by Janet Dailey
“I don’t think it’s wise for us to get into a discussion about our past differences. That isn’t why I came.”
“Isn’t it? I never would have guessed. Everything we’ve talked about so far has dealt with my shortcomings. I mean, you’ve criticized my drinking habits, found fault with my dinner partners, and, in your own way, cautioned me against mentioning Claudia. Just what is it you want to discuss, Drew?” Luz demanded tautly.
“I wanted to talk to you about the children.”
She swung away from him, fighting her anger and tension. “I suppose you think I’m to blame because Rob still won’t come to see you. I can’t, and I won’t, force him to do it.”
“I am concerned about this trip to Argentina you have planned,” he asserted. “When I went along with Rob’s decision to sit out college for a year, no mention was made about a three-month sojourn in Argentina.”
“He has enrolled—” she began as she turned back toward him, but got no farther.
“Trisha told me all about this famous polo college.”
“I thoroughly investigated it before I agreed to let him attend.” Luz reacted to the disdain she heard in Drew’s voice.
“But you didn’t consult me about this trip, and I happen to be their father,” he pointed out curtly. “Although, God knows, you’ve always made sure Rob got anything he ever wanted, you could have gone through the motion of discussing it with me. But it isn’t the trip I resent so much as Trisha’s participation in all this. Do you realize that she is considering waiting until midterm to start college just so she can make this trip? She’s putting her acceptance at Harvard in jeopardy, for God’s sake.”
“I wasn’t aware of it. Or, at least, the times she’s mentioned it, I haven’t taken her seriously.” She looked at the glass in her hand, conscious of the inner turmoil this subject aroused. “If she decides to wait, it won’t be with my approval. Personally, I would rather she didn’t go with Rob and me to Argentina. But she is of legal age, so there’s little you or I can do to prevent her from going.” She took a drink of the water, for the first time in a long while wishing it were liquor-laced. With a sardonic tilt of her head, she glanced at Drew. “You see, she’s wildly infatuated with Raul Buchanan.”
“Yes, I had that impression when she talked about him.”
“He’s much too old for her, but I can’t make Trisha see that. It’s all your fault, you know. You’ve set a fine example with Claudia. If it’s all right for Daddy, it’s all right for her,” Luz taunted. “Tell me, Drew, how do you feel about a thirty-seven-year-old man seducing your eighteen-year-old daughter? Maybe that doesn’t bother you?”
“Of course it does. She’s too young.”
“Then why don’t you tell her that? Instead of always being the understanding, doting father, why don’t you play the heavy for once?” she challenged angrily.
“I’d be more than happy to talk to her, Luz,” he assured her, and she hated that placating tone in his voice, that patient reasoning of an adult talking to a child. “But I’m in a somewhat awkward position.”
“You’re in an awkward position? My God, that’s rich!” She pushed the glass onto the counter near him, shaking too much with anger to hold it any longer. “What about me? Don’t you think I’m in an awkward position?”
“Of course—”
“Anything I say to her sounds like the bitterly prejudiced opinions of a jilted wife whose husband left her for a younger woman! She won’t listen to me. Can’t you see that?”
“I understand what you’re saying.”
“I don’t think you do,” Luz snapped and pivoted sharply to walk away from him, but he reached out to stop her. She went rigid at the touch of his hands.
“Let’s not argue, Luz. It isn’t going to help,” he insisted while his hands continued to hold her shoulders, the pressure gentle and affectionate. The charm was being turned on, but she was buying none of it. “I know these last months have been difficult for you, and believe me, I regret that. We had some good years together. Let’s try to remember them and put this bitterness behind us. We’ll never get anywhere in solving this problem if we keep blaming each other for what happened.”
“I can’t turn my emotions on and off like a faucet the way you can, Drew. I can’t pretend nothing has happened.” He was expecting too much to believe they could ever sit and discuss Rob and Trisha as parents without also remembering that they once were man and wife. She couldn’t wash away the bitter taste of the divorce. No one was that selfless.
