by G M Mckay
“I’m surprised your mother lets a groom ride her prized stallion at all,” Xan muttered.
“Oh, Xan, don’t,” I said reprovingly. “Gilbert’s a beautiful rider and Coconut likes him best. Really, you can’t expect me to help you if you keep insulting my friend.”
“Fine,” Xander said grudgingly, then brightened. “Does that mean you’ll help me with old Ruthless?”
“Hmm, tell you what; if you can convince Mother to let me go away for a few weeks then I’ll come with you. As long as I can bring Bally.”
“Done,” he said, grinning happily, “Cousin, you and I are going to have a brilliant vacation.”
He wasn’t smiling quite so hard that evening at dinner when Mother turned down his request the second he opened his mouth.
“Absolutely not, Xander,” Mother snapped, “And by all means, help yourself to more of my wine. I see you’ve already had a second glass so what’s a third, really? Young people these days have no appreciation for what things cost.”
Xan put the decanter back down on the table with a thud and reached for the crystal water pitcher instead, scowling down at his plate.
“Rupert!” she added sharply, suddenly fixing my father with a gimlet stare, “that meat is too rich for you to have a second piece. Consider your blood pressure. Have some of the boiled brussel sprouts if you’re still hungry. Jones, you should know better than to offer it to him.”
My father looked longingly after the meat platter as it was whisked away by the stony-faced Jones and sighed. I made a mental note to smuggle a plate of left overs up to his office later. Thirty battle-worn years of marriage had drained most of the fight out of him, although he could still rebel on occasion; like when he’d spirited me away to Europe and bought Bally for me.
He looked up, saw me watching him from across the table and winked.
“Did you hear what Xander said, Rupert? That dried-up old dragon Ruth has invited him to visit and he wants to take Jilly. After the way that battle-axe treated me last Christmas, the things she said to me, I don’t think this family should have anything to do with her.”
I looked up with interest. This was something I hadn’t known about. Of course, last Christmas I’d still been reeling from the public ridicule Frederick had inflicted on me a few months earlier and I hadn’t paid attention to much other than my own misery.
“Oh dear, yes, unpleasant business,” Father said vaguely, sneaking a piece of bread and butter.
“She accused me of bullying my own daughter, as if she should talk, the old harpy. How would she know how difficult it is to be a mother? If she had had children, they would have murdered her in her sleep.”
There was a shocked silence and Xan looked at me with his eyebrows raised, his lower lip quivering as he held back laughter.
Now this was really getting interesting. Great Aunt Ruth defending me to Mother? Apparently, I should have been paying more attention.
“Cousin Viola visited the estate last year,” Xan said finally, composing himself, “she took her Welsh stallion, Biscuit, and said the facilities were world class.”
“Did she now?” Mother fixed him with an outraged look. “Rupert, are you listening to this? Viola went to Dark Lady Farm last year and didn’t say a word to me. What do you think of that?”
It was clear by her look what he was supposed to think.
“Well, my dear,” Father said, clearing his throat several times, “Viola does get along with everyone. I was just about to say, though, it is Jilly’s birthday coming up soon and she has been a bit down. Perhaps she’d like to have a little adventure, a vacation; she does train awfully hard.”
“Jillian doesn’t need a vacation,” Mother snapped. “And there’s nothing wrong with hard work. It builds character.”
“Yes, you’re always right, darling. But perhaps she could do with a short rest. She is looking a little pale.”
“Pale?” Mother’s icy gaze snapped to my face, narrowing as she looked me over. “Nonsense, she looks perfectly fine to me.”
“Yes, of course, she’s doing very well under the circumstances.”
Father raised his eyebrows and sent me another small, secretive wink.
Mother drew herself upright and her face flushed until two brilliant spots of colour stood out like fall apples on her cheeks. Father’s comment was referring to The Fredrick Incident, as we’d come to call it. It had been Mother who’d introduced me to my one-time fiancé and had pushed me hard into the union, hoping to marry me off to someone of her choosing; in this case, the son of a well-connected old school friend. He’d been older than me and charming and, as it turned out, a complete gold-digging liar who’d only been after my supposed fortune.
