Bittersweet Farm 1: Mounted
Page 13
There was a change in his demeanor. For the first time ever I felt like he was taking sides. He had been so careful over the years trying to treat us equally, that had been plain to me. If I hadn’t always been so angry with him, I would have appreciated the even-handedness more.
But I wasn’t my mother and I didn’t have her guidance to tell me how to behave, I just had to try to imagine what she would have advised. I had no idea what she would say now. Probably being grounded for a while would have been part of it. She thought violence was the last resort when defending yourself, not the first.
But this didn’t feel like the first time, it felt as though Greer had been pulling this routine on me for years. There was just something so mean inside her; the capacity for compassion was missing.
Her mother was like that. They were both emotionally cold and calculating. Their first thought always seemed to be “What’s in it for me?”
Even though we were related, we couldn’t be more dissimilar. We didn’t even look like sisters.
“Talia, what’s it about this time?”
“Lockie and I went to see Josh at the playhouse and came back early because it was so boring. We saw a light in the loft so went up to make sure it wasn’t a fire.”
“And found Greer with whom this time?”
“Derry, the rider Lockie hired to school Counterpoint while Greer’s on summer vacation.”
He snapped the cap back on his fountain pen. “How is Lockie?”
“Better, and thank you for arranging for the doctors and getting him the contact lenses from Singapore.”
“Do they help?”
“Very much. He used to be so uncomfortable.”
“Do you like your new horse?”
“He’s a door opening.”
“Your mother used to say that.”
I nodded. I remembered it very well. All doors are locked except the one God wants you to go through.
“She would be proud of you.”
“She judged me favorably.” Too favorably from what I could tell.
“Your mother was a very unique individual but so are you. I will try to talk some sense into Greer.”
I had tried to leave Greer to her own choices and let her misbehaviors surface own their own. Tattling would have gotten me nowhere and taken up a good part of my life to boot. Telling my father anything was not something I chose to do over the years. She was his daughter and he had feelings for her even if I didn’t. Only if asked, did I say anything.
“Greer wants to...” I couldn’t bring myself to say the words “with Lockie.”
“No, that’s not a good idea.”
“Is her mother like this?”
“Exactly.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation, but why?”
My father exhaled. “Because I didn’t understand intimacy until I met your mother and by then Victoria had already happened.”
I could see the horses in the pasture through his windows; they would be coming in soon. “My mother showed me a photo of my grandmother at a resort in the Catskills.”
“She showed me that vacation picture, too.”
“It was a lesson.”
“It was.”
***
When I got down to the barn, Greer was in the indoor on Counterpoint arguing with Lockie. I stood at the doorway and watched.
“Greer, are you going to do what I ask you to do this morning or not?”
“Not when it goes against my better judgment,” she snapped.
“Fine. The session is over for today.” Lockie crossed the arena and left by the side door.
She turned and saw me standing at the front entrance. “Bitch!”
“What did I have to do with it?”
“You’re turning him against me.”
“You did that on your own,” I replied and walked back to the barn.
I found him in the feed room opening a bag of Calf Manna. “Does she always have her period?” Lockie asked.
I started to laugh.
He poured the pellets into a metal garbage can, then put the cover down. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“There must be a diner or a café in town.”
“Yeah, there’s a place near the Green, The Grill Girl. They have good handmade hamburgers.”
“Perfect. I’m starving.”
We were getting into his truck as Greer was riding Counterpoint back to the barn.
“You were serious?” She shouted.
“I don’t know how you treated everyone else who came here to help you but you won’t treat me with disrespect,” Lockie said and got in the driver’s side.
Greer slid off Counterpoint and pulled him over to the truck so she could speak through the window. “I apologize.”
“That’s very nice.”
“That bi....Talia attacked me this morning. I was upset with her and took it out on you. That was very wrong of me and I’m sorry.”
“We’ll take a couple days off.”
“I have a show coming up,” Greer said sharply.
“Maybe you’ll be ready and maybe you’ll miss it,” Lockie replied. “Please put your horse away or let Tracy do it.”
Lockie started the engine and backed the truck slowly away from Greer.