“I’m not asking you to pretend merely to—” He was distracted by the small click of a door latch followed by a rush of warm, humid air from the outside.
When Luz glanced toward the French doors, she saw Trisha standing motionless a foot inside the room. Dressed in tennis clothes, a visor around her chestnut hair and a tennis racket in hand, she stared at the two of them. A split second later, Luz realized how it might look with Drew holding her like this and immediately backed away from him.
“I picked a bad time to barge in, didn’t I?” Trisha murmured.
“Of course you didn’t,” Drew denied.
“I saw your car parked out front and I … I never considered that you might be here to see Luz,” she ended lamely. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s no need to be sorry.”
“Close the door, Trisha,” Luz ordered, irritated with Drew that he either could not see the construction she was placing on their being together or was simply not doing anything to squash it. “You didn’t interrupt anything. Your father and I were just arguing about our trip to Argentina. He doesn’t approve of your going.”
“That isn’t exactly true,” he denied. “I simply felt I should have been consulted about it before the plans were finalized. After all, I am your father, and that makes me an interested party.”
“There you go again twisting things around so you come out looking good!” she flared bitterly, then angrily swept a hand toward Trisha. “He’s been blaming me because you’ve been hinting you may not start college until midyear.”
“I was merely expressing my concern—”
“And I suppose next you’re going to claim you approve of her interest in Raul Buchanan!” Luz accused.
“Since I’ve never met him, I can’t very well approve or disapprove. At this point, I can only trust that Trisha is discerning enough not to be taken in by a possible fortune hunter.”
“Damn you.” She dug her nails into her palms in helpless frustration. “And you want to become a lawyer, Trisha. Be sure to take lessons from your father in how not to give a straight answer!”
“Stop it! Both of you!” Tears shimmered in Trisha’s eyes. “Why do you always have to argue with him, Luz?”
“It’s always my fault, isn’t it? No matter what happens, I’m to blame.” It was a battle she’d never win, and it was useless to try, she realized. “You know where the door is, Drew. I suggest you use it.” She bolted from the room, tears of impotent rage burning her eyes.
Minutes after she reached the privacy of her room, she heard the front door open and close, followed by the deep rumble of the Mercedes engine starting up. After all this time, she still recognized the sound of that motor. She waited, hoping Trisha would come upstairs so that she could explain all that had happened before she arrived, but she never came. Later, when she saw her at lunch, no mention was made of Drew’s visit.
A dark starling took wing into the coral-tinged sky, its iridescent neck feathers flashing with the dying light of the sun. Rob briefly tracked its flight as he climbed the stairs leading to Jimmy Ray’s quarters above the stable. When he reached the door at the top, he instinctively glanced over his shoulder to see if anyone was watching, but the stable itself blocked any view from the house and the surrounding acreage placed the other domiciles at a distance.
Inside, a television set blared the sound of screeching tires and crashing cars. Rob knocked loudly at the door, then looked anxiously behind him in
a guilty reflexive movement. A second later, the television volume was turned down.
“Who is it?”
“It’s me. Rob.” He didn’t try the doorknob. Jimmy Ray always kept it locked.
After what seemed an interminable wait, the slow-moving man opened the door. He stood there in his loose-fitting tan pants and matching workshirt and sized up Rob. “Want some, do you?” An understanding nod accompanied the drawled summation.
“Yeah, and it better be good. I don’t want the shit you sold me last week,” Rob stated.
“Be down with it directly.” He swung the door closed, shutting Rob out. Rob was never invited to wait inside while he was making a buy. The old man was careful not to reveal the location of his drug stash.
Within seconds after the door closed, he heard the click of the deadbolt sliding home. Rob turned and hurried down the outside stairs. At the bottom, he swung around the rail post and entered the stable through the side entrance.
