by M. Garzon
Jaden frowned.
“So what’s your incentive to win?” Al asked, puzzled.
I just looked at him. It was Julia who said, “You don’t know Téa. She wants to win like she wants to breathe.”
I smiled my thanks, and she squeezed my hand briefly. Al looked uncomfortable for some unfathomable reason, but his curiosity seemed satisfied. He and Julia excused themselves soon after.
Jaden moved his chair closer to mine. “Why doesn’t your contract cover prize money?”
“When Hades first arrived it was for training, so the Donalds signed a simple board and training contract. When I started riding him at shows I told them my riding fee. It wasn’t complicated, it didn’t seem worth drawing up a contract for.”
Jaden looked at me carefully. “Did you pick an industry standard amount? The same amount other professional riders are charging?”
“Well,” I hedged, “I think it might be a bit lower. I’m just starting out as a pro and he’s such a phenomenal horse.”
Jaden placed his hand on the side of my face. His thumb gently stroked my cheekbone. “Don’t undervalue yourself, Téa. Your interests need to be protected. Why don’t you go online and find a rider agreement, and we’ll customize it?”
I kissed the inside of his wrist. “Dec’s right. It is convenient to have a lawyer in the family.”
* * *
Jaden surprised me by announcing he was coming to my place. “I want to spend Canada Day with you.” It took a long time to pack up, drive home, and settle the horses, but I fell into bed feeling that all was right with the world. I was doing work I loved and looking forward to a day off spent with my sweetheart. The only thing missing was Seth, but he’d sounded so happy in his last few messages that I couldn’t help but be glad for him.
Jaden fed the horses with me the next morning, and we spent a few leisurely hours at home before heading for the July First festivities in a neighboring municipality, since my own town of Julien was too small to host much in the way of a celebration. It was a hot, sunny afternoon, the very essence of summer. Children ran around sticky with cotton candy and cried when they dropped their ice cream. People played Frisbee and ball, and delighted screams carried over the green field from the rides set up nearby.
We listened to the outdoor concert for a while, sampled some gourmet popsicles, and even went for a ride on the Ferris wheel. I clutched Jaden’s hand tightly at the top, and he laughed as he tucked me firmly into his side.
“You ride an animal fifteen times your size at speed over huge obstacles, and you’re afraid of the Ferris wheel?”
“I’m not afraid,” I corrected. “I’m just not... unafraid. At least horses have a sense of self-preservation.”
When it got dark we lay on our backs on the sun-warmed ground to watch the fireworks. I breathed in the midsummer smells of crushed grass and bug spray, mingled with the exciting scent of fireworks. My head was pillowed on Jaden’s arm, our bodies touching along the length of my side, and if I could’ve bottled that feeling I’d label it ‘bliss’.
Afterward, Jaden needed caffeine since he had to drive all the way to Toronto after dropping me off. We stopped at a coffee shop, blinking in the bright light after the darkness of the car.
“I hope we get to spend more days like this one,” he said as we sat down. “I’m going to do my best to keep my weekends free. Is there anything special you’d like to do next time?”
My heart dropped. “Oh. Jaden, I’m only here for another week. Then I... I’m going to Quebec for three weeks.” I looked away, berating myself even as I did so. It wasn’t as if I was confessing to a crime. I was following my dream — a perfectly valid, legal dream. Jaden’s groan reminded me of why I couldn’t meet his eyes.
“Again? Why so far, and for so long?”
“The Bromont International is a three-star event, the points count toward world rankings. And there’s a national-level show right before it, and it’s too far to come home in between.”
I peeked up at him. His hand was sweeping through his hair, frustration etched in every line of his features.
He rested his sinewy forearms on the table and leaned over them. “You know, I know guys who complain their girlfriends are too clingy.”
“You want me to be clingier?” I asked, confused.
“I’d like to be able to spend time with you without making an appointment a month in advance.”
“Jaden, I’d love to spend more time with you, but it’s the middle of the show season! You know what that’s like.” My own frustration began to swell.
His tawny predator eyes didn’t release mine. “No, I don’t, actually. Polo isn’t the same. We may travel to tournaments occasionally, but it’s possible to spend most of the season at one club.”
