Dark Horses

by Susan Mihalic

  Slightly too play-by-play, but possible. I fought the urge to explain why the school gates were wide open: The custodial staff must still be here, but I hadn’t been able to find them.

  “If I had a cell phone,” I said in the third wave of my offensive, diversion, “I could’ve called you.”

  For the first time since I’d made him flinch, he looked at me closely. “Why do you need a cell phone?”

  “Most of the time I don’t.”

  “I’ll think about it. Guess I wasn’t paying attention last night. You must be freezing.” He reached over and squeezed my hand. He held it until I pulled free to tuck my hair behind my ear.

  Only when we were through town and on the open road toward home did I relax my guard enough to remember Will. I’d left without saying goodbye or Merry Christmas or even looking back. Warmth flushed through me when I remembered the way we’d made out. I couldn’t wait for January.

  * * *

  PART OF MY master plan to convince Daddy he could trust me to stay by myself involved spending time with him over winter break. If I appeared to like the time we spent together, he wouldn’t suspect me of wanting to spend time with someone else. I hung out with him at the barn, taking on extra chores like cleaning the tack room and the feed room. I accompanied him on the evening walk-through. We went out to lunch at the historic tavern on the square, where we weren’t the only ones having a father-daughter date. Will’s father and little sister were in the corner booth. They didn’t notice me, but I observed them. Mr. Howard was indulgent, gentle, sad, but now and then Carrie said something that made her father smile. When they left, they were holding hands, and Carrie was skipping.

  On Christmas Eve, Albert and his crew took over the kitchen shortly after breakfast, and that night all the employees and their families came to the farm’s annual holiday party, where a hired Santa—a good one, with a real beard—distributed toys to the kids and Daddy slipped envelopes containing bonuses to the employees.

  The next morning, there was a pile of presents under the tree. I was afraid Mama had made an appearance via consumer-excess proxy, but all the tags read Love, Daddy. He usually bought me one or two nice things, not loads of stuff. He was compensating for Mama’s absence. It was weirdly touching, something a normal father would do.

  After breakfast, we opened gifts. Mostly I opened them, because I’d only given him the wooden chest, but he seemed pleased by it.

  I liked my new hunt jacket, which fitted me as if I’d been measured for it. He gave me a pair of soft black kid gloves to replace my old ones, some boot socks with crazy patterns on them, a book on Olympic equestrians that included an entire chapter on him, a pair of dressy blue paddock boots, and a galloping gold horse pendant studded with diamonds and strung on a gold chain. I held up my hair while he fastened the clasp.

  On my birthday, just before New Year’s, a heavy snow closed the roads. Daddy canceled the dinner reservations he’d made for us in Leesburg. Gertrude made shrimp étouffée for supper, since crawfish wasn’t in season, and Daddy beat me at chess and triumphed in a Scrabble tournament. Then he was through playing games.

  As we undressed upstairs, I wondered whether Will still thought about me all the time. Maybe two weeks with no contact was too long for a boy. It was pretty long for a girl, too, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him—except when I led him into one of the stalls in my mind and shut the door so he couldn’t see, wouldn’t know, what I did with Daddy.

  * * *

  SERIOUS TRAINING RESUMED on New Year’s Day. I started off the year with a fall when Vigo swerved away from a jump and dumped me off to the side.

  Jarred but unhurt, I stood up, spitting out dirt and brushing myself off.

  Daddy caught Vigo. “Pay attention to what you’re doing.”

  “Sorry.” I accepted the leg up he gave me and trotted back to the beginning of the course.

  A few days later, he drove me to school for the start of second semester.

  “See you at one.”

  I got out of the Land Cruiser, hefting my new backpack, a birthday gift from Eddie and Gertrude.

  “Oh, and good lesson this morning.”

  “Thanks.” I closed the door and walked sedately into the building.

