I still didn’t feel good about it.
Chapter Twelve
I was in the barn the next morning when Derry Friel drove up and got out of his truck.
“Hi. Is Lockie around?”
“No, he’s in the city.”
“Who’s his second in command?”
“Me. Talia Margolin.”
“Hi. Lockie said he has some horses that need riding.”
He had an Irish accent.
“Yes, ami-owner jumpers.”
Derry pulled his saddle out of the truck. “Where’s the ami-owner?”
“I have no idea. Does that make a difference?”
“I usually like to talk to the owner and find out what they want for the horse.”
“We want you to ride Counterpoint and Spare. When Lockie’s here he’ll be very specific. My sister is...busy so you probably should consider them your project.”
“Your sister. Is this your barn?”
“My father’s.”
“That’s fine with me. Do you want me to ride them this morning?”
“I sure do.”
“Anything I should know about them?”
“Nothing you won’t find out after five minutes of being on top of them.”
When he smiled, he was cute as a button as my grandmother would say.
Greer was going to like him. A lot. I felt as though the task of keeping them apart had just fallen on me. We needed him to ride the horses.
***
Around mid-afternoon a town car drove down the driveway, stopped and Lockie got out.
I could tell something was wrong by the way he walked toward me.
“Hi. What did the doctor say?”
“That I’ve reached the end of my career.”
“How is your health?”
“Good. But the rest, not so bright. There’s not much they can do since I plowed into a hard surface. It could have been much, much worse. I knew that from last year. I could have died or been paralyzed or brain damaged. Maybe I was.”
“Lockie, don’t say that.”
“They’re going to see if there’s a better set of meds for the headaches. The doctor doesn't want me to compete anymore.”
“That’s no big deal.”
“That’s my life. I’m a good rider.”
“You’re a wonderful rider but you’re an even better trainer. So what if you can’t show?”
“I’m not sure you understand.” Lockie paused for a long moment. “I’d like to be alone for a while. Is that okay?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t say it well.”
“Our lives and possible futures are so different. You don’t ever have to do anything and this is the only thing I can do or ever wanted to do and now I can’t.”
He turned and walked to the barn.
I stayed on the terrace and read without comprehending the words.
I knew he didn’t mean it as an insult but what kind of person did it make me that an entire lifetime stretched ahead of me in which absolutely nothing was required? Simply because my father had money?
My mother certainly didn’t think that was an excuse to be a slacker. There was much to be done in the world; people and animals needed to be helped. I had been blessed and never had the sense that gave me a pass to behave as irresponsibly and callously as Greer.
My father had been born into a very fortunate family and he never felt entitled to do nothing. He worked hard not only with his businesses but various charities.
I hoped that was just Lockie’s disappointment being expressed and not what he believed was the truth about me.
About an hour later, I saw him lead Wing from the barn, get on the mounting block, settle into the saddle and ride down the into one of the pastures.
I didn’t know what to say to him.
My mother would have known. She would have said it didn’t matter as long as he was still alive.
He was fortunate to have dodged that bullet. My mother hadn’t been so fortunate. I understood loss, too, intimately.
Jules came out with some cookies and iced tea. “Did Lockie come home?”
“He came back and it’s not good.”
Jules paused in mid-chew.
“No, he’s fine but if I read between the lines, they don’t want him to take chances of an accident like that ever happening again.”
“That makes sense.”
“He feels as though he has no future. Competing defined him in some way that I don’t get and he knows that and I think I hurt his feelings.”
“Lockie’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met and I’ve met a lot of people. If he was upset after hearing the news, give him some time to process it. He’ll be back to his normal self soon.”
“He’s right though, isn’t he? Doesn’t it change his life if he can’t show?”
“Your life changed. My life has changed a couple times. Big changes. Unwanted changes. That’s life. You can ignore it and pretend it’s not happening as Greer tries so hard to do. She’s miserable. She refuses to accept reality. Lockie will come to accept his reality.”
“Which is what?”
“Was showing a part of what he was hired to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I don’t see why this is a deal-breaker. Didn’t Derry come here today and ride Greer’s horses? Do you find people to ride horses at shows, too? Not everyone rides the horse they own. Not everyone shows the dogs they own. They hire someone to trot around Westminster Kennel Club with their dog. Go hire someone to show the horses you train.”
“I suppose.”
“Or you do it,” Jules said.
I shook my head. “I don’t plan on ever showing again. Now that my father has given up the idea that he could see Greer with the blue and me coming in second place, as usual, in the Maclay, why bother?”
Jules finished her cookie. “What do you think Lockie would like for dinner?”