“But...” I cast around desperately for an anchor point. How could we have had such a monumental misunderstanding? “I haven’t been hiding some deep dark secret. You knew I was going to be showing a lot this summer.”
He exhaled heavily, and his body softened. He reached across the table, and I grabbed his hand like a lifeline. “I knew you’d be competing a lot. What I didn’t know was how much traveling that would entail.” His eyes reached into mine. “I miss you.” His last, fervent whisper sliced through me. It smarted, and yet a warm glow spread from it all the same.
Jaden’s admission wasn’t the only thing that made me reluctant to leave. Gracie’s foal was due soon, and I very much wanted to witness the birth. Dec had installed a video camera in the corner of her stall so that we could monitor Gracie from the house. He promised to send me video of the foal’s arrival if I missed it, but that wouldn’t compare to being there. Stephanie’s belly was getting noticeably larger also, but she was prepared to jump in her car and race over as soon as her horse went into labor.
I patted Gracie’s neck as I led her, lumbering and slow, to the grass paddock early one morning. “Please keep your baby in until I get back,” I entreated. I knew it didn’t work that way, but it couldn’t hurt to ask, right?
I made a detour to the house for a couple of chocolate chip cookies and wandered back to the barn just as Lisa and Melanie arrived together.
“How do you stay so thin when you eat chocolate chip cookies for breakfast?” Melanie exclaimed.
Lisa shook her head at me. “Those cookies were meant to be a snack, you know.” She had delivered them fresh-baked the day before. I gave her a guilty smile and turned out two more horses before giving in to her urging to get a real breakfast.
Dec was already pouring coffee. “I wanted to talk to you.” His pause was enough to alert me that this wasn’t regular breakfast conversation. “We’ll have to find a new beginner horse soon. Maybe you can put the word out while you’re at the shows because Sebastian’s parents want to buy Panda.” At a spry thirty years, Panda was our most dependable school horse. Almost all our students had their first few lessons on him, and he was wonderful. He slowed down when he felt his riders losing their balance, and he did his best to interpret their unclear and often contradictory cues.
“But... but...” I was standing by the kitchen table, stuttering with shock. “We can’t sell Panda! He’s a part of the family.” I was aghast at the very suggestion; it was something we’d never done in the past. Gran’s old horse had been thirty-five when she died and hadn’t done any work in years. She’d been well taken care of until the end.
“Things are tougher now with your brother gone,” Dec explained. I noticed his reluctance to say Seth’s name. “And all your traveling has an effect, too. We have to pay more for help.”
I brought the conversation back to Panda. “Sebastian and his brother are young now, but what happens in a couple of years when they want to gallop and jump? They’ll overwork him, he could get hurt.”
“Their parents will watch them. We’re lucky that someone is willing to provide a good home for Panda at his age.”
“It wouldn’t be his home — this is his home, he’s lived h
ere for twenty years!” I was having trouble forming an intelligible sentence. I couldn’t believe that Dec was serious about this.
“You see, this is why you’d never make it in this business, Téa,” he said angrily. “You’re not tough enough.”
Okay, that was too much. “I’ve been working my butt off in this barn day in and day out for ten years!” I yelled.
“It takes more than that!” Dec said loudly, slapping his thick palm on the table. “This place is a business, and sometimes you have to make hard business decisions. We can’t keep all our old school horses in cushy retirement, not when we have the option of someone else taking on the expense. And what about when one of the boarders falls on hard times and can’t pay her board? You’d have to sell her horse to recoup the money — would you do that?” He gave me a stony look for a minute before answering his own question. “No, you wouldn’t. Face it, Téa, this business would chew you up and spit you back out if you had to do more than teach and ride.”
I spun and left the room, and Dec didn’t stop me.
I had tried to cram all my lessons into the few days that I was home, so I spent eight hours in the baking sun, teaching and breathing in the dust stirred up by multiple hooves. My voice was raspy when I trudged into the house at dinnertime.
Dec and I eyed each other warily.