  Will lounged against the wall outside the office. Without a word he straightened and took my arm, hustling me across the lobby and into the alcove that led to the cafeteria. He caught me in a hug and swung me off my feet. “That was the longest two weeks of my life.”

  “Mine, too.”

  He looked up at me. “You’re a lot heavier than you look.”

  I punched his shoulder. “It’s called a backpack, and it has about twenty pounds of books in it.”

  He set me down. “When,” he said, “is your father’s trip?”

  * * *

  TEN DAYS LATER, Daddy dropped me at school on his way to the airport. With negotiation skills worthy of a diplomat, I’d persuaded him to let me stay by myself while he was in Del Mar, but all the way to school I expected him to change his mind.

  “Wouldn’t you feel safer with Gertrude and Eddie?”

  “I’ll set the alarm. Besides, Rosemont’s like a fortress. I’ve never been scared to be alone there.”

  “You’ve never been alone all night long.”

  “I might as well have been. Mama was out cold every night.”

  Daddy looked briefly pained.

  “Also,” I said, “I need the computer for homework.”

  “Only homework.” He’d check the browser history, and he probably had keystroke software, too. Sometimes I had a passing curiosity about what he-as-me had posted on Instagram and Facebook, but mostly, I wasn’t interested in staring at a computer screen any longer than I had to. Besides, Chelsea would show me anything I needed to see. He turned steel-gray eyes on me. “Can I trust you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ll call you every night,” he said, and because I was certain he’d do exactly that, on Friday night, Will came to Rosemont.

  * * *

  DADDY CALLED AT seven, an hour earlier than he’d called last night, as I was about to walk out the door to meet Will at the back gate. He was having drinks and dinner with his students, he said, and might be out late.

  “You okay by yourself?”

  “I’m fine. I’m going to take a bath and work on my French project.”

  “Are all the doors are locked? Is the alarm on?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay. Love you, darlin’.”

  “Love you, too, Daddy.”

  If he called back, I’d given myself some cover by saying I was about to take a bath, but not even the best plan was fail-safe. I’d taken every precaution I could imagine except not going through with the date, which was unthinkable. This date was happening.

  Frozen snow gleamed on either side of the back driveway, the moon so bright I didn’t need a flashlight.

  At the gate, I punched in the code. It swung open. I climbed up and sat on the top rail of the fence. Meeting Will here meant I was dressed for the weather, unfortunate since my down jacket made me look like I was inflated, but I was warm.

  Headlights strafed the road, and Will’s truck pulled into view. I waved him through the gate and closed it behind him.

  When I opened the passenger door, the aroma of garlic with an undercurrent of pot greeted me. Will picked up the big flat pizza box on the passenger seat and handed it to me.

  “I promised you pizza and a movie.” He held up a DVD. The artwork showed Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine in sepia tones. In the bleachers, he’d thought my fondness for old movies was quaint, but tonight, he’d turned up with—

  “Rebecca?” I said, dismayed. “Hitchcock’s scary.”

  “No, I read about him. He didn’t do horror. It’s a psychological thriller.”

  “Psychology can be pretty horrifying.”

  “How can you call yourself a fan of old movies if you don’t watch Hitchcock? He’s co
nsidered one of the masters. I’m broadening your cultural horizons. Work with me.”

  “Fine. But if I have nightmares, I’m calling you.”

  “Please do.”

  He gave a low whistle when the barn came into view. “This is a barn?”

  “I’d show you around, but Eddie might check on the horses.”

  I pointed him toward the house. He pulled the truck around to the screened porch, where Eddie and Gertrude would be unlikely to see it even if they came to the house.

  In the kitchen, I immediately shed the jacket, hung it on a hook by the door, and checked the phone to see whether anyone had called. All clear.

  “Pizza’s probably cold,” Will said.

  “I’ll reheat it.” Glad to have something to do, I washed my hands, turned on the oven, and arranged the pizza slices on a cookie sheet.