“I have no idea.”
It felt like a crack in the earth the size of the Ausable Chasm had just opened between us.
“Isn’t that him riding in now? Why don’t you go ask him and get back to me?”
“Oh. No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Sure it is. Go ask.”
I didn’t move.
“I won’t start dinner until I find out.”
“You’d blackmail me? You’d hold my dinner hostage?”
“Of course I would.”
I pushed back from the table and stood. “You must have learned how to be a tough negotiator from your father.”
“I sure did.”
There was no choice but to give up because at some point before midnight, I wanted to eat dinner. It seemed as though the walk to the barn was a mile long and I found him toweling Wing off after their ride.
“Jules sent me down to ask you what you want for dinner but that’s just an excuse to force us to speak to each other.”
“I like it here,” Lockie said. “The reality is that my utility to your father has diminished dramatically.”
“Did he say something?”
“No.” Lockie didn’t look at me, he just kept working on Wingspread.
“Then what makes you say that?”
“I was hired to get Greer to the finals. That’s not happening. I was supposed to train horses. What’s training without showing? You don’t want to show. I can’t show. Greer is undependable. What’s my job? What’s my value to this operation?”
“You still can train. Did they say you can’t ride?”
“No, I can work on the flat but even that was a concession I had to pry out of them.”
“So your head isn’t going to explode. You can still stand or sit in the middle of the arena and tell me what to do. You can still run the barn, you can still train horses, and you’re upset because you can’t race across country full tilt and see if you can have another accident where you try to jam your spine into your brain stem a second time?”
Chapter Thirteen
Lockie stood up and looked at me with an intensity I hadn’t see in him before. “You have so fully comprehended the situation, Talia, I couldn’t have said it better if I tried.” He was angry.
I didn’t blame him for that. Loss makes you temporarily insane.
“My mother is dead. I would give anything I have or will ever have if she was with me today under any circumstances. What you lost has already been replaced with many blessings. What do you want for dinner?”
Lockie thought for a long moment. “Beef.”
“You want a steak?”
“Yes. And potatoes.”
“Okay. But take a shower before you come up to the house, you’re a mess.”
He studied me. “What are you going to wear? Are you going out tonight?”
“That’s not a bad idea. I’d like to go out tonight.”
“Have a good time.”
“Aren’t you coming with me?”
“And be a third wheel?”
“Like a tricycle? What else has three wheels? Geez,” I turned and walked out of the wash stall.
“Not a tricycle, Tali,” he called after me.
“What then?” I paused and turned back around.
“The Messerschmidt cars have three wheels.”
“That would still technically be a tricycle.”
“A third leg then,” Lockie replied.
“Like a stool?”
“If it has three legs.”
“It wouldn’t have two, that would make it a ladder.”
“A ladder?” He looked at me as if I my brain had been fried in the summer heat. “What if it had four legs? Some stools have four.”
“Four? Are we going on a double date?”
“This is a date?”
“I thought you wanted to be alone with me off the property. What the hell was that all about? We fly to Pennsylvania and we weren’t alone anyway. I can’t figure you out.”
“Me? I said I wanted to be alone with you.”
“So be alone with me tonight. What’s so complicated about that?”
“Something obviously. What do you do in this town to go on a date?”
“The movies. Can you do that?”
“No. The lights and sound are too much. Besides, I don’t want to be with you with clutter.”
I wasn’t following him at all. What did clutter mean? “Fine. Then we’ll go to the state park and walk along the river and get bitten by mosquitoes. How does that sound?”
“Why don’t we go get some ice cream?”
“Jules made you fresh peach ice cream.”
“Why don’t we just have ice cream here and walk to our own stream?” Lockie asked.
“You’re impossible.”
“I am very possible.”
Lockie was back and I was so glad to see him, I nearly grabbed him the way I would have done with Butch.
***
I stopped halfway to the house and called my father.
“Are you coming home tonight?”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“I would like you to.”
“Why?”
“I would like you to speak with Lockie.”
“Wasn’t that the reason telephones were invented so you didn’t have to travel seventy-five miles to communicate?”
I said nothing.
“Your mother would have done it in person?”
“Yes.”
“We’re coming into an extremely busy season for me.”
“This is important.”
“I understand that and one day soon I’m going to explain why your mother knew how important our work was. Do you have any idea what I’m referring to?”
“Politics?”
“In general.”
“Yeah, I’m not very interested in that.”
“Your mother was. That’s how we met. We were of one-mind on the subject.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Believe it. See you for dinner.”
I couldn’t see how it was possible for my mother to agree with my father on anything but the truth was I didn’t know him very well.
