“When did this happen? Have you asked for help?”
Milly felt her own heartbeat speeding up to a gallop. She couldn’t remember ever having seen her calm, collected father looking so panicked. Something must be really wrong.
“Yes. Okay. Okay.” Cecil nodded gravely. “I’m on my way.”
“What is it?” asked Linda as he hung up. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” said Cecil. “It’s not. That was Nancy.” He looked ashen. “Radar collapsed about twenty minutes ago. She says it doesn’t look like he’s going to make it.”
Milly’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her mouth in shock. Instinctively Bobby put his arm around her, but she was too upset even to register it and pulled away, pacing back and forth.
“What’s wrong with him?” Her voice quivered.
“Equine influenza,” said Cecil bleakly. “A particularly virulent strain, it would appear. And I’m afraid it gets worse. Some of the other stallions have been affected.”
Milly stopped her pacing. “Which stallions?”
“Easy’s already running a temperature of a hundred and four,” said Cecil, confirming her worst fears. “He’s in a bad way.” He turned to Linda. “I’m sorry. I have to get straight back there.”
Without thinking, Milly reached for Bobby’s hand, which he gave her, instinctively squeezing his support. He knew how much she loved that horse.
“I’m coming with you,” she announced to her father.
“Me too,” said Bobby.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Milly,” said Linda. “You have a play to finish. It’s out of the question. Jasper can go and help your father if need be.”
Releasing Bobby’s hand, Milly spun around to face her mother, her features set in a mask of such pure determination that even Linda was caught off guard.
“Fuck the stupid play,” she said. “I’m going back to the stables, and I’m going right now. Easy needs me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Back at Newells, the entire yard was in chaos.
Under the full glare of the floodlights, a veritable swarm of vets, grooms, and handlers ran back and forth from the house carrying syringes; buckets of water; and a variety of towels, blankets, and bandages. Seeing Cecil’s 4x4 screeching into the graveled driveway, Nancy rushed forward to greet him, her pixie-like blond figure followed closely by a harassed-looking man who had evidently just been dragged out of bed. He still wore his pajama trousers—tucked into riding boots—and his upper body was covered with a thick Guernsey sweater that had been pulled on inside out.
“I drove like a maniac, but it takes forever on those fucking country roads,” said Cecil, glancing apologetically from his watch to the vet and back again. “How are we doing?”
“They’re both still alive,” said Nancy, nodding a brief hello to Bobby and Milly, who she was pleased to see Cecil had brought back with him. If anyone could help calm and comfort these two stallions it was them. “But it’s not looking good. Radar’s up to a hundred and five and a half, and Easy’s not far behind. His nose looks like Niagara Falls.”
“Can I see him?” Milly stifled a sob.
“Sure,” said Nancy kindly. “Follow me. This is Drew, by the way, from the EDRI.” She introduced pajama man as the five of them hurried over to the stable where Radar and Easy had been isolated. The Equine Disease Research Institute was well-known in Newmarket, its vets and scientists some of the most respected in Europe. “I brought him in in case there was anything we’d missed.”
“And?” asked Cecil. “Was there?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Drew in a soft Scottish burr. “It’s a clear-cut case of the flu, although one of the most virulent I’ve seen in a long while. Unfortunately, as with all flu viruses, it’s highly contagious. We won’t know for sure how many animals have been affected for a day or so, although judging from the severity of the two cases you have, I would expect to see symptoms emerging within hours if it has spread.”
“But we immunized them all, for God’s sake,” said Milly. “I watched Easy get his flu jab myself.”
“New viral strains pop up all the time,” said Bobby. “That’s the problem.”
“Exactly,” the vet agreed. “All it takes is contact with one unknown horse who might have traveled abroad, say, or been exposed to a new, mutated strain. And the thing can spread like wildfire.”
“It isn’t fatal, though, is it?” Milly asked, unbolting the door to the temporary quarantine.