  Will took off his jacket and hung it over the back of a chair. He wore jeans and a plaid shirt—untucked, naturally—his hair as messy as ever.

  I put the cookie sheet in the oven. “Do you want something to drink? There’s Coke, orange juice, milk, mineral water. Tea. Beer?” Bourbon? I should have had a shot before I went down to the gate. I was less worried about Daddy calling or someone coming to the house than I was jittery at finally being alone with Will.

  “Coke’s fine, but first…”

  He put his arms around me and kissed me. He tasted minty, or that might have been me. I liked the way our tastes mingled. This I knew, kissing, fitting my body to his.

  “You smell good,” he murmured.

  “So do you.”

  He stepped back. “And you look nice.”

  “So do you.”

  I fixed two Cokes and handed him a glass. “The pizza will take a few minutes. Want to see the house?”

  “Sure.”

  I’d shown him the dining room and living room, and we’d gone into the entrance hall when he said, “Your house is like a museum.”

  “Wait’ll you see the dead-ancestor paintings. It’s like an art gallery upstairs.” I flipped on the lights in Daddy’s study. “And here we have the inner sanctum.”

  Will went immediately to look at the medals in their glass case under the spotlight. Daddy had known what he was doing when he put them there. They commanded attention. His father’s and grandfather’s medals, displayed more discreetly in a smaller case to one side of his desk, escaped notice.

  Will studied the photos of Daddy in the book. “How many times was he in the Olympics?”

  “Three. Some of those are from the Pan Am and World Games.”

  “He really is a big deal, then.”

  “He thinks so.”

  He took in the trophies on the bookshelves. “These are his, too?”

  “The impressive ones are. Most of mine are in my room.”

  “Do I get to see your room?”

  I matched his casual tone. “Let’s go.”

  It was strange, seeing my room through his eyes, the double border of ribbons strung near the molding by the ceiling, the shelves of trophies and cups, the photos on the wall over my desk.

  He leaned forward to peer at a photograph of four-year-old me, lanky legs straddling a wide Dutch warmblood named Roxie, a blue ribbon affixed to her bridle, my face split in half by a grin.

  “That was my very first competition ever.”

  “And you won. What a surprise.” He touched the frame of the photo hanging next to it. “Where’s your dog?”

  It was the only photo I had of Bailey and me—and Mama. Gertrude had taken it the day Mama had brought him home. We sat on the front steps, his body stuck to mine like he was held there by Velcro, and Mama had her arms around both of us. She knew she’d done well, and something like happiness had transformed her face so much that she was almost unrecognizable. She’d taken Bailey and me into town to the feed store, where she’d helped me pick out a big pillow-like dog bed for him, and a red collar and matching leash, and ceramic bowls with paw prints on them for his food and water.

  In one of my forays into magical thinking, I stubbornly hoped the photo would turn Bailey, and maybe even Mama, into something that wasn’t painful, but the perfect moment it captured had been eclipsed a few days later when Daddy half dragged him behind the barn while Mama tried to stop him, her bird-claw hands grasping at his arm, and Jamie pleaded, “Monty, I’ll take him. You don’t need to do this.” Daddy had shaken Mama off, and Jamie had turned to me, the helplessness on his face something I felt all the time.

  The gunshot had been hardly more than a puff. I’d been surprised that it didn’t make a sharp cracking sound like gunfire in movies.

  “We had to put him down.” That sounded detached and clinical, something the vet would do, not something Daddy had done with a .22.

  “Was he sick?”

  “He bit Daddy. So that’s my dead dog. Want to see my dead relatives?”

  I showed him the portraits. Both my grandfather and great-grandfather had died long before I was born, but their faces were familiar. Daddy looked so much like them that they could have been triplets. They’d been painted with their Olympic horses, Gustavo and Pert, according to the brass nameplates screwed into the bottom of the picture frames, and in the background of my great-grandfather’s portrait, our barn was identifiable. The rest of the ancestors were less interesting—no horses.

