Turning For Home (Alex and Alexander Book 4)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  “Of course we won’t let him go. I know he is our pet, and obviously we would never sell him. But he needs a job, and we’ll be all right without him. There’s hardly a lack of horses in the barn.” Alexander’s voice was gentle and reasonable, which for some reason made everything seem all the more upsetting. “You've barely gotten to know the new two-year-olds. There’s bound to be a new pet in the bunch. You find one every year. Last year it was Personal Best, remember?”

  “And now he’s in Miami,” I sniffed. “And so is Luna. That’s not helpful. If I lose my favorite every year, I’m just going to stop getting attached.”

  Alexander shook his head, looking amused. “Oh, Alex, if only. But you’ll get attached to someone new. It’s in your nature. And then you can cry about him next year, too. It’s your way. It’s emotionally exhausting, yes, but it’s just the way you are.” He held up his hands and smiled as if there was nothing he could do about me, despite all his best efforts. I was unfixable.

  “They’re all dull this year,” I sniffed, ignoring his teasing. “I don’t know what we did wrong, or if there was something in the water or what, but not one of these babies has the personality of a banana.”

  Alexander gravely considered the potential personality of a banana. “Well,” he said finally. “At least they’ll be easy.”

  He had a point. Personality usually meant brains, and brains usually meant trouble. Young horses who thought too much got ideas in their heads that were not easily removed, ideas about who was in charge, the rider or the horse. Tiger was an excellent example of this. Tiger asked himself, and me, this question every single morning.

  I sipped at my coffee, which had taken on the approximate taste and consistency of a truck-stop latte, and leaned back in the chair. I could see my reflection in the mirror tilted against the wall behind Alexander, resting crookedly on the dusty filing cabinet. I frowned at myself. I was thin this winter, from constant riding and farm work, and my shoulder-length blonde hair was in an untidy pony-tail that seemed to accentuate my cheekbones and chin. It wasn’t really flattering. Alexander told me to eat more. But I’d been anxious constantly since the string of horses had gone to south Florida, and all I’d wanted to do was work. I’d even gone back to galloping a few horses every morning, instead of watching the sets go by from the back of a pony. When I was galloping, I wasn’t thinking about anything but that horse, in that moment. It was a relief to let everything else slip away for a few minutes, and just concentrate on the sound of hoofbeats rumbling and tack jingling, to communicate to the young horse how to change his leads in the turns and how to match his strides with his work-partner.

  I had to admit I’d been spending an inordinate amount of time on Tiger. Tiger, the horse who lost. I’d been so excited over his last two works. What a morning glory he’d turned out to be in the end! The loss could hardly have been more painful. Forty lengths was bad enough. Forty lengths was practically in the next race, all racetrack jokes aside. Forty lengths was a sign you might consider a new career for yourself, never mind your horse. But when you considered who had won that race, and with what sort of horse, it got a thousand times worse.

  Mary Archer had looked like the cat that got the cream, too. I could practically hear her purring as she accepted the memorial plaque that had accompanied the race. Behind her, the horse she had won with, some Nobody by No One out of Nothing Much, had looked around the winner’s circle with wild eyes. As well he should have, since it was the first time the five-year-old gelding had ever seen the inside of one. That horse blew up the board and busted a few pick-six millionaires that day. Mary Archer had looked over at me, as I sponged water over my sweaty horse’s poll, and gave me a squint-eyed glare, as if I were something she’d scraped from the bottom of her shoe.

  So had the press.

  And the horsemen around the barns. And the bettors. And basically everyone in the world.

  Tiger had been the second-favorite, you see.

  Today hadn’t been my best day.

  Then, the gossip had hit, and Miss Mary Quite Contrary had disappeared very quickly. Back to the barns, back to her truck? Amongst the clusters of horsemen repeating the unbelievable news that had just come out of south Florida, Mary was absent. Conspicuously so, it seemed to me. But maybe that was just because of our ongoing feud. Maybe it didn’t mean anything at all.

  “I guess I just didn’t want to believe he was so done. I knew he was slowing down, but I didn’t know it would be so terrible.”