Too bad I’d fallen for him hook, line, and sinker. Which had made the humiliation of discovering that he’d never even liked me, let alone loved me, all the more bitter.
Even though it was her policy to never apologize for anything if she could help it, I knew Mother felt guilty about the whole thing. That was why Father’s comment hit her in just the right spot.
“I suppose she could do with a short vacation,” Mother said reluctantly. “And it would be nice to see what that old biddy Ruth is up to at that mausoleum of hers. I haven’t seen her estate in years. I’ve never met a more cantankerous old hermit.”
Xan spluttered into his water glass and I kicked him hard under the table to keep him from bursting into laughter.
“Jillian,” Mother said finally, fixing first Xan and then me with a hard stare. “You will go and visit your Great Aunt. But you’re not allowing Ballymore to travel in that tin can of a trailer. Xander should be ashamed of himself for towing such a travesty. No, Gilbert will drive you in our trailer and see to taking care of the horses. He will be your groom.”
I choked and quickly grabbed for my own water glass. Oh no, Gil will hate that. I can’t imagine him being cooped up with Xan for all that time.
Xan lit up, a wide, wicked smile spreading across his face. I could just see him envisioning the good impression he’d make on Great Aunt Ruth when he showed up with a fancy trailer, his own groom, and the impeccably bred Rigel in tow.
“Good, it’s settled then,” Mother said, “Jillian, I’ll expect a full report, complete with photos, of Dark Lady Farm when you get back.”
And, just like that, my fate was sealed.
Gilbert didn’t take the news nearly so well. “Coconut has his Grand Prix debut coming up in two months. I can’t afford to go on a road trip with you and that pretentious, blathering idiot.”
“I’m sorry, Gil, I did try and get Mother to let Coconut come, too, but she wouldn’t hear of it. And Xan’s not so awful if you give him a chance. He’s really funny.”
“Yes, at other people’s expense; I don’t know why you spend time with him, Jilly.”
“Well, because, besides you, he’s the closest thing I have to a friend. Everyone else hates me.”
“Nobody in Maplegrove hates you,” Gil said patiently, repeating what he’d been telling me off and on for most of our lives, “they just …”
“Think I’m crazy. I know, I remember the looks people gave me after Frederick told them what I was really like.”
“Nobody believed that idiot, Jilly. You have more people on your side than you think. But you have to give them a chance to know you like I do.”
“Never mind all that now,” I said, changing the subject quickly, “look, don’t you think it will be fun going on an adventure? We can eat junk food and stay up late and explore Great Aunt Ruth’s mansion. It’s probably haunted; remember how we used to go around looking for ghosts when we were kids?”
I broke off in surprise, wondering what on earth had prompted me to use the words haunted and ghosts voluntarily out loud after all this time. It was an unspoken family rule never to speak about that odd part of my past. My parents had gone to great lengths to develop me into a normal child and we’d all agreed that my weird childhood delusions belonged fir
mly buried in the past.
“Yes,” Gil said slowly, giving me a strange look, “you dragged me all over the countryside on your ghost-hunts and when we got into trouble, and we usually did, I got blamed. You sure had quite the imagination.”
“Um, right,” I said, twisting my hands together nervously.
The thing was, back when I was little, I hadn’t been making up the stories about ghosts just to annoy my mother and terrify the local children; in my mind, I’d seen spirits as clear as day and talked to them, too. I hadn’t known then that it was just a delusion, a trick of the mind, the result of an over-active imagination run wild.
I’d loved my imaginary ghosts better than real children. And, when I was very young, I couldn’t understand why other people couldn’t see them, too.
“Look, she’s right there,” I’d told eight-year-old Kristal Saunders when she’d marched boldly over to see why I was talking to a tree on the school playground. “She wants to play with you, too.”