After I was born, they didn’t live together. I saw him infrequently and thought he was too busy for us. He had another family, I knew, and there was the very messy divorce. Even so, he was a good provider, and we had all we needed. As a child, I attended a private school and never met Greer who went to live with her mother for a while in England, which resulted in more legal actions.
Being young, and sheltered well, I didn’t know many of the details. I suspect my mother and father continued to meet during the day while I was in school. The organization she worked for had something to do with him, tangentially. She told me she was in the information business. I was eight. I didn’t ask.
Then once she became ill, I didn’t ask.
After she died, I didn’t want to know. And I had never asked because it was all over. For my mother, her job was done. Someone else must have stepped in. In some way, we are all very replaceable even when irreplaceable to a few people.
I went into the house and Jules looked up from the bread she was making.
“My father will be here for dinner.”
“That’s a surprise. Did you speak with Lockie?”
“Yes. He’d like a steak.”
“Fine, we’ll have filet mignon with brandy and mushroom cream sauce.”
“He would like potatoes, too.”
“I have new potatoes from the farm market. So everything is sorted out between you?” Jules glanced up from the dough she was kneading.
“It was more like arguing for a while. Then it was like...”
“What?”
“More arguing.”
“What were you arguing about?”
“Where to go on a date,” I said as I started to leave the room.
“Hang on. You can’t say something like that and not finish.”
“There isn’t that much to say. We’re not going out.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re making ice cream and we have a stream.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Me neither.”
“He wanted to go out with you?”
“Why is that so shocking?”
“It’s not shocking but you are the boss’s daughter.”
“I forgot about that.” I started out of the room again. “And I forgot to tell him about Josh.”
Jules stopped in mid-knead. “Talia.”
“I know.”
Going to my bedroom, I turned on the newest album by Michal Towber and lay down on my bed.
I had been seeing Josh for the last two years, if seeing was the correct word used for going out together given our circumstances. When I was new to The Briar School, Josh was one of the first in my class to welcome me. He was positioned somewhere in the middle between me, as stranger, and the rest of the students who were more like Greer.
Rogers was also somewhere in the middle, not sleek but round, and unsure of what to do or say; never coordinated unless she was on a horse. A better rider than she thought, lack of confidence held Rogers back and her horse multiplied the problem.
Lockie would be a more effective teacher for her than Robert Easton, who had no patience and a very loud voice. I rode with him for half a lesson two years ago and walked out. He picked on Rogers, nearly mocking her at times, and she didn’t have the wherewithal to tell him off and find another coach. Her parents pressured her to stay with him because Robert produced winners and up here in Litchfield County, everyone wanted to be a winner.
Except me.
***
My phone rang. I thought about letting it go to voicemail then looked at it and clicked on. “Hi.”
“Hi. I just got a call from Marilyn and the skyscraper is leaving first thing tomorrow morning.”
“That’s good.”
I had been looking forward to the grey horse’s arrival. He seemed companionable a
nd I missed the time spent going off into the woods with Butch to get away from everything. Maybe I would find that again with this horse.
I rode for pleasure. Greer rode for accolades. If she wasn’t being praised, riding was a waste of effort.
There was a social aspect to showing that Greer enjoyed. Most of her friends attended the same shows, had motor homes with well-stocked refrigerators they brought to the competitions and it was all very tail-gate partyish. They rode in the class, then put their horses in the vans and spent the rest of the time gossiping.
I wasn’t a part of that social set, obviously. Greer’s friends were not my friends. I didn’t feel left out and was glad they didn’t want anything to do with me.
“I asked her to send up that mare, too. Is that okay?”
“Lockie, it’s your barn to run as you see fit. These are your decisions.”
“I think she can be worked on for couple months and could be sold in October. That will give the buyer all winter to get used to her. I don’t know what kind of plans you’d have for her.”
“Stop it!”
“There are things that should be said.”
“I don’t know why,” I replied.
“I had envisioned building an outside course this fall.”
“So?”
“There’s no one to train over it.”
“You’re still impossible.”
“I’m possible.”
“You have too high an opinion of yourself in that case.”
“Tali.”
“What?”
“I think I should talk to your father and offer to leave.”
I felt like tossing the phone across the room. “Hey, this is working out perfectly because he’s on his way up to the city to talk to you.”
“What does he want to say?”
“I have no idea. It’s between the two of you.”
“Do you really not know?” Lockie was too clever not to have suspicions.
“What difference does it make? You made your decision. You want to leave.”
“I don’t want to leave but it’s not fair to the farm to stay when I can’t do everything I was hired to do.”
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