice to me. I didn’t want to disappoint her. I knew that she would think I’d let the horse down by riding for a bad trainer and I knew it was a mistake that I’d never forget.

  “I’ve got some new horses coming in from Europe,” Esther said, her face lighting up. “You can help me with them if you like.”

  “Sure,” I said. “That would be great.” Only I couldn’t help thinking that there just weren’t enough hours in the day to help my father with his farm and Esther with hers.

  “I’m really glad your back,” I said as I brushed the crumbs off my legs. “But I’d better get back.”

  Esther stood up too and suddenly pulled me into a hug.

  “Everything is going to be fine now,” she said.

  This from the woman who didn’t like to show her affection at all. I wondered what exactly had happened to her over in Sweden to make her so different but I had to admit that the few seconds that she held me close were nice. I wondered whether, if my mother had done the same thing, maybe everything would have turned out differently.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  I started working harder then I’d ever worked before because now I had two barns to attend to. I’d do my chores and ride my own horses in the morning when our ring was still shaded by the trees and the house and in the afternoons I’d go over to Sand Hill and help Esther get her barn ready for the new horses.

  “You’re really not going to have any boarders?” I asked her as we filled the stalls with shavings.

  “Maybe one or two,” she said. “You know, nice people. But not the nasty ones.”

  I had to laugh. Having our own boarders had turned out to be more of an experience than I’d thought it would be and Esther was right. If you could run your barn without them then it would probably save you a lot of hassle in the long run.

  “But how are you going to make money?” I asked, leaning on my pitchfork.

  “Oh you know, this and that,” she said vaguely.

  Hopefully her plan consisted of more than this and that because many great barns had failed because they couldn’t afford to run themselves. We were struggling enough as it was thanks to my mother.

  “Do you think you can really make money in this business?” I asked Esther.

  “You can make money if you start out with money,” she said, wiping the dust from her eyes with a laugh.

  Today she had a blue paisley bandana wrapped around her head. Looking at her it was like she never left. Like Sand Hill was a part of her and she was a part of it.

  “But what if you don’t have any money to start with?” I asked.

  “You’re too young to be worrying so much about money,” Esther said. “Now come on, one stall left and then I’ll hose you down before I send you home.”

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s not fair.”

  “You girls used to love using the wash rack as a shower,” Esther said. “Have you really grown up so much?”

  “Not that much,” I said, tossing a pile of shavings at her.

  She responded by doing the same and of course the shavings stuck to our sweaty skin like glue and we both had to rinse ourselves off in the wash rack, which I had to admit actually felt pretty good.

  “It’s okay to have fun you know,” Esther said as we dried ourselves off.

  “I know,” I replied, thinking how great the schooling show had been. But the next show wouldn’t be like that.

  “And what happened between you and Mickey?” Esther pressed me for more information than I wanted to give her. “You two used to be joined at the hip. I had to pry you girls apart and now it seems like you are not even friends anymore.”

  “We are friends …” I said, my voice trailing off.

  “Let me guess, its complicated,” Ester said. “Isn’t anything in your life black and white?”

  “Not really,” I told her with a grin. “It’s sort of a big, swirly gray mess at the moment.”

  “Well I think we need to figure out how to make it not so much of a mess, don’t you?” Esther winked at me.

  I wasn’t sure exactly how she thought that she was going to turn my life around but apparently she thought she could and I wasn’t going to stop her from trying because I knew that I needed all the help I could get and I wasn’t about to reject any that was offered to me.

  “How about you ride Bluebird over tomorrow and we ride to the beach?” Esther said.

  “Really?” I asked her.

  “Sure, I haven’t been yet since I’ve been back and I’m dying to gallop on the sand. Aren’t you?” Her eyes were bright as she dangled the prospect of a beach gallop in front of me like a carrot on a stick.

  “I really should be training for the next show,” I said, feeling hesitant about the whole thing.

  It wasn’t like at Fox Run where the private trail led all the way to the beach. From Sand Hill you had to go along public trails where you were more than likely to meet crazy teenagers racing four wheelers and you had to cross a road where traffic roared along at a million miles an hour. All I could think about was Bluebird getting hurt before the show and I couldn’t let that happen. I guess I wasn’t as over my fears as I thought I was.

  “You’ll make your pony bored if you ride him in the ring all the time,” she said. “You know that. Come on. It will be fun and I’ll take care of you, I promise.”

  She looked so eager and happy and I didn’t want to disappoint her so I said yes even though my heart was screaming no.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  “I’m going on a beach ride with Esther tomorrow,” I told Dad that night. “So I won’t be around in the morning. Is that okay?”

  “I guess,” he said.

  He was hunched over the kitchen table looking at the paper. I wasn’t sure what had his attention but whatever it was I was sure it had to do with selling stuff to make money or finding another job. He’d already been doing some handy work for one of the neighbors, putting up their fences instead of our own but what else was he supposed to do, sell Canterbury? He didn’t really want to do that and I didn’t want him to either.

  “Who is this Esther person anyway?” he said, finally looking up just as I was creeping away, thinking that I’d got away with it.

  “You know,” I said. “I told you. She used to rent Sand Hill and I used to ride there. Then she moved out of the country but now she’s back.”

  “Is she any good?” Dad said, sounding more curious than I’d like him to be.

  “At what?” I said.

  “At riding,” Dad said the words slowly like I was being stupid.

  “She was pretty good,” I said. “But she did more teaching than riding. At least she used to.”

  “Okay then,” Dad said.

  I guess it was the answer he was looking for though I wasn’t sure what else he expected me to say. That Esther was a better trainer than he was? I wasn’t even sure anymore.

  The next morning Patrick whined and pawed at my leg as I got my stuff together.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him. “You can’t come. Not this time. Go and lay down.”

  I pointed to his bed that we’d set up in the corner of the kitchen and my dog went and laid down with a sigh, his tail between his legs, making me feel like a horrible person for leaving him behind. At least Bluebird was hap
py to see me. He gobbled up the treat that I gave him and then nudged me for a second one.

  “When we get to the beach you little piggy,” I told him.

  I tacked him up with butterflies in my stomach. I hadn’t been to the beach in ages. People thought that just because you lived near the water, you probably went there all the time but that just wasn’t true. And the weather was getting hotter, the horses would love a good gallop along the wet sand and splash in the ocean before the tourists arrived with their colored umbrellas, flapping their towels and scaring our mounts.

  I rode Bluebird up the hill feeling light hearted, I even managed to hum a tune as we wound our way through the fence and along the small trail. Esther had said that we could leave the fence board down now and so I had but it still felt weird riding back to Sand Hill again. Sort of like the old days, only in reverse. But I was excited to spend some more time with Esther. Maybe I’d finally be able to really talk to her. To tell her everything.

  As we reached the barn I saw that there were two horses tacked up and waiting to go, the black and white Paint mare with the blue eyes and a stocky plain bay. I’d assumed that Esther and I would be going alone. I guess I was wrong. I instantly got the urge to turn Bluebird around and go back home before anyone saw me but it was too late.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  “Hi!” the girl said, waving at me as she saw me come out of the woods. Too late to turn tail and run away now. “I’m Hanna,” she added.

  “Emily,” I said.

  “I know, Esther has told me all about you,” she said.