Kristal, to her credit, had squinted hard at the shady spot under the trees where I’d pointed, toward where the little barefoot ghost-girl was turning cart-wheels across the grass. She tilted her head and held her breath, trying her best to see if there was truly anything there. But the next moment her hopeful expression had fallen and she’d called me a liar and shoved me so hard that I’d skinned my hands and knees when I hit the rough ground.
That didn’t stop me, though. For such a smart, bookish kid it took me an incredibly long time to learn to keep my mouth shut. By the time I’d realized that maybe some things were best not talked about, I’d developed quite the reputation as that crazy ghost kid. Kristal and her friends had called me Casper one day and that nickname had stuck until well after I’d graduated from high school. There were probably still townspeople who called me that behind my back.
Only my Scottish Nanny, and ever-loyal Gil, had at least pretended to believe me. Nanny had even encouraged me to write all my ghostly encounters down. When Mother had found my stash of carefully written ghost journals (complete with maps and illustrations), she’d been livid. “For heaven’s sake, Jillian,” she’d said in exasperation, “do you want this family to be a laughing stock? I’ll thank you to keep your wild stories to yourself. You don’t want the commoners to come after us with pitchforks and torches like they did back in the 1600s, do you?”
Things might have turned out much differently if I’d just listened to her for once.
“Jilly,” Gilbert said, bringing me out of my dark thoughts, “do you really think your Great Aunt is going to let your groom tramp all over her mansion? I’ll probably end up sleeping in the horse trailer; where the help belongs.”
“No, you won’t,” I said, although sleeping in the horse trailer was hardly a punishment. It had deluxe accommodations the size of a small house, a full kitchen, and two bedrooms. We’d spent many a horse show bunked in there. “We won’t tell her that you’re a groom. We’ll just say you’re a friend of the family, or, better yet, another cousin; there’s enough of us around that she won’t know the difference.”
Gilbert set his jaw in a hard line and shook his head, not meeting my eyes. “Fine. To keep you out of trouble, I’ll drive you to the backwoods of Quebec so you can spy on your crazy relatives. But I won’t like it.”
“Oh, thank you,” I said, pinning him in a quick hug, “you won’t regret it, you’ll see.”
“I already do.” He sighed and walked back into the barn.
Chapter 2
Early the next morning, when the world was still sleeping and the grass was stiff with frost, we loaded Bally and Rigel in our roomy, six-horse trailer and started our road trip east. These days I almost never left Greystone except to go to horse shows and I was practically bouncing up and down on my seat with excitement.
“Let’s have lunch at a real truck stop, Gil. I want to eat all the greasy food I can get my hands on.” I hardly ever had access to junk food; training all the time under the watchful eyes of Christoph and Mother meant that I ate mostly healthy, balanced meals and protein smoothies and I hadn’t had a burger in months. My mouth watered just thinking about it.
“Sure,” Gil said, turning to me with an easy smile.
We drove down our long driveway and turned right onto the narrow, tree-lined road that rose and fell sharply several times before plunging down the hill into Maplegrove.
I looked out the window wistfully at the still-sleeping town. It was a charming, picturesque village like something out of a storybook. Wide tree-lined streets housed small, specialty shops, mostly owned by us and rented out to enterprising locals. In another hour it would be bustling, but right now with its lightly frosted roofs and brightly painted doors it looked like a snow globe right before it gets shaken up.
I’d spent my whole life wanting to not feel like an outsider here; to really belong. If I could be one of those girls who could casually pick up a coffee at MapleBrew, call out cheerful morning greetings to all my friendly neighbours, and then maybe saunter over to the local bookstore and just browse there without anyone staring, whispering or sending me curious looks I felt my life would be perfectly complete. But, if once I’d nearly had that life in my grasp, Frederick had made sure that my reputation in this town had been destroyed permanently.