The interior was cloaked in shadows with only patches of fading sunlight filtering onto the runway from the top half of the stall doors. Rob flipped on the string of overhead lights to illuminate the wide corridor, then wandered down it. A horse whickered in one of the closed stalls. From various points came the soft rustle of hay and the crunching chomp of horses chewing on it, and the occasional stamp to chase away a pesky fly. A breeze stirred through the open halves of the doors facing the paddocks and drifted into the stable, its fresh tang picking up the smell of hay and horse.
The gray horse, Stonewall, thrust its head into the corridor and snorted inquisitively at Rob. He wandered over to it and let the soft gray-white nose investigate his shirt pockets for sugar while he scratched the underside of its jaw. The aging gray horse was growing whiter. A man had made Rob an offer for the horse today. He wasn’t much of a rider or a polo player, but he liked the image of himself astride a horse cantering across the field on Saturday afternoon and making showy swings with his mallet. An inglorious end for a good game horse, but it would be an easy old age, Rob decided.
A door shut outside the stable, followed, after a long pause, by the measured thud of footsteps on the outer stairs. Rob reached inside his pants pocket and removed the folded bills, the amount already counted, then tucked it under the taut string of a hay bale sitting on the concrete runway between the closed stalls.
Jimmy Ray ambled into the stable, a slouch hat covering his bald pate. His long-sleeved shirt was buttoned at the cuff despite the subtropical heat of a humid July night. He walked over to the gray horse and nonchalantly passed the packet to Rob.
“How’s the old man tonight?” he crooned to the horse, never even glancing at the hay bale that had become the money pickup. From what Rob had been able to learn since he’d begun dealing with him regularly, the groom only pushed enough stuff to pay for his own needs, and he only sold to people he knew well. Not that Rob had ever seen anyone else make a buy from him.
“I’m selling Stonewall,” Rob said, slipping the cocaine packet into his pocket.
“To Greble?”
“Yes.”
Jimmy Ray rubbed the reached forelock of the animal. “Be the same as gettin’ put out to pasture, old man,” he drawled to the horse. “Difference is, you’ll get to parade once’t in a while.”
“That’s true.” He fed the gray horse the sugar lump he’d denied him earlier.
“You be takin’ anything with you on this trip? I’ll be needin’ t’ know.” His attention returned to Rob.
“Too risky.”
“Could be,” Jimmy Ray conceded.
“It isn’t like I can’t do without it for a while,” Rob asserted.
“None of us got to have it,” he agreed, but his mouth slanted in a knowing smile.
Rob wasn’t worried. He wasn’t hooked on cocaine. You couldn’t get addicted to it like the hard stuff. A guy didn’t go through agonizing withdrawal if he didn’t get it regularly.
The groom patted the gray horse one last time then shoved away. “Night.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Rob saw Jimmy Ray pause beside the hay bale and remove the money with a quick twist. He stayed by the gray’s stall until the man had left the stable and he heard his footsteps on the wooden stairs outside. Only then did he slide away from the horse and head for the privacy of the tack room.
Once inside, he carefully and quietly shut the door and locked it, then crossed to his saddle rack and crouched down to remove the free-base kit he’d purchased a couple of weeks ago at a head shop in Lauderdale. After he set it out on the small work table where Jimmy Ray repaired broken tack, he took the package of cocaine from his pocket and emptied part of it into a small container. Careful to avoid inhaling the odorous ether fumes, he added enough to the cocaine to make a paste. He performed all the steps the way Cyn’s friend had shown him in England. Once the ether-coke paste was lit, he settled back in the high-backed rocking chair in a corner of the tack room and smoked the pipe, inhaling the vapors. Tooting was kid’s play. This was the only way to do it, he realized as his world became right and his self-confidence soared.
“Helen, I would love to work on the committee for you, but I’m leaving for Argentina in a little more than two weeks and won’t be back for at least a month, if not more, so I don’t see how I can be of much help to you.” While Luz patiently explained her refusal to the woman on the telephone, Trisha absently listened. She was still smarting from the bitter scene she’d witnessed that morning between her parents, and especially the role her mother had played. “I don’t consider it to be running away, Helen,” she heard her mother say tautly. “Rob wants to buy some polo ponies there and take some training under one of their top professionals. That’s why I’m going. It has nothing to do with the divorce or Drew.”