We headed up the driveway.
“She can’t have you fired,” I said to him.
Lockie stopped at the end of the driveway. “I’m not worried about it, don’t you be.”
***
Greer was on her best behavior at dinner but no one believed it for a minute. She could be quite tolerable and knew how to hold a pleasant conversation. To move in society circles was an expected skill and Greer had acquired it at a young age from her mother.
“Mr. Swope,” Lockie began.
“Andrew, please,” my father replied.
“Andrew. Rogers called me earlier and made an offer on the German mare, Karneval.”
“She can’t be serious!” Greer said with a laugh.
Lockie ignored her. “I don’t know what your intentions are so before saying anything, I thought it was better to ask.”
“It’s your barn to run as you see fit.”
“There are some complications,” Lockie said.
“There always are,” my father replied as he took a drink from his wine glass.
“Rogers had a falling out with her trainer and would like to ride with me and keep the horse with us.”
“I don’t want her here,” Greer said.
We all glared at her.
“That dumpy thing? She can barely stay on a horse.” Greer glanced around the table. “Why is everyone looking at me? It’s true.”
“You’re being unkind,” Jules said evenly.
“What’s the problem with the horse staying?” My father asked.
“Perpetual embarrassment,” Greer said.
“We’ll have one less stall available,” Lockie replied without looking at her. “I had been planning on being in Florida for most of the winter but now I’m not sure.”
Greer dropped her fork onto her plate. “I thought I was riding the jumper circuit.”
“I thought so, too,” Lockie replied evenly. “But that would mean you, not Derry, would be riding your horse now. I’m not dragging you and two horses fifteen hundred miles, wasting your father’s money on a fool’s errand.”
Greer stared at Lockie in shock. No one had spoken like that to her. Ever.
My father smiled. “I guess that’s settled. What’s for dessert?”
Greer shrieked, pushed back from the table, knocking over her water glass and hurried into the house.
“Watermelon granita and stone fruit tart,” Jules replied.
“That sounds wonderful.”
By the time I helped clear the dinner dishes and serve dessert, Greer was tearing off up the driveway in her Porsche.
“It’s always such a relief when she leaves,” I said.
Since no one replied, I understood th
at no one disagreed.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The following morning I was on CB doing a volte, a precise circle, at a collected trot.
“What’s he doing?” Lockie asked.
“Nothing. Trotting.”
“No, he just did something.”
I missed returning to the track at the point where we left it.
“Talia, you missed the marker.”
“I can’t talk and concentrate at the same time.”
“Try harder.”
“You asked about his swish.”
“Walk.”
I pulled CB to a walk.
“What are you talking about?”
“He has this thing he does. I can feel it. I call it his swish.”
“Stop him from doing it.”
“Yeah. Right away.” It came out wrong and I knew it the moment the words left my mouth.
“Excuse me, Miss Margolin?” He was annoyed.
“How do you propose I stop him? He’s happy with himself. Maybe he even likes me although God knows I haven’t given him very many reasons to do so.”
“He shouldn’t be happy and pleased with himself, he should be working. Get him to focus.”
From the moment he had come down the stairs wearing his glasses an hour ago, I knew that Lockie didn’t feel well. He wouldn’t be so impatient, nor call me Miss Margolin, if he didn’t have a headache. I thought it was a hangover from last night’s performance by Greer. It was too much tension for all of us.
He had left the house right after dinner and just as it became dark outside and the horses had been checked for the final time, the lights went off in his apartment.
“I’ll try harder,” I said.
“We’re done for the day.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I have to take my truck to the mechanic in town.”
“Okay. I’ll follow you down and bring you back then we can go pick it up later.”
“No, Tracy is going with me. Rogers is buying Karneval and wants you to go Runnymeade with her and pick up her tack. Easton won’t give her any grief if you’re there.”
“Is he selling Sinjon for her?”
“I got him sold to the Bancrofts up in Massachusetts.”
I was having a difficult time understanding how this was all working out. “You never saw him.”
“That wasn’t necessary. They did. They know the horse. I was just the agent. So you can do that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“When will you be back?”
“Long before you will be, why?”
