“Sorry.”
“Kidding.”
I waved off Tyler’s trainer then and helped him up myself.
“Sure,” he said, “now you love me.”
I grinned. “Love is kind of strong, frankly.”
“Is this some insane shit or what?” he said. “It coming down to me and your mom, I mean.”
The announcer in the schooling ring told him it was time.
Tyler winked at me.
“Don’t worry, kid,” he said. “I’m gonna kill it. Then tell your mom to do the same.”
I gave him a fist bump, like he was my best friend. And for the next couple of minutes, he was going to be, if Mom was going to get one last shot at a gold medal, and I was going to get another. Insane shit indeed.
I gave Mom her space as she was getting ready for the jump-off. A good look at her revealed the nearly visible force field she put around herself in big moments. Even Gus gave her room. Now it was her turn to be the one who hadn’t come this far to finish second.
Gus watched from the in-gate. I walked outside the fence, maybe twenty yards from him, and got ready to watch from there. Tyler Cullen. The guy with the rep for being better than his horses. But we didn’t need that today. We just needed for him to be as good as his horse, on this day when he needed Mom and she needed him, after everything that had happened between them for months.
Couldn’t make it up.
At breakfast Grandmother had said, “I can’t believe that I have to root this hard for that little bastard.”
“Get over it,” Mom had said.
I’d laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Grandmother had said.
“Inside joke,” I’d said.
While Tyler waited for the buzzer in the middle of the ring, I heard a familiar voice calling my name from the stands. Steve Gorton.
Tyler had told us the other day about how he felt Gorton had strung him along just to mess with him, until he’d finally screwed him over. Tyler, being Tyler, had no sense of irony about the fact that they’d both tried to screw over Mom.
I turned around and found where Gorton was standing, saw him pointing at Tyler.
“My guy!” he shouted.
I just nodded and thought: We finally have something in common.
The two rollbacks on the short course were the places where you could win or lose. Rails could go down anywhere on the course. But to me, those were the two biggest trouble spots.
The weather was perfect today. The footing looked absolutely perfect after they dragged the course following the first round. Some sun, but not too much.
And then Tyler was out there riding a seamless course, with good pace, but not a reckless one. His technique, I thought, was pretty damn impressive considering what was on the line, all the way through the first combination. Then the second. With three fences left, I knew he was faster than Eric had been at this same point in the course. If he could stay clear and beat Eric’s time, then Mom wouldn’t need for Coronado to break the land speed record. She could even get a rail and still win.
Second rollback coming up now for Tyler, the tighter of the two. He went inside. Everybody before him had. His Olympics were over in three jumps. No reason to leave anything out there. Had his horse perfectly lined up after he came out of the turn, flying.
Galahad touched the rail with his left hind leg. I could see the fence clearly from where I was standing not more than twenty yards away. I could barely hear him touch it. All I saw was this ripple, like it had been hit by a strong breeze.
The rail ended up on the ground.
Now Mom didn’t just have to go clean, she also had to be faster than Eric Glynn, or Ireland would win the team gold medal.
Our team would end up with silver.
And Mom would walk away with a second silver.
ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-EIGHT
Maggie
MAGGIE’S LEFT KNEE, the bad one, the one she was going to get fixed when she got home, had been killing her all afternoon.
Nobody to blame but herself. She’d walked too much since she’d gotten to Paris, the past couple of days walking the city alone, getting herself ready for this moment, for the whole thing coming down to her, in case it actually did. She’d spent hardly any time with Becky. Or Gus. Even her mother. Just walked. Even lit a candle at Cathedrale Notre-Dame. Now she was paying a physical price, at the worst possible moment. It wasn’t just her knee hurting. It was her neck and back, too. If her horse wasn’t slowing down this close to the finish, Maggie Atwood sure as hell was.
And now the whole thing had come down to her, and this ride. Tyler came out of the ring, head down, cursing loudly at himself. Maggie ignored him. She wasn’t just thinking about going clean. She was clearing her mind. If she thought any more about what was on the line, how much this all meant to her, she might feel as sick as Becky said she had before her first round in the individual.