  “It was terrible,” Alexander agreed promptly. “It was an embarrassment. It was a kick in the balls. But that’s racing. It’s nothing personal—he just let you know he was done, in the most public way possible.” He picked up his coffee, took a sip, then quickly put down his cup as if he’d suddenly had a revelation. “Is this just about Tiger, or are you upset about Mary Archer beating you?”

  I slumped in my chair. Caught. “A little,” I admitted. “But look at the streak she’s on, and with all these horses right off the claim. She’s jumping them in class and they’re all winning and no one is questioning that even a little bit? All this and she’s training for Littlefield, Alexander! Horses no one else in town would touch with a ten-foot pole. That horse that beat Tiger hadn’t even run at that level before, let alone put his nose in front. That’s not a little nuts? And she was nowhere to be seen once the word broke about those abandoned horses. I don’t know how many bad schemes one person can be in on, but I’ve only seen her in the worst of company, and you know it.” The bush track at Otter Creek came to mind. Mary didn’t worry much about social conventions, or which side of pari-mutuel law she was on.

  Alexander looked around to see if anyone was listening. “Maybe this isn’t a public conversation,” he suggested in a reproving tone.

  “Fine.” He was probably right. At the races, you never knew when you were alone and when there was someone just outside the door, loitering and listening. Secrets were worth good money here.

  “But whether her horses are legitimate or not, Tiger didn’t get beat by a nose. He got beat by forty lengths. That’s got nothing to do with the winner.”

  I sighed. I knew that. I did. But it didn’t make things any better. I was still losing a horse, and I’d still seen him get beat by the woman who had tried her best to make me look like an idiot in Saratoga, and followed that up by being my only rival for a classless claimer who needed a safe retirement. I’d done all right at Saratoga despite her, and Christmasfordee would soon be safely installed in Lucy Knapp’s training barn, where she would learn to be a sport-horse, but Mary was always back for more, a thorn in my side, pointing out my every mistake.

  “I guess that’s it then.” I brushed at my tingling eyes. “This dusty barn!”

  Alexander took my hand and rubbed his thumb against my palm. “We get so attached,” he teased. “We really are awful at this business.”

  I had to smile at that, and at Alexander, and at us, two trainers with horses running and winning all over Florida, a breeding and training farm recognized the world over, and the softest damn hearts in the game. “At least we don’t have a guilty conscience keeping us up at night,” I said lightly. “Not everyone in this business can say that. Sure, we get our feelings hurt, but our horses are healthy and safe and happy.”

  Alexander nodded. “You’re right about that, love.” He reached across the desk and took my hand. His calloused grip was soft on mine, but I could feel the power there, the sinews and tendons and muscles and hard bone beneath leathery warm flesh. We were strong, I thought. We were mighty, and we would not let a little thing like retiring a horse bring us down. We’d provide for Tiger as we had provided for every other horse who had been entrusted to our care. We were the good guys, and even if I’d been a dismal failure as a trainer today, my day would come. Simple karma said so—karma and hard, hard work.

  Alexander’s phone suddenly buzzed, bouncing across the desk like an angry bee, and we both jumped. He let go of my hand to pic
k up the phone, and I put it back into my lap, feeling anxious, even a little cold, without his comforting touch.

  Goodness, I was just all kinds of a girl tonight, wasn’t I. Time to toughen up and remember who I was. I smiled at Alexander as I got up and headed back into the shed-row to find something to do. There was always something to be done. That might be the best thing about working with horses.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Whatever work there was to be done, I really couldn’t find it. The feeding was done, the shed-row was raked, the horses were watered and settled in for the night, the grooms were gone home. I gazed off down the shed-row. Just a short distance away, slanting winter sunlight sparkled on the white rail of the backstretch. It was almost post time for the last race; in a few moments a field of horses would go thundering by, and the slumbering backside would awaken for one thrilling moment as horses hurried to their stall doors to look out and see the excitement, and then just as quickly as the galloping herd had arrived, they would be gone, and it would be nothing but the usual sounds of a resting barn for the remainder of the evening and night—the munching of hay, the scratching of manes on door-frames, the thumping of hooves as a horse rolled too close to the wall, the occasional I’m here, are you there? whinnies of anxious horses making sure that they hadn’t suddenly been left all alone. The frogs would peep when the sun went down, and the crickets would sing from the drains and the wash-racks, and the whip-poor-wills would call their names from the nearby pine barrens.

