“I’m glad you were able to work this out in your head, Mom, no kidding,” Becky said. “Not only did you set the debate, nobody else got to join it.” She nodded. “Very cool.”
Maggie was breathing so hard, more deep breaths in and out, that her ribs were starting to feel sore all over again.
You’ve come this far.
No turning back now.
“I was going to wait another week,” Maggie said. “Just to be sure that I was sure. But then at dinner you all got so excited talking about the calendar, and what’s coming up, and what’s at stake, and I decided my waiting any longer wasn’t fair to anybody.”
“Now we’re talking fair?” Becky said. “To who?”
“You think me getting thrown from the horse was fair?” Maggie said.
Then she paused and said, “The Olympics was my dream first.”
Maggie was waiting for her mom to weigh in. Or Daniel. Or both. But this was between Maggie and her daughter. The room crackled with silent tension. And the intensity of an electric storm.
“This is a lot to process,” Maggie said. “Maybe we all need to sleep on it and talk in the morning.”
“Coronado is your horse, Mom,” Becky said. “You can do what you want with him. Next time, maybe think about giving me a heads-up.”
Becky walked over to the front door, opened it, started out, stopped, stepped back inside.
“Have at it,” she said to Maggie, and left.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Daniel
BECKY HAD GONE to Coral Gables for a couple of days to visit her old college roommate. According to Maggie and Caroline, they had found a note from Becky on the kitchen table. She needed a break and would be back on Wednesday to ride Sky. Until then, she wrote, Don’t miss me too much.
Now it was Tuesday morning. Day two of Daniel being back in the ring with Maggie Atwood.
“Listen,” Maggie said to him now. “I need to say this while Becky isn’t around. We’re all going to have to get used to the new normal.”
Normal? Daniel thought. This family?
“Fair enough,” he said.
“Don’t sound so enthusiastic,” Maggie said.
Maybe she’d always been this edgy, and he had forgotten. Today was starting out as awkwardly between them as yesterday had when Maggie had just been waiting for him in the ring, she and Emilio having already saddled Coronado. No request that Daniel continue to train her beyond “Let’s do this,” and they went right to work.
But this, Daniel knew, was about more than the horses and the women in this family riding them. So much more. Daniel, for all his misgivings and anger about the way she had pulled the rug—the horse, really—out from underneath her daughter, felt he owed her his best efforts.
He watched her do small jumps now, after having just trotted the horse the day before. She looked stiff in the saddle, as if afraid to even change her position slightly.
“You need to watch your posture, Maggie,” he called out to her. “Shoulders back more, where they used to be.”
“Small problem, Daniel,” she yelled back to him. “A lot of things aren’t where they used to be. You may have heard, some of my furniture got rearranged.”
Tread carefully, he told himself.
She is still your boss.
“I told myself it would be like riding a bike,” she said. “Guess what? It’s not. My mind isn’t fully connecting with my body.”
“I’d like to see you press down harder into the stirrups,” he said. “You’re standing up more than you used to.”
“I know,” she said.
The edge again, the words brittle.
He’d set the rail at three feet, a height girls in the Hunters ring could clear with ease. Her distance was fine on the first jump she’d had on Coronado in a long time. The horse’s form was perfect. Daniel closed his eyes briefly and tried to imagine her executing the same kind of jump at 1.6 meter in the International Arena.
Could not.
Maggie circled back around. Jumped the big horse again. As she landed him Daniel could see her wince, revealing the strain on her face, the tension in her whole body.
“Better,” he said.
“Be honest, please,” Maggie said, slowing the horse and coming in his direction.
“I have never been a good liar,” he said. “You should know that by now.”
Except when I need to be, especially with your daughter.
She said, “Do you honestly believe I can ride this horse in a Grand Prix in two weeks?”