It felt good to say awful, true things about Mama.
“What does she blame you for?”
“Her failed modeling career. Her isolation. I don’t have time for mother-daughter shopping trips or pedicures or stuff like that.”
“What do you have time for?”
At last, an opportunity to make myself sound normal. I could claim I had pizza and slumber parties with friends—but I wasn’t normal, and even if I didn’t tell the truth about everything, the first tenet of lying was to be as honest as possible.
“I don’t have spare time.”
“No friends, no dating, nothing?”
“You don’t get gold medals for having a social life.”
“Tell me about riding. Do you feel a lot of pressure to win?”
“Pressure comes with the sport.”
“Does your father pressure you to win?”
“No one wants to lose, right?”
That sounded glib, like I was deliberately playing a game with her, only this was no game.
“I don’t lose too often.” Better arrogant than glib. “I have goals. I’m focused, I’m determined, and I work hard. What’s wrong with that?” Arrogant and defensive. Great.
“Nothing. Is there anything we haven’t discussed that you’d like to talk about?”
It was my last chance. Tell her now, and put an end to the lies.
Tell her now, and put an end to everything I wanted.
“Not a thing,” I said.
She closed her folder and stood up. “I enjoyed our talk. Would you like to talk again sometime?”
“Nope.”
She started to say something, but Daddy rounded the doorway. His face registered mild surprise and nothing more at seeing a stranger in my room.
“Hello,” he said.
“Good morning.” She extended her hand. “I’m Beth Adams.”
Daddy shook her hand. “Monty Montgomery.”
“Mrs. Adams is a social worker,” I said.
He smiled benignly. “How you feeling, darlin’?”
“Better.”
“Good.” He picked up Mrs. Adams’s business card and examined it. “Any particular reason for your visit?” He struck exactly the right tone: casual, curious, somewhat amused.
I sensed something, as if the patron saint of deception had whispered it in my ear: Mrs. Adams had been on the verge of leaving, but now that Daddy was here, she wanted to observe our interaction. She wanted to see what I’d say to him. What I wouldn’t say.
“Daddy, did Patricia tell you what happened last night?”
“I haven’t seen her. What happened?”
I told him, downplaying it, as I had for Mrs. Adams. Obviously Patricia had exaggerated.
Daddy displayed concern about the hyperventilation—“My God, darlin’, are you all right?”—and when Patricia came in he asked all the right questions, and during their conversation, Mrs. Adams slipped away.
How about that, I thought. Daddy and I had passed the normal test, as administered by a licensed mental health professional.
- fourteen -
THE HOSPITAL RELEASED me in the late morning. A sallow light shone on the new leaves on the oaks lining the driveway, and the air smelled like rain. In the pasture, the foals stuck close to their mothers. The babies were all legs, the mothers all belly, the fate of the broodmare.
Daddy was quiet. He had to be thinking about Mrs. Adams. I was. In fact, we might have been thinking the same thing: I’d had an opportunity to tell someone, and I hadn’t.
He stopped in front of the house. “Let’s get you to bed.”
I got out of the car in stages. The rib bone was connected to every other bone and muscle and nerve and joint in my body.
From the entrance hall, I caught the smell of browning onions; Gertrude was in the kitchen. I followed Daddy upstairs. He set my duffel and backpack by my desk and turned back the covers on the bed. I crawled in. The extra pillows Gertrude had propped against the headboard were like clouds, the sheets smooth and cool.
Daddy pulled the covers up to the middle of my chest. “Okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re bruised.” He stroked the blue smudge the needle had left on the inside of my elbow. “We need to talk about what happened.” He sat down by my hip. “It’s not like you to lose focus in the middle of a lesson. Is there a bigger problem?”
“It was only a lapse.”
“Darlin’, you can’t have a lapse when you’re on the back of a fifteen-hundred-pound animal.”
Obviously I could.
“And a panic attack? That’s not like you, either.”
All I wanted was to close my eyes and be quiet. “I felt claustrophobic.”
“Since when are you claustrophobic?”
“I’m not. It’s this thing.” I indicated my torso and by extension the rib belt. “I freaked. Anyway, it wasn’t a panic attack. The nurse made it into a bigger deal than it was.”
“However you think you came across, she was concerned enough to give you a shot of Ativan. You can’t allow it to happen again. What if it happens at a show?”
I understood the layers of meaning behind the question. First, someone who went around having panic attacks would appear psychologically vulnerable. My competitors would see me as weak, and weakness could be exploited. Second, since I wasn’t known for being weak or vulnerable, people might start asking questions.
“If you have a breakdown in public,” Daddy said, “the sponsors won’t like it.”
Third, the sponsors. Had to keep them happy.
I registered the first part of what he’d said.
“It wasn’t a breakdown.”
“What do you want to call it?”
“A misunderstanding.”
“Fine. But that misunderstanding is the reason a social worker was in your room this morning.”
Fourth, the social worker. Someone who went beyond asking questions. Someone who could analyze the answers. I didn’t want that any more than he did.
