“Good idea. I’ll be up shortly. Give me a holler if there’s anything you can’t find.”
Mary Jo walked into the tack room to retrieve her coat. Somehow it had slid off the saddle and onto the floor. She bent down to pick it up and noticed a short, thick stick laying on it. Curious, she picked it up. Not a stick, but a rabbit’s foot. She had no doubt a certain Jack Russell Terrier was