I got a glass of water, drank it in gulps, and cleared my throat. “Can you at least wait until I get back before making any decisions about Panda?” I faced Dec across the counter and tried not to sound like I was pleading. “You weren’t going to sell him anytime soon, were you? It’s only July, and he’ll be in full work at least until September.” ‘Full work’ being a relative term.
His sky-blue eyes seemed to warm infinitesimally. “Okay.”
I sighed in relief before collapsing at the table. I was teaching again after dinner; the longer days meant more hours to ride outside, but despite my tiredness, I felt reassured. Dec would wait, and in the meantime, I’d think of a way to keep Panda home where he belonged.
The heat continued that week, suffocating and unrelenting. We dug out two large old box fans and placed one in each long aisle of the barn, and we only turned horses out during the early and late parts of the day. When the heatwave hadn’t broken on the third day we canceled the midday lessons, and I began taking horses out of their stalls and running cold water from the hose over them before returning them, soaked but cooler, to their stalls. Most of them loved it. Cal kept sticking his face under the spray, and Panda gave a deep sigh and dropped his nose almost to the floor as the cool liquid washed over him. I did Gracie at three-hour intervals, worried about the effect the heat might have on her and her baby. She did seem particularly listless, so at lunchtime, I called Gran.
“I’ll be right over,” she said promptly.
Dec, Alan, and I were relieved to see Gran stride briskly into the barn, looking inexplicably cool in long beige shorts and a short-sleeved lilac blouse. She met us at Gracie’s stall and stepped in with confidence. Gran had far more experience with foalings than Dec, and while I’d seen one foal born and did possess some theoretical knowledge, I didn’t trust myself to judge whether Gracie was okay. Gran patted her and spoke to her quietly. She took her pulse and watched her breathing before running her hands over the protuberant liver-chestnut belly and bending to peek underneath it.
“Why, she’s waxing up,” she said, straightening with a smile.
“Oh!” I exclaimed. ‘Waxing up’ referred to the beads of colostrum, the all-important first milk, appearing on the mare’s teats. “Should Stephanie come?” I could barely restrain myself from jumping up and down.
“There’s time yet,” Gran said. “It may be a day or two before the actual labor begins; she isn’t showing any other signs.”
“I’ll let her know it’s coming.” I skipped to the tackroom, where I’d left my phone so it wouldn’t get soaked during the horses’ showers. After sharing a squeal of excitement with Stephanie I called Jaden.
“I wouldn’t want to miss that. I’ll be over right after work,” he promised.
I waded through the sultry air to check on the horses that lived outside. I leaned my forearms on the baking fence board while I watched them for signs of distress. They seemed fine, clustered in the shade of the run-in shed and the few trees by the fence’s edge, but I felt unsettled. The fine hairs on my body were reaching outward. The utter stillness didn’t feel calm — it felt like that split-second silence between indrawn air and a scream. I scanned the skies to find roiling steel-grey clouds overhead, and I turned quickly to make my way back to the barn. The wind hit just as I made it there, blinding me with hair blown into my face despite my ponytail. Dust swirled in eddies as I trotted inside.
“Looks like a storm’s coming,” I commented. Dec and Gran were in the tackroom, assembling supplies that we might need for the foaling.
As if to underline my words, wind whistled through the open tackroom door, causing Gran to exclaim as rolls of gauze bounced to the floor. We’d been keeping all the doors and windows open to catch every wisp of air. I could hear stamping in the barn along with the rising wail of the wind.
“Let’s close a few things up,” Dec suggested. The air was still hot despite the fact that it was now moving rapidly, and I closed the windows in the horses’ stalls reluctantly. By the time we were done, gusts were howling down the aisles through the open doors, carrying dust, leaves, and debris with them. The aisle connected to the indoor arena was the worst since the opening at the far end of the arena was a large garage door. I ran to lower it while the wind snatched at my clothes and hair. My glimpse outside showed trees swaying like dancers and grass flattened against the ground.
I secured the door and blinked the dust out of my eyes as I trotted back into the barn. Dec and Alan were shutting the remaining doors, leaving the barn stuffy, dark and oven-like. A few horses circled their stalls nervously, upset by the noise and voltaic energy in the air.