“Usually, no,” said Drew, following her inside. “But, like I say, this is an unusually bad case. And as with humans, it’s the elderly and the very young who are most at risk. Radar has a better chance than your old man here.” He pointed to Easy, who lay in the corner of the stall, curled into a shivering, sweat-drenched ball. Too tired to lift his head, his eyes rolled up at the sound of Milly’s voice and he gave her a hopeless, exhausted look of recognition. Already he seemed smaller somehow, diminished by the awful virus that had struck him down so suddenly.
“Poor baby.” Kneeling down beside him, Milly flung her arms around his neck. It was like pressing herself against a wet radiator, he was so hideously hot. “Can’t we do anything? I mean, we can’t just leave him here like this.”
“Can I help?” asked Bobby. He felt so useless, standing there like a spare part. It had already been a tough week for Milly, but he knew that her other disappointments meant nothing compared to the prospect of losing Easy. He wished there were something he could do.
“Thanks, but not really,” said Nancy. “He’s had a shot of painkiller, but too much weakens his ability to fight it. We’ve been using towels and water to cool him. Other than that, there’s not much we can do except to let it run its course.”
Cecil ran his hands through his hair in despair. Like Milly, he was fond of his horses, particularly Easy, the old man of the yard. But unlike his daughter, he could also look at this devastating disease from a business perspective. Easy Victory was by far the stud’s most profitable stallion. To lose him alone would be a serious blow. But if the rest of his stallions turned out to be affected, the business that he’d spent the last twenty years building up would be decimated, perhaps even finished for good. He was insured against the loss of his own animals. But once a stud got a reputation as being unsafe or disease prone, that was it. Not even long-standing clients and friends like Michael Delaney could afford to take that sort of risk with their racehorses or their sires.
“I know it’s not what you want to hear,” said Drew, echoing Nancy. “But the best we can do for these two now is to keep them cool, give them some peace and quiet to try to rest, and keep them well away from the others.”
Milly looked at Bobby despairingly.
“What are their chances?” asked Cecil. He had not expected either horse to look quite as ill as they both did. “Honestly.”
“Honestly?” said Drew with a sidelong glance at Nancy. “Fifty-fifty. At best, I’m afraid.”
The night was one of the longest of Cecil’s life. Heeding the vets’ advice about letting the two sick animals rest, he spent most of his time in the stallion barn and the other livery blocks, checking on the progress and temperatures of the other horses. Early signs of equine flu included nasal discharge, depression or listlessness, and loss of appetite, although with a strain this strong he would expect the symptoms to become acute very quickly and, in particular, for body temperature to shoot up out of the blue, as it had done with both Radar and Easy. By daybreak, hope was rising that somehow, miraculously, the rest of the stud remained unaffected. Some of the stallions were irritable, baffled, and annoyed by all the unusual nocturnal comings and goings—but none of them were showing significant temperatures.
It was a long night for Bobby too. Having spent the night fetching wet towels and making everyone endless cups of coffee, he finally decided to catch an hour or so’s sleep at around five A.M. Yawning and stretching out his aching arms as he headed back to the house, he made one
last stop by the barn where the two sick animals were being isolated to check on Milly. Sticking his head around the door, he found her curled into a fetal ball in the straw behind Easy’s forelegs, one hand extended behind her to rest gently against the horse’s sweat-soaked flank. Radar appeared to be sleeping soundly in the far corner. Still in the black skirt and burgundy ruffles she’d been wearing at the play, both now muddied beyond repair and covered with horsehair and straw, she had kicked off her formal black court shoes, tucking her bare feet in behind her.
For the second time that day, Bobby felt a rush of tenderness toward her. He knew what it felt like to lose an animal you loved as much as Milly loved Easy. It would be so easy to go and lie down beside her. To pull her to him. Comfort her.
And he wanted to. Fuck, he wanted to so much it hurt. But with a titanic effort, he held himself back. God knew he wasn’t the most scrupulous of men when it came to sex. But to take advantage of a young girl’s childish crush, when she was at her weakest and most vulnerable? Even he couldn’t live with himself after that.