“It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” He started to stand up, and then, with the same casual amusement he’d used with Mrs. Adams, he said, “What did she ask, anyway?”
He wasn’t the only one with power.
“A lot of questions about you.”
“Me?” He sounded baffled but not uneasy, not worried—not the reaction I’d wanted.
“Patricia overheard you in the ER. She thought you were harsh.”
He briefly considered that idea. “I didn’t say anything harsh.”
“It might have been your tone,” I suggested.
“I wasn’t harsh.”
“However you think you came across,” I said evenly, “she was concerned enough to call a social worker.”
That got his attention. It had never occurred to him that someone might see through the act. It had never occurred to me, either. We were pretty good at it.
“Exactly what did she ask?”
“Whether it’s only the two of us now that Mama’s gone. If it’s important to you that I ride. If you pressure me to win.”
He looked unimpressed. I wasn’t too impressed myself. The questions seemed less insightful than they had earlier.
“She asked if I’d like to talk to her again sometime.” I wanted him to ask me how I’d answered, to think, if only for an instant, I might have said yes.
He didn’t.
“Don’t you want to know what I said?”
“You said no. It wouldn’t serve you well to have said yes. You have too much to lose.” He stood up. “Get some rest.”
I listened to him go down the stairs. If I’d ever had any power, I’d given it away when I’d decided not to tell the truth.
My brain was approximately the size of a basketball; it even felt like someone was dribbling inside my skull. Sounded like it, too. My head hurt worse than my side until I started to get up, and then my ribs screeched back into first place. I went to my w
indow, anyway. After a moment, Daddy came into view, walking toward the barn.
I retrieved my phone and squatted in front of my closet. On the back wall was an ancient electrical outlet; it was a stupid place for an outlet, and its safety was questionable, but I plugged in my phone and put it in my boot.
Stretching to reach the outlet left me hurting, but the doctor who’d discharged me said aspirin should be sufficient for pain relief. I swallowed two tablets from the bottle in my medicine cabinet and washed them down with water cupped in my hand.
“Sugar?” Gertrude stood in the doorway of my room, a tray in her hands. “Want some soup and cornbread?”
She waited while I got back in bed and propped myself up.
“Thanks for the extra pillows.”
She set the tray on my lap. “It wasn’t me. Your daddy must’ve done it.”
Fuck. Even as a father, he got it right some of the time.
I took a cautious spoonful of black bean soup, which was topped with crispy brown onions. The smokiness of paprika and chipotle cleared my sinuses.
She glanced toward the window. “It’s going to pour. Good day to stay in bed. How about I unpack for you?”
She kept me company as she put yesterday’s riding clothes in the hamper, my boots in the closet—nowhere near the old boots that held my contraband—and the empty duffel on the overhead shelf.
She gestured toward my backpack. “What about your books?”
“Leave them in there.” I didn’t want her to get in the habit of looking in my backpack.
“Want anything else?”
“No, thanks.”
She came back to my bedside and smoothed my hair back, a Daddy gesture. A Will gesture, too.
My leg jerked, and the tray tilted precariously. I grabbed it. Good thing my bowl was empty.
“Nothing wrong with your reflexes.” Gertrude picked up the tray. “I’ll check on you later.”
Alone again, I pushed Daddy’s extra pillows onto the floor. Daylight lanced through my eyelids, but the cool breeze bathed my face. The rib belt was as stiff and binding as it had been yesterday, but I wasn’t losing my shit over it today. The belt hadn’t triggered my panic. It hadn’t helped, but the trigger had been something else: the memory of being touched by both of them, Daddy and Will.
* * *
THUNDER GRUMBLED. RAIN pattered on the roof and then intensified. My room was dark.
Daddy’s voice came to me under the sound of the rain. “You awake, darlin’?”
I flinched. Pain spiked through me.
“Figured sleep would do you more good than supper, but I’ll bring you a plate if you’re hungry.”
There was a chance I could have slept through what he’d said, so I didn’t reply.
He lifted the edge of the covers and carefully folded himself around me, tucking his legs behind mine.
He drew in his breath, inhaling me, and wrapped my hair around his fingers, massaging my scalp lightly. The sound was loud, like static, but I could still, maybe, have been asleep.
He squirmed closer and pushed his erection against my buttocks. When I was little, he’d hold me on his lap while he put on my socks and shoes, his erection pressing against me like this, except now he rubbed against me. This wasn’t so bad. All I had to do was lie here. I might as well have been an inanimate object. A piece of furniture.
The rain fell harder. A sound filled my mouth. It could have been a scream or a sob; I’d never know which because I stayed silent. This was what I did. I managed this.
With a soft groan, he finished. Warmth and wetness seeped through the back of my sweatpants.
His breath was heavy with bourbon. “Didn’t mean for that to happen.”
He’d been rubbing his dick against me. What had he thought would happen?
He kissed the back of my head. “Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He got up as carefully as he’d lain down. The door closed behind him.
I’d chosen this. It served me well.