  But we’d hear it all from Ocala, not Tampa, because we were going home tonight. That was what I liked best about Tampa, besides its good surface and unpretentious atmosphere—we could ship in and out so very easily. We all slept better in our own beds, horses and humans alike.

  There was a sudden bang from behind me, and a few horses neighed in alarm. I jumped and turned sharply, and saw Tiger leaning over his webbing, yanking triumphantly at the hay-net he’d finally pulled down from the door-frame, taking a few inches of wood with it. He appeared to be intent on dragging it into his stall. “You are seriously messed up,” I told him, but he ignored me, concentrating on trying to get a good grip on the cotton rope with his teeth. “Tiger was just a name, not a life-choice suggestion.”

  I was still watching him struggle with his prey when Kerri strolled into the barn, jingling the truck keys in one hand. “You almost done or—” She stopped short at the sight of Tiger the Vicious Jungle Creature and his dead hay-net. “So he finally did it. Dude, you killed the hay-net!”

  “I guess the wood around the stall door was rotten.”

  “Don’t downplay his moment of triumph. Tiger, buddy, you did it! After all those years, you taught that old hay-net who was boss!” Kerri applauded, to the dismay of the spooky three-year-old in the next stall. The colt snorted and disappeared into his stall with a rattle of hooves.

  Tiger ignored Kerri and the silly colt next door with equal aplomb. He slid the hay-net a little further into his stall, then stepped back to confront the problem of getting it out from under his webbing. You could practically see the wheels turning. Tiger was a scary-clever horse.

  “Are you just going to let him drag that into his stall so he can get all tangled up in the netting and learn his lesson? Because he’ll break all four legs and his neck before he learns anything from this. You know how stubborn he’s gotten.”

  Alexander came out of of the tack room, his face stony. “He learned that from Alex.”

  Uh-oh, I thought. That must not have been a good phone call. Sensitive, empathetic Alexander had disappeared, and I didn’t like the look of what had replaced him. “What did I do?” I asked warily.

  “You talk too much,” Alexander retorted. “Especially when people of good sense tell you to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Where is this coming from?” I was astonished by his tone, especially when not five minutes ago he’d been trying to make me feel better, but I was more than up to the challenge of getting good and pissed off in five seconds or less. “I hope you have a really good reason for talking to me like this,” I snapped.

  Kerri busied herself yanking the hay-net away from a furious Tiger, who went sulking to the back of his stall after she shooed him away from his prize.

  “I have a bloody great reason. You’ve landed us in hot water with that magazine article you did, Miss Responsible Retirement.” Alexander hurled the false title at me like sharp stones. “They’ve traced one of those Everglades horses back to us, but not a word would have been said if you hadn’t been posing like the Mother Teresa of horse racing. Instead I’ve just been warned that at least one news van is parked at the farm gate. We’re staying here tonight.”

  The Everglades horses? Connected to us? I felt light-headed with horror and started to babble. “How could there have been one of ours? We were just there last week. No one has said anything!” Oh God, what horse of ours could it have been? Oh God, was it the one who had died? Oh God, oh God, oh God. I thought of Luna, I thought of Personal Best, of Shearwater, of Virtue and Vice—it couldn’t have been anyone of them, though, they hadn’t been starved, they were safe at the training center—

  “Not one of our horses, although the news will tell it differently.” Alexander’s voice was thin with his own brand of ice-cold rage, but his eyes were fiery. “Someone has deciphered the tattoo on one of them and it turns out he was in our barn for breaking as a long yearling. Market Affair. A bay gelding, five years old, with a star and a snip and two white hind legs. By Lost Wager and out of some Marquetry mare, I’ve forgotten her name. Ring any bells?”

