Love Story(47)
Author: Jennifer Echols

I walked through the rest of the front stable where we kept the money-making horses we liked visitors to see, the race winners and their parents and offspring, through the large gravel courtyard empty but for a few pies that kept their smell to themselves in the cold air, into the back stable and around the corner.

Blinked at the white horse in the corner stable. Either I’d forgotten the layout of the barn in five months away, or Boo-boo was missing.

Digging my fingernails into the apple in my pocket, I walked quickly through the cold barn, glancing at the horses that peeked out of their stalls, searching for a stable hand. When I found a new guy grooming a brown gelding, I tried to keep my voice calm but it came out a croak. “Where’s Boo-boo?”

He looked around at me, startled. I watched the realizations march across his face: this was a stranger, this stranger had red hair like Mrs. Blackwell, this was the prodigal granddaughter everybody had been talking about, the one dragged back from college by Tommy Allen’s boy. Then a touch of fear that the stables had sold off the girl’s favorite horse and she would have a fit. This man looked like he’d been slapped by a spoiled brat before.

“Boo-boo,” I said impatiently. “High and Mighty. By Rocky Mountain High out of Might Is Right.”

“Oh!” As he realized he was not in trouble, his shoulders relaxed. He pointed with his grooming brush toward the other end of the back stable. “Rock Star has taken a shine to her. We moved her next to him because she calms him down. Want me to saddle her up for you?”

“No thanks,” I said, hurrying toward my horse. The new guy had not gotten the memo that nobody saddled horses for the old lady’s granddaughter. Tommy had seen to that. He’d taught me that if I wanted something done right, I had to do it myself.

Relief flooded me as Boo-boo poked her head out of her stall to see who was coming, ears pricked up. When she saw me, her ears moved forward. If I’d been twelve, I would have sworn to anyone who would listen that Boo-boo recognized me and loved me. However, I was eighteen. I knew better. I was holding the apple out in front of me.

The time in the stall was always the hardest for me. My body tensed, waiting for the horse to rear, and my brain kept replaying the accident I hadn’t seen.

Boo-boo was a thoroughbred, looming and nervous like all of them. But she was relatively sweet tempered. Tommy had picked her for me when my grandmother insisted that he put me back on a horse a week after my mother died. Boo-boo’s soft, surprisingly nimble lips plucked the apple out of my palm. As she chomped, I stroked the side of her head firmly, as Tommy had taught me. Cooing “Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo” to her, I squeezed the terror out of my brain. The way to stay safe was never to let a horse know I was afraid. I wiped the apple juice on my jeans and put up my hand to make sure I was wearing my helmet before I ventured farther into the dark stall to find the tack.

Riding was dangerous, with the constant threat of being thrown and trampled, but ironically, once I was up in the saddle and away from Boo-boo’s legs, I felt safe. I directed her out of the stable—she was in great spirits today, kicking up her heels and shaking her head as if bragging to the other horses that she was going for a run and they were not, ha ha, so there—and I trotted her across the paddock to the back pasture. Then I loosened the reins and let her go. She loved to run.

Normally I loved it, too, the green grass flashing past, the bright fall trees, the cold wind in my face, the always foreign feel of a huge animal galloping underneath me. Today I was sore. Every step of the horse jarred my hip and sent a ripple through my back. Even my fist gripping the reins was sore after grazing Hunter’s hard jawbone. After a few minutes of riding I grew used to the pain and settled in for a long ride. Usually Boo-boo and I dashed out for a gallop after school, and then I had friends or homework or reading to occupy me. Today I decided we would explore every corner of the farm. I had nothing else to do besides study history and calculus, and I might never be back.

Something inside me died that long afternoon while Hunter was at the races. I finally lost all hope in my dad. He was not coming for me. He did not harbor a secret wish to become reacquainted with me. He was not dying to complete our family but was prevented from doing so by foreign spies. He had left me to bury my mother and my grandmother to raise me, and he had moved on with his life. If he had anything to do with it, I would never hear from him again.

But more likely, he would die before me, and I would receive the news just when I was about to get married or give birth or embark on my national tour for my best-selling novel. I had looked forward to my dad’s return as the climax of my story. Now I knew he would ruin my happiest day for me, an unexpected plot twist.

Boo-boo chomped through the reins as I pulled her up short out of a canter. We had reached a far pasture, many rolling hills away from the house and the barn. Standing on a limestone boulder under the golden canopy of an oak was the horse that had killed my mother.

She’d been two at the time and there had been talk of trying her in the Derby the following spring. After the accident, my grandmother never raced her, though she potentially lost millions of dollars with that inaction. She just put the filly out to pasture. If the decision had been mine, I would have shot her myself. But as Tommy had explained, horses bore no malice. They were skittish herd animals escaping danger.

They were not, however, mountain goats. Boo-boo danced impatiently as I gazed toward the black horse on the gray rock under the yellow tree. How had she gotten up there? The back of the boulder sloped more gently, I remembered. That was the explanation. But my heart did not slow down.

In Hunter’s most recent story, the girl he looked down on rode a black filly. I wondered again what his story had meant.

I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF dishes clanking in the kitchen and the scent of bacon. Untangling myself from Hunter’s bedclothes and sliding my history book off my face, I squinted at the dark window. Dawn had not broken. In the dimmest light glowing from under the bedroom door, I could just make out the planets stuck to the sun above Hunter’s dresser.

“Tommy!” I exclaimed at the overflowing kitchen table. “You didn’t have to cook all this. I hardly eat anything in the morning. I’ll just have some coffee.”

“Coffee,” he repeated in exactly the Long Island accent Hunter used when he said coffee. Turning with a skillet of eggs, Tommy jabbed the spatula toward an empty chair at the table. “Eat. Hunter told me you’re living on peanut-butter crackers. Eat or you’re walking to Churchill Downs.” He flopped eggs onto my plate. “Or are you hiding here all day?” He sat down at his own place and handed me a platter of biscuits.