“It’s so hot — can’t we leave the doors open a bit?” I asked.
Dec and Alan exchanged a worried look. “We can try, as long as we stay inside to keep an eye on things,” Dec said finally. I began to open the double-wide door that faced the main ring; the wind tore it from my hands and it crashed into the barn’s side with a bang.
“Are we getting a tornado?” I was getting scared. Tornadoes weren’t unheard-of in our area, but they were relatively rare. A small one had touched down in a neighboring town a few years before, but I had never experienced winds this strong.
“Don’t know,” Dec said tersely, “but we should close things up and go to the house.”
“I don’t want to leave the horses,” I protested.
“I need to check the weather reports and I’ll feel safer with you in the house,” he insisted. “You too, Alan. Mom, come on,” he called toward the tackroom. Gran joined us and we secured the door. Dec took Gran’s arm on one side and I took the other, and Alan clamped his hand on my other arm before we headed for the house, chained together like daisies. My eyes were streaming by the time we got inside.
“I’ll make us some tea.” Gran bustled off to the kitchen while I washed my hands and face in the powder room, grimacing at my disheveled state in the mirror.
When I got back to the kitchen Gran was setting out tea and a plate of scones. Alan was on the phone with his family. I poured myself some tea and was adding milk when Dec appeared, looking worried.
“Well, there’s a tornado watch in effect,” he announced as he dropped into his chair. Gran passed him the teapot before rising to answer the phone. From her assurances, we could tell it was a boarder checking on her horse.
We spent a tense afternoon listening to the wind howl and answering calls from worried boarders and students. Jaden called regularly also; they were getting high winds in Toronto, but no tornado warning. And then, just before feeding time, the power went out.
“This’ll make feeding fun,” I muttered.
> “You’re not coming,” Dec said firmly.
“I want to check on everyone. Besides, you can’t go by yourself, what if something happens to you?”
“We’ll all go,” Gran decided. Alan had left earlier to rejoin his family, and had called to let us know he’d arrived safely. There was no way to finish cleaning the stalls in this weather.
We linked arms again and leaned into the gale. It felt like a long journey to the barn, and once inside even Dec, with his massive strength, had to strain to shut the door. We set off in different directions; the barn had two long aisles connected by two shorter ones. Its many windows ensured that it was normally bright in the daytime, but the sullen skies weren’t letting much light through today. I made a beeline for Gracie’s stall. She was restless, pacing only to stop and listen, ears pricked and head high, to the bumps and shrieks outside. It was impossible to tell if her agitation was due to impending motherhood or to the weather.
Dec went into the hayloft with a flashlight. I was glad it wasn’t me; I found it spooky in the dark when I was alone. We took our time feeding, trying to calm and reassure each horse as we went. Most didn’t seem unduly disturbed, to my relief. A horse can easily get hurt by panicking in a stall. We gave them all some extra hay so they’d have a distraction overnight.
Our own dinner was eaten cold and by candlelight. I didn’t eat much, too unnerved by the rattling of the windows and the occasional loud thump as something struck the house. The image from the camera in Gracie’s stall transmitted video to Dec’s laptop, but we didn’t want to run his battery down by keeping it on, so we checked on her every hour. After getting eyestrain reading next to flickering candles for a while, I went to bed, setting my phone to wake me an hour later since I was determined to keep checking the foal camera. The fourth time I hauled myself out of bed, Dec’s laptop was dead. I didn’t know if there was a way to pick up the transmission with mine, so I decided to go check on Gracie in person. I yawned as I pulled a hoodie on over my PJs, then I went outside.
Grit assaulted my bare legs and I was tugged and buffeted by the air, but it wasn’t as strong as before. After finding the flashlight in the tackroom I clicked it on and took a quick walk around the barn to make sure that the weather hadn’t caused any injuries. Beyond looking annoyed at being woken, all the horses seemed fine. When I got to Gracie’s stall she was lying down. I tried to be discreet in running my flashlight over her, not wanting to startle her into getting up, but it was immediately apparent that she wasn’t having a nap — she was having a baby. Her flanks were drenched with sweat and she was groaning.