  I chewed my lip, thinking back. Dozens and dozens of horses had come and gone in the years I’d been at Cotswold. A five-year-old who had been a long yearling—that would have put him on the farm back when I was a gallop girl, before I’d held any sort of power at the farm. I tried to picture a weather-worn collar, with the name of the sire and dam and foaling year engraved in brass, bobbing through a mop of black mane as I jogged some youngster through the pastures in a nose-to-tail line of baby racehorses. I tried to imagine picking out two white hind hooves, worrying over seedy toe in rain-softened pale hoof walls; I tried to picture pulling a bridle over a little yearling face, the browband brushing the white spot on the nose and the white star between the eyes as I slipped it up and over the fuzzy brown ears.

  “It could have been anyone,” I began, and then I remembered, the images washing over me like a cold wave. A nippy little colt with a big dynamic trot that made my repressed dressage intuition hum and sing, a habit of opening his mouth for the bit and then clamping down and refusing to let it go after a ride, an overwhelming desire to lie down in mud puddles that had once ended with me leaping from his back as his knees buckled into the mire for a forbidden roll. “Oh no.” I trembled and suddenly felt weak-kneed and queasy, horror roiling in my belly and clouding my vision. I put out a hand to steady myself, gripping the rough railing of the shed-row with everything I had.

  “So you remember him.” Alexander’s voice was grim. “He was on our farm.”

  I gulped, found my voice again. “I remember.”

  Kerri finished rigging up the hay-net, threw away the rotted wood that had been tangled in the knot, and sidled up alongside me. “You okay?”

  I shook my head, my jaw tight, thinking of that sweet little colt left abandoned in the Everglades with two other Thoroughbreds, his skin pulled drum-tight over his ribs and hips and shoulders, his eyes bewildered and his heart broken by a cruelty he could never have deserved.

  Kerri put an arm around my shoulders and looked at Alexander. “But why the news van? I mean, this is terrible, but it’s hardly the first case of abuse, especially in south Florida. They’re all crazy down there, far as I can see.”

  “The problem is that someone phoned the local media and told them that the horse is connected with Cotswold Farms, and that Alex has been held up as a model of responsible racehorse retirement in the equestrian world.” Alexander sighed. “And now she is go
ing to be held up as a hypocrite. Everyone—the news media, the animal rights activists, they’ll be looking for someone to blame—and they’ll find Alex has made herself an easy target.”

  Kerri’s arm stiffened around my shoulders. “How can that be?”

  “How can that be?” I echoed, my mind still swirling with horrible images of that sweet little colt I had started under saddle. “I never did anything to cause this! And he did so well. He trained beautifully. He got a good price at the April sale, as I recall. I think he breezed in a little over ten.”

  “It’s not about his training,” Alexander said. “It’s about the fact that he was with us at all. They’re going to pounce on someone who talks such a good game about retirement, but allows a horse to end up in such dire straits. The perfect poster child for anti-racing organizations, because they can point and say that even the good guys are really bad.”

  None of this was making any sense. “How can that be my fault? I was only an exercise rider back then, and you didn’t even own him! He was a consignment!”

  “It isn’t your fault and no one in the business would think it was your fault—but since you had to get into that magazine chattering on about how you keep track of the Cotswold horses and everyone’s calling you a model breeder and horsewoman and the essence of change, anyone anti-racing is going to try and use the media’s total lack of knowledge about the racing business to crucify you.” Alexander shook his head in exasperation. “And it’s going to be very bad for business. Wait until Wallace hears about this. Dammit. He’s going to flip his lid. That one’s lost for sure.”

  Then, as if he couldn’t take another moment of my presence, Alexander stomped off, his Italian race-day loafers coated in dust from the shed-row, in search of solace from heaven-knew-where. The clubhouse bar, maybe. The man who had held my hand and reassured me that I was going to successfully retire my favorite child had utterly disappeared. I watched him go, then turned to Kerri. “Um, who is Wallace?”