Kneeling over her, he gently stroked her cheek until her eyes flickered drowsily open.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I just wanted to see if you were okay?”
“I’m fine,” she whispered unconvincingly. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and her nose was almost as inflamed as Easy’s. “I wasn’t asleep. You going to bed?”
“I was going to,” he said, standing up and rubbing a tired hand across the back of his neck. Even in her misery, Milly found herself wishing it were her neck he was touching instead. “Nancy and your dad say there’s not a lot that can be done right now.”
She gazed up at him. Standing above her, his silhouette dimly illuminated by the milky glow of the moonlight, he looked as handsome as he ever had.
Guiltily, she turned her thoughts back to Easy. How could she even think about anything else while he was so sick?
“How’s he been?” asked Bobby, as if reading her mind.
“Like this.” She ran a loving hand over his rump. “His breathing’s so shallow, and he’s shivering all the time.”
“Do you want me to stay with you?” he asked, half hoping and half fearing that she’d say yes. “I’m happy to, if you need the company.”
Milly thought miserably that she’d never wanted anything quite so much in her entire life. But she knew that these might be her last few hours with Easy. He needed her more than she needed Bobby.
“No,” she said, nuzzling back into Easy’s side. “You go get some sleep. I’m fine on my own.”
“Okay.” He tried to hide his disappointment, taking off his leather jacket and laying it gently on top of her. She was curled up into such a tight ball that it covered her body almost completely, like a blanket. Only her beautiful, pale, freckled face could be seen poking out at the top. “You know where I am if you need me,” he said. And he left, softly closing the stable door behind him.
Cecil came into the barn about an hour later, at just after six. Milly was still curled beneath Bobby’s jacket, sound asleep. Radar, to his surprise and delight, was on his feet. He pricked his ears up at the sound of footsteps, shaking his head from side to side, like a passenger trying to uncrick his neck after a long plane journey, and blinking at Cecil as if to ask him what all the fuss had been about.
“Well, hello there, you old troublemaker.” Cecil smiled as he scratched the horse between the ears and stroked gently along the length of his narrow white star. “Welcome back.”
Radar nuzzled him affectionately in response, seemingly oblivious to Milly’s presence—and that of the prone, lifeless form of his stable mate and onetime companion on the straw behind them.
Turning around, Cecil sighed heavily. He’d just been given a tentative all clear on the rest of his animals by the veterinary team and had been on the point of allowing himself a small taste of relief. But now his heart sank again as he confirmed for himself the news that he’d been both dreading and expecting: Easy Victory was dead.
Crouching down on his haunches, he gently shook his daughter awake.
“Mill,” he whispered. She barely stirred. “Milly,” he tried again, more loudly this time.
“It’s all right, Dad,” she said wearily, her eyes still firmly closed. “You don’t have to tell me. I know. He’s gone, isn’t he?”
Hearing her trying so hard to be brave, exhaustion battling with the sorrow in her voice, he felt close to tears himself. Easy had been a once-in-a-lifetime stallion. They would all miss him. But Milly had had a special bond with him, closer than anyone else’s.
She’d changed so much in the last few weeks, since Bobby had arrived. It was almost as if the old, preaccident Milly had come alive again. As angry as he’d been when Bobby confessed they’d been riding together behind his back, looking at her now Cecil realized how much he’d missed his happy, carefree daughter; the one whose eyes lit up the moment she climbed up into the saddle. These days, he also recognized, with a stab of paternal concern, they also lit up every time Bobby Cameron walked into a room.
His little girl was growing up. Or rather she would be—if only he’d let her.
The thought of Milly riding again, of taking that risk, still filled him with a terror that made his breath catch in his throat. But deep down, ever since his row with Bobby, he’d had a gnawing awareness that maybe the boy was right: maybe Milly should go with him to California?
Bobby’s words kept coming back to him, like an endlessly playing tape in his head: “She’s not happy here.” With Bobby leaving, and now with Easy gone, she’d be even less happy.