The very mention of the word “divorce” drove Trisha from the room. It was over, so why couldn’t Luz make peace instead of holding such a bitter grudge and lashing out every chance she got? Her father had attempted to justify her behavior after she had stormed out of the living room that morning.
“Your mother’s been deeply hurt by what’s happened,” he had said. “It’s understandable that right now she’s going to take anything I say to her personally. I wasn’t attempting to criticize her, although that’s what she believes. You and Rob are important to me. I merely wanted to express my desire to remain involved in decisions that affect your lives.”
At least her father was trying to establish some sort of workable relationship for the family’s sake, which was more than Trisha could say for Luz. She spied Emma coming out of the kitchen.
“Where’d Rob go? Did you see him leave, Emma?”
“I think I saw him walking to the stables,” she replied.
“Thanks.” She headed out the French doors to the pool and patio area and cut across the grounds toward the stable, not that she had much hope Rob would understand what she was feeling, but she wanted to talk to him. He’d take Luz’s side, as always.
Dusk purpled the grounds, deepening the shadows cast by he palm trees, buttonwoods, and shrubbery around the house area. There were lights shining inside the stable, reaching out like beacons into the growing night. Trisha walked toward them, conscious of the dew on the grass dampening her canvas shoes.
As she neared the long building, she could hear muffled voices and laughter. She frowned, then realized the sound was coming from Jimmy Ray’s television set. He always had the volume on so loud. There was something about that man she didn’t like no matter what anyone else thought.
She crossed to the main door and pulled it open. The hinges squeaked as she walked in and let it swing shut behind her. Trisha walked past the closed tack-room door to the wide concourse that ran down the middle of the building. But there was no one there.
“Rob?” A horse shuffled in its straw-covered stall. She wandered down the row, glancing inside the opened tops of the doors. “Hey, Rob, where are you? Are you here?”
A faint sickly-sweet smell
drifted in the air. Trisha wrinkled her nose at the odor and guessed Rob was doctoring one of the horses. She heard a loud noise and turned, certain it had come from behind her.
“Rob?” Trisha paused to listen, then noticed the slash of light at the base of the tack-room door. She retraced her steps and stopped in front of the door, but the knob wouldn’t turn when she tried it. “Rob, are you in there?” she demanded, jiggling the knob. From inside, she could hear soft scurrying sounds. “Rob!” She rapped on the door.
“Just a minute.” The closed door muffled his answer.
Frowning, she waited. A second later, she heard the flush of the toilet in the half-bath located off the tack room, then the sound of his footsteps approaching the door. The lock clicked open a second before the knob turned, and Rob stepped out.
“Why did you lock the door?”
“It’s always supposed to be locked,” he chided her. “We’ve got some expensive tack in there. You may not care whether your saddle gets ripped off, but I do.” He curved an arm around her shoulder, turning her away from the door while he shut it. “What brings you down here?”
“What’s that funny smell?” The fanning action of the door made the odor stronger.
“Some of Jimmy Ray’s liniment, probably.”
She took a deep breath. “It’s too sweet,” she said first, then caught something else. “I smell smoke.”
“Trish, you’re crazy.” He laughed at her. “Hey, did I tell you that I’m selling old Stonewall? You’d better say goodbye to him, ‘cause I’ll be calling the guy tomorrow to accept his offer.”
The pressure of his encircling arm forcibly guided her in the direction of the gray horse’s stall. Her frown deepened as she looked up at him. This mood of his wasn’t natural. He was in such high spirits.
“What’s got into you, Rob?” she wondered. “You’re acting like you’re on something.” The minute she said it, everything seemed to fall into place. “Are you?” she demanded. “That smell—have you been smoking pot?”
“What are you talking about?” He paused, giving her an amused look.