As a teenager, being friends with Gil had opened a lot of doors to me that normally would have been slammed in my face. Everyone in town loved him. He’d excelled at every sport our small school could throw at him and after graduation he’d been offered scholarships from a dozen good colleges and universities. Nobody could understand why he’d turned them all down to stay home to ride horses instead.
He’d been the town golden boy and more than one jealous girl had demanded why on earth he chose to hang out with me when he could take his pick from any girl at school. There had even been a rumour that I’d cast a spell on him.
The truth was that I didn’t know why Gil stayed friends with me either. I’d been adventurous as a child but I’d turned into a cautious and shy teenager, something that had stayed with me even after graduation. I wasn’t particularly smart or interesting and my social skills were clumsy at best. I was pretty enough in my own way but I practically lived in riding clothes and rarely bothered with make-up or to pull my hair out of a pony-tail.
I’d been shocked when awful-Frederick had shown up and swept me off my feet. Honestly, there’d been a small part of me that had been relieved when he’d turned out to be a gold-digging liar; at least that had explained his baffling interest in me in the first place. Too bad he’d also ensured that I could never show my face in town again.
I sighed heavily and Gil, guessing my thoughts, reached out to squeeze my hand. “We could stop here first if you want. You might remember that MapleBrew makes the world’s best cinnamon buns. See, it even says so right on the sign.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said lightly, my mouth watering at the memory of those sugar-glazed cinnamon buns that were a local specialty. “I had the new groom, Andre, pick us up some snacks.” I held up the bag of tantalizing road-trip junk food that I’d bribed one of the grooms to smuggle us from town. “I made sure to get those awful sour candies you like, too.”
“Perfect.” He laughed. “You always know the way to my heart.”
I leaned back happily in my seat with my shoulder wedged comfortably up against Gil’s and firmly put all thoughts of Maplegrove behind me. I’d sandwiched myself in between Gil and Xan, mostly to stop them from fighting but it hadn’t been necessary. Xan had fallen asleep even before we’d left the driveway, probably due to all the scotch he’d drank the night before when he stayed up late playing billiards with my father. That left Gilbert and me to entertain ourselves.
We hadn’t had the chance to hang out together much this last year, not since Frederick had arrived and departed from my life like a hurricane, leaving a trail of wreckage in his wake. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this easy comradery.
We a
te lunch as we neared the Quebec border. Gil found me the best, greasiest truck stop he could, and we sat side by side on revolving stools at the yellow, faded Formica counter and had our coffees in battered white mugs.
“Cheers,” I said, clicking my mug against Gil’s. “Best. Diner. Ever.”
Xan was still feeling ill; he’d taken one look at the menu and headed back to the truck to have bottled water and antacids, leaving Gil and me to stuff our faces.
I had a dripping, pulled pork sandwich with poutine and coleslaw on the side, and followed it up with a gigantic slice of lemon meringue pie.
I sighed in happiness and patted my full stomach appreciatively.
“This reminds me of the old days when we’d spend the whole summer travelling to horse shows. Remember how much fun we always had?” I asked, licking a trace of sticky meringue off the edge of my thumb. My formative years had been spent travelling with Gil, Christoph, and sometimes my parents from one horse show to another, first in Canada and then down through the States as far as Florida. That had been my whole world right up until Fredrick had appeared on the scene.
“Those were good days, Jilly,” Gil said with a sigh, looking down at his plate. “too bad they couldn`t have lasted forever.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and then jumped to my feet with a startled yelp as the bell over the front door jangled and an icy, sharp breeze blew across the back of my neck. It felt like a hoard of invisible spiders crawling across my skin, and I rubbed hard with both hands to make the sensation go away. I spun around to face the doorway, overwhelmed by the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that someone, or something, dark and malevolent was staring at me very intently. For a moment I thought I could see the dark figure of a man, arms crossed, watching me with an expression full of hatred. But the next second there was nothing there; the doorway was empty, just the bell swinging back and forth slightly in the breeze.