Would she forgive him, he wondered, if he didn’t let her go?
Should she forgive him, if he continued to let his own fears blight her life and stifle her talent?
Reaching beneath Bobby’s straw-covered jacket, he found her hand and squeezed it, pushing his doubts and fears about her future to the back of his mind for now. Whatever mistakes he might have made as a father, he loved her more than anything. Right now, he simply wanted her to know it.
“Yes, sweetheart” was all he said. “I’m so sorry. He is gone. Easy’s gone.”
Far away in Solvang, Wyatt McDonald tried in vain to shake himself free of the black mood that had gripped him since daybreak as he hurried down Main Street.
The early fall sky was as blue and cloudless as a tourist-board postcard, and even at this relatively early hour the sun’s rays were warm enough to bake his back as he made his way through town. He was headed to the bank to meet with the manager, his old friend Gene Drummond. Friendship aside, it was not likely to be an enjoyable meeting, and the prospect of it was causing his brow to knit with stress as he walked.
“Mornin’, Wyatt.”Mary Lonsdale, the sweet-natured, hugely overweight clerk from the post office, waved at him as she emerged from Devon’s Pharmacy.
“Mary.” He tipped his hat at her, smiling despite his inner gloom. Wyatt had known Mary for going on forty years now. She was one of the gentlest souls he’d ever met.
One of the nice things about Solvang, like any small town perhaps, was that neighbors still knew and cared for one another. A popular local figure like Wyatt could barely expect to walk twenty yards through town without somebody rushing out to greet him or wave or ask him how the kids were doing or how they were all getting on up at the ranch since poor Hank’s passing. Being September, the worst of the tourists had gone but he still passed a couple of groups of sightseers on his way to Wells Fargo at the far end of town, their LA tour bus sticking out like a sore thumb in the central village parking lot.
Founded by Danish settlers, educators from the Midwest who came out to California looking to establish a new colony in the early nineteen hundreds, Solvang had always been a big draw on the Western tourist trail. The name itself means “sunny valley,” and that it certainly was. But it was the unique Danish architecture, a token of the old European way of life frozen in time up in the Califor
nia mountains like a fossil in amber, that kept the crowds of visitors coming back here summer after summer, year after year. With its cobbled streets, gas lamps, tiled gable roofs, and no less than four windmills, the place looked like a Disneyland Denmark. But behind the tourist façade of the Happy Windmill Hotel, where Bobby’s mother, Diana, had once worked, and the endless gift stores selling Danish flags and peasant dolls, there existed a real living, working community. Some of the families—with names like Sorensen, Rasmussen, Skraedder, and Olsen—had lived here now for four generations, and took their Danish ancestry and heritage very seriously. Inevitably, they had intermarried with even older local families, some of whom, like the Camerons and the McDonalds, had ancestors who had lived and worked as cowboys in this valley for almost two centuries.
Walking up the white wooden steps into the old bank building, Wyatt took off his hat and brushed the dust from his feet before approaching the teller.
“Mornin’, Phyllis.” He smiled.
“Wyatt.” The old woman flashed an almost toothless grin back at him. “Gene’s expectin’ ya. You wanna go straight through?”
His old friend got up from behind his desk and walked around to greet him as he came in.
“Wyatt. Good to see you, buddy. How you been?”
It was an odd question, given that they’d spent half an hour together only last Tuesday at the high school PTA meeting, chewing the fat about Highwood and life in general. Still, maybe he was just nervous and looking for something to say.
“Good,” said Wyatt, sitting down in response to a gesture from Gene. “But somethin’ tells me I may not be feelin’ quite so good once this meetin’s over. So come on. Don’t keep me in suspense, Gene. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, firstly, I want you to know that none o’ this is my doing, Wyatt.” He shifted awkwardly in his seat. “This comes from the powers that be. I’m just the lowly messenger boy.”
“I know that,” said Wyatt kindly. “Go on.”
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