- fifteen -
I WATCHED THE clock until daybreak, when I finally let myself get up. My ribs still felt like knives, but my headache had faded into a low, steady drone, the all-over soreness had diminished, and I had no nausea. I was healing already. Maybe it wouldn’t take six weeks for the bones to knit. That would make Daddy happy. Me, too.
I unfastened the Velcro and peeled off the rib belt. The elastic had left impressions in my skin—but by the time I finished showering, my ribs cried out for the belt. I dried off and cinched myself back into it, tightening the straps until I saw stars.
The leaves of the trees outside my window dripped from last night’s rain, but the sky had cleared. It was cool, so I dressed in jeans and a hoodie. Then I picked up my sweatpants from the floor. I’d taken them off last night and let them lie where they fell. Now I shook them out and checked the back. The semen stain was barely noticeable, but I turned them inside-out before I put them in the hamper so Gertrude wouldn’t see it.
Daddy was at the dining room table, his newspaper folded into quarters. He put it down when I came in. “Look who’s up and about. How do you feel, darlin’?”
“Better. Sore.”
“You should take it easy today. Sit down. I’ll fix your plate.”
He served my plate from the chafing dishes on the sideboard and set it in front of me with a glass of orange juice. This was familiar, acting like nothing had happened the night before. I started on my eggs.
“I spoke to Vic this morning. He’s coming out Sunday to interview you. They want to document your recovery—show how a winner copes with a setback. They’ll film every Sunday and cut clips into their coverage of Athens and Ocala. Then the whole thing will air during Bluegrass.”
The Bluegrass International Cup, held in Louisville the first weekend in May, would be my first two-star ever. If I hadn’t broken my ribs, I’d have had three other two-stars under my belt by then.
“We’ll run through some questions and answers before they come,” Daddy said. “This Sunday will be the big interview, but they’ll ask a few questions each week, and as you start working out they’ll get footage of that.”
I envisioned the mini-documentary Daddy had in mind, an athlete profile that would show my grit.
“Sounds good,” I said.
“And I posted on your social media channels last night.”
His rationale was unspoken but understood. The only sensible thing to do was take advantage of my injury. Posts allegedly written by me the day after sustaining three broken ribs and a concussion would illustrate my toughness.
“As for the horses,” he said, “I’m keeping them in training. I’ll work them myself.”
It was bad enough that I was losing training time. The horses couldn’t lose it, too.
“I can observe,” I said. “It’ll be like auditing a clinic.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise, which was a little insulting.
I reminded myself to stay on his good side. “It’s better than nothing.”
“All right. Do you feel up to it this morning?”
I didn’t feel up to much of anything, but I didn’t want to stay cooped up in the house, and my ribs and head would hurt no matter where I was.
We walked down to the barn together. The asphalt gleamed in the early-morning sun. The earth smelled damp, the wet grass like freshly cut watermelon, the horses… like home.
“There she is,” Eddie said. “You feeling better?”
“Loads. I won’t be riding for a while, though.”
“Or mucking,” Mateo said as he led Vigo from his stall. “Which I know you’ll miss.”
While I was injured, Daddy didn’t want me interacting with the horses too closely in case they spooked and knocked into me. I hung back as he tacked Jasper. Childishly, I was jealous.
I got more jealous watching him work my horse. His cues were invisible, his hands light, his seat elegant, and Jasper elevated his own game in respon
se. Traitor, I thought.
Next Daddy rode Diva, who would never dream of throwing him. I shouldn’t have come off Sunday. I should have been paying attention. When I could ride again, I’d work harder. Meanwhile, I’d focus on Daddy’s flawless form.
I did, until my pain inched up and the aluminum bleachers became intolerable.
“I’m going back to the house,” I called.
Daddy nodded, acknowledging my departure without interrupting Diva’s piaffe. She was demonstrating perfect impulsion and suspension. She and Daddy both looked exactly like the elite athletes they were.
I went into the house through the screened porch off the kitchen, where Gertrude was watering the potted herbs she used for cooking. She took one look at me and told me to go to bed.
Upstairs, I took more aspirin, changed into an oversized T-shirt, and got in bed. Under the sheet, I stretched my legs into the cool depths of the bedclothes.
Gertrude brought my lunch on a tray again.
I sat up. “I can eat at the table.”
“Don’t push yourself.” She nodded toward the tray. “I’ll come back for this.”
After lunch, I made the strange discovery that lying on my left side, the injured side, alleviated the pain a bit. I was more comfortable than I’d been in a while, and exhaustion dragged at me, pulling me under.
“Sugar?” Gertrude called softly. “Wake up.”
I started awake.
“Someone’s here to see you.”
I struggled to sit up, pushing my hair back from my face. “Who is it?”
She stepped aside, and Will Howard appeared in my doorway.
Panic rose in me like vomit. “What are you doing here?”
“You have homework.” He indicated the books and notebooks tucked under his arm. “And I brought you these.” He held out a bunch of radiant yellow daffodils.
“Aren’t those pretty?” Gertrude prompted me.
What was he thinking, coming here?
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