Not Sky’s fault. Mine. Totally my bad. Bad Becky. I either had to have my saddle monogrammed that way or put college on hold.
I’d ended up having a slightly better summer, not feeling as much pressure as I had in the spring, telling myself that next year would be better, that maybe Sky and I just needed to get out of Wellington. Then Coronado came along and I decided to make Mom my main focus.
Only the focus had shifted now—from getting her to the Olympics to getting her better.
“What happened to your mother wasn’t your fault,” Daniel said, now in the ring.
I had climbed off Sky and was walking her back inside. Daniel was walking with us.
“Try telling Grandmother that,” I said.
Just then, from the open doors to the barn, I heard Grandmother say, “Tell her what?”
“Just that we’re done for the night,” I said.
“What the hell were you doing down there?” she said.
“Doing what you’re always telling me to do,” I said. “Trying to get better.”
“Well, you picked a hell of an odd time to start,” she said. “Now get up to the house. I need to talk to both of you.”
Then, for the second time tonight, she walked away from me.
I walked Sky back inside her stall, gave her the treat I’d promised her, and wished I could spend the rest of the night with her.
EIGHT
GRANDMOTHER’S LIMP LOOKED more pronounced than usual as she paced the living room, back arched, head high, fists clenched, as if she were challenging the world to a fistfight.
“Why the hell did I ever go into business with that hideous man?” she said.
“You know why,” I said. “To get Coronado.”
“If there was a better way,” Daniel said, “you would have found it, jefa.”
She liked it when he called her that.
“I should have looked harder,” she said.
She sat down in the antique rocking chair positioned in that exact spot for as long as I could remember. Like Grandmother, it was rickety, but built to last. She grimaced slightly, then stretched her left leg out in front of her.
Next to her was one of her favorite photographs, Mom and me in our riding clothes, looking more like sisters than mother and daughter. She was taller. Even though my blond hair had darkened considerably since I was a little girl, hers was still darker. I thought she was prettier, and when I’d tell her so, she’d laugh and say, “Tell me another one.”
“He wants to find another rider for Coronado,” she said. “Any rider will do, as long as he—or she—rides him all the way to Paris.”
“He can’t give up on Mom this quickly,” I said.
“Oh, really?” she said. “Because his heart suddenly grew a few sizes? That’s if he’s actually got a goddamn heart.”
“What if the doctors are wrong about Mom,” I said. “What if she gets better?”
In the soft light of the standing brass reading lamp, I took a closer look at the woman who kept herself around horses. Since I’d found Mom near the canal, she appeared to have aged ten years.
“This was our dream, Maggie and me,” she said, as if talking to herself, as if Daniel and I had disappeared.
Not Mom’s dream. Theirs.
“Any other rider on Coronado,” she said, “will make him Gorton’s horse and not ours.”
“Does he know which rider he wants?” Daniel said.
“Knowing that bastard? He started calling around before Maggie was out of surgery and has already made his selection, like some fantasy football draft.”
“Grandmother,” I said, choosing my next words carefully, “wouldn’t having an Olympic horse help the barn, even if Mom doesn’t get better in time to ride him?”
“Oh, now you get practical?” she said.
She rocked slowly back and forth in her chair.
“Horses are more than a business for Atwood Farm,” she said. “You know that.”
“People in outer space know that,” I said.
“That man is nothing like us,” she said.
Daniel smiled at her now.
“Except you both care for the winning,” he said.
Her head whipped in his direction and she snapped her eyes like a whip.
“That’s exactly what he said,” Grandmother said. “The sonofabitch.”
“Let me help you with this, jefa,” he said. “I have a rider in mind.”
“Who?” Grandmother asked. Her voice may have stopped horses, but not Daniel.