“Sorry,” I said, as if feeling him.
“Are you?”
“Time is money,” I said.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of smart remark?”
“Not if you have to ask,” I said.
“I know I’m supposed to be the bad guy here,” he said.
“Actually, in this case, you’re not.”
“But none of this is my fault,” Gorton said. “You had your chance and you blew it. We need to stop jacking around with the notion that you should be riding this horse. Or ever should have been riding this horse.”
“You made that pretty clear yesterday,” I said.
“The guy who tells people what they want to hear?” he said. “I’m not that guy.”
I grinned.
“So I’ve heard.”
“I’ll send somebody to pick up the signed papers,” he said.
“You can actually take them with you,” I said.
“She needs to sign them first,” he said.
“Well, see, here’s the thing,” I said. “She’s not signing. And we’re not selling.”
“We had a goddamn deal,” he said.
“And now we don’t.”
“That’s it?” he said. “Care to explain?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
I got out of the rocking chair and walked across the living room and opened the front door for him. He walked past me, close enough for me to smell his cologne, turned when he got to the driveway.
“You’re telling me that she’s walking away from a million dollars now, even though you all know I get control of the horse in a couple of weeks?” Gorton said.
“Crazy, right?”
“You really don’t care to tell me why?”
“She changed her mind,” I said.
I shrugged.
“If it’s any consolation to you, Mr. Gorton?”
“What?” he snapped.
“Shocked the hell out of me, too.”
TWENTY-NINE
The night before.
I THREW EVERYTHING I had at Grandmother, queen of the manor, if you could call Atwood Farm a manor.
I reminded her that I’d been told my whole life that we weren’t in the horse business for the money. That if it were only about the money, she wouldn’t have basically mortgaged her whole life to have enough money to get a share of Coronado. She’d done it because she loved Mom enough to give her this chance. And this horse.
No go.
“We keep talking and talking but arriving back at the same damn place,” she said. “And that means this place. Your grandfather and I built it up from nothing. It’s been the last fifty years of my life. First with him, then with you and your mom. You know how much I hate to do this. But there will be other horses.”
“Not like this one.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “Maybe not. But your mother was on her way to the Olympics with Lord Stanley before he went lame.”
By then I only had one bullet left.
“Then sell my horse,” I said.
“Sell Sky?” Mom said. “You don’t mean that.”
“Yeah, Mom,” I said. “I do.”
She knew how much I loved the horse. So did Mom and Grandmother. We’d all known it from that first day I’d ridden her. And even though I hadn’t done nearly enough with her last year, nobody was blaming the horse. We all knew that every year when WEF would start up again, there was an Irish trainer named Dermot Morgan who’d try to buy her. I’d always give the same answer. She wasn’t for sale.
“I’d never let you sell that horse,” Grandmother said.
Like we were back on the same side all of a sudden.
“It’s my horse,” I said. “And even though she won’t command nearly what Coronado would, I know what Dermot has offered in the past.”
“You’re coming off your worst year,” Mom said.
“Wasn’t Sky’s fault,” I said.
“You’re willing to place that kind of bet on yourself?” Grandmother said.
At least I had her attention. Still had her talking. Even I wasn’t sure whether I was bluffing.
“Damn straight,” I said. “Dermot writes me a check, I hand it over to you, and we all get ready for the Grand Prix.”
“Have you spoken to your father about this?” Mom said.
“He says it’s my horse and I can do what I want with her,” I said.
I actually hadn’t spoken to him since the night after Mom had been thrown.