“I thought maybe we could go for a hack, if you feel like it.”
“Maybe later, maybe this evening.”
He was giving himself more than six hours to feel better. Perhaps I expected too much of modern medicine, thinking there would be a real abatement of his pain. It hadn’t been true for my mother so I was rather naïve imagining this time it would be different.
“Okay.”
Before I had even untacked CB, Lockie had driven away in his truck followed by Tracy in hers.
***
I was with Rogers for hours, and no, my being there didn’t prevent Robert Easton from verbally attacking her. We hadn’t even reached the tack room to get her trunk and already she was in tears. That didn’t slow him down one iota.
Telling him to go to hell where he was sure to find many compatible friends seemed like the perfect thing to say but only if I wanted to alienate Rogers’ former trainer completely. Lockie was certain to have to deal with Easton at some point and this was bad enough, my adding to it wouldn’t improve the situation.
I dropped Rogers off at her house after spending an hour trying to calm her down and convince her that the worst was over. She never had to ride Sinjon or be humiliated in a lesson again. Everything had changed in her favor.
Provided Greer shut up and didn’t start in on her.
There had to be a solution to the Greer problem, but I had no idea what it was. She had been given two wonderful horses and an opportunity to restart her riding career in a new division. Instead, she had spent most of the summer at the beach or in Millbrook poolside with her friends from school.
What she said she wanted had changed again. She had talked about little else besides the finals for the last two years.
Now she wanted Lockie.
She may have missed the blue ribbon but the one thing Greer never missed was acquiring a designated male target. When Greer said she took what she wanted, that wasn’t a boast, that was her track record.
Greer inherited that talent from my father and her mother. Some would call her a lucky girl. I thought she was a slut.
It was two p.m when I pulled my truck in front of the barn and stopped. Lockie’s truck wasn’t there. He wasn’t in the barn. Wingspread was in his stall. I gave Butch a handful of grain and then went to CB’s stall to give him a handful.
He nickered as I started to slide the door open. It made me feel guilty for not being more friendly toward him.
This was a new barn, a new home, a new country and I rode him for twenty minutes a day as if he was a bicycle.
Holding out my hand, he ate the grain; I put my arms around his neck, promised to do better and meant it. He pressed down on me with his head and neck like a hug.
Closing the stall door, I wondered if Lockie still had the headache from this morning. I wished that bringing him a handful of grain could make up for the uncomfortable dressage lesson of this morning.
I went up the stairs to his apartment and knocked on the door. “Lockie.”
“Sshh!” It was a female voice on the other side of the door. It was Greer.
“It’s Talia,” I said, louder.
“Don’t get up,” Greer said, just loud enough for me to hear. “You don’t want her to know we’re in bed together. Just be quiet. She’ll go away.” After a moment, there was giggling.
I tried the doorknob. The door was locked.
THE END
Thank you for reading Mounted.
If you enjoyed reading this novel,
please consider leaving a review.
Mounted
If you’d like to contact me via my website:
Barbara Morgenroth
If you’re wondering what happens next
Bittersweet Farm 2: Joyful Spirit
Will answer some of your questions.
Life at Bittersweet Farm is one long challenge for Talia Margolin. Their trainer, Lockie Malone, believes she can become a dressage rider. But Talia is unconvinced, even with her talented new horse, Joyful Spirit. Her half-sister is easily switching to jumpers, her friends have unshared secrets and there’s a hunter pace looming in the near future. Can life get more complicated? Yes, it can.
Cover image of Lily Barlow and Grayboo
photographed by
Sommer Wilson
EBooks By Barbara Morgenroth
EQUINE FICTION
Bittersweet Farm 1: Mounted
Bittersweet Farm 2: Joyful Spirit
Bittersweet Farm 3: Wingspread
Bittersweet Farm 4: Counterpoint
Bittersweet Farm 5: Calling All Comets
If Wishes Were Horses
YA
Bad Apple 1: Sweet Cider
Bad Apple 2: Burning Daylight
Bad Apple 3: Rise
Bad Apple 4: Certain
Flash
Flash of Light
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
>
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
EBooks By Barbara Morgenroth