  “We’d better check the pizza,” I said.

  We picnicked on the floor of the living room, leaning back against the sofa with our legs outstretched while the movie played. I’d turned out the lights so the room would be dark, like a theater, and we ate in the blue light of the television screen. When we finished the pizza, Will put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer. I rested my head on his chest. Beneath my ear, his heart beat fast.

  We kept watching the movie—which wasn’t scary at all.

  “Hey, they have portraits, too,” Will said when the freaky housekeeper showed the second Mrs. de Winter the painting of the woman in the wide-brimmed hat.

  “She’s setting her up, isn’t she?” I said.

  “Watch and see.”

  I watched, but the movie couldn’t distract me from the feeling that every single cell of my body was awake and aroused. Will had to feel it, too. He couldn’t be touching me like this without feeling it.

  “Does she have a name?” I asked. “Or are we just going with ‘you little fool’?”

  “No name. That’s one of the conventions of the book and the movie.”

  There was a book? No-name had a dog named Jasper, which was a weird coincidence, and Olivier was condescending and superior, which reminded me of Daddy. I tried to pay attention, and after an eternity, the end credits started rolling.

  “What’d you think?” Will asked.

  “Well—”

  He kissed me with no trace of the restraint he’d always shown before. His tongue moved in my mouth, and the kiss went on for some time. Then he pulled back.

  “This is dangerous.” His voice was both soft and rough.

  “No one’s here but us.”

  “That’s why it’s dangerous.”

  “We’re just kissing.”

  My fingers stroked the back of his neck. He kissed me again, and when I felt no misgivings or reluctance in him, I shifted, took the front of his shirt in my fist, and tugged. He didn’t resist, his body following mine as I lay back on the floor. He was lighter than Daddy, more angular. I pushed my pelvis against his, and he responded, moving against the most sensitive part of me. Wetness flushed inside me.

  I hooked one leg around his waist, and he made a sound of appreciation, but he wasn’t the only one who liked the change of position. My climax spread through me like wildfire.

  My cry caught in my throat, my fingers gripping his shoulders, little quakes traveling through my whole body.

  He lifted his head, and I drew in breath as the beats between my thighs subsided.

  “Did you…” His eyes searched mine. “Are you all right?” />
  He was so earnest that I giggled. “Yes.”

  “Reckon we’re not just kissing anymore.”

  “Reckon not.”

  The television screen was frozen on the main menu of the DVD. I reached for the remote, pushed the off button. The room went black and silent.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” I said.

  “We should talk about this.”

  “No. No more talking.”

  In the dark, I led him up the stairs to my room, hands linked. Bare tree branches scratched the windowpane. I knelt in front of him, lifted his shirttail, and started unbuttoning his jeans.

  He drew in his breath when I touched him. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I wouldn’t if I didn’t want to.”

  He smelled and tasted different from Daddy, more spice than citrus, but not so different that I didn’t know what I was doing. What if he could tell I knew what I was doing? Suddenly he groaned. I swallowed once, then again, and a third time, and a fourth. That was different, too—so much of it. And it had been really fast.

  Gently, I disengaged and looked up at him. He held out a hand to me and I stood up. Even in shadow, his expression was dazed.

  “You’re the first… that was the first…”

  Understanding flashed through me. Will was a virgin.

  I gave him a sly smile. “Are you all right?”

  He chuckled. “That was amazing. I thought you’d be more shy.”

  He’d had no reason to think that—I’d been all over him in the bleachers—but I was trying to come up with an explanation for why I wasn’t shy when he kissed me. His hands roamed downward and then up again, but now they were under my sweater. I raised my arms, and clumsily he pulled the sweater over my head, static electricity crackling. He moved my bra strap off my shoulder. “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.” I unbuttoned his shirt, kissed his chest, and led him to bed. He removed his clothes and then mine. I reached behind my back, unhooked my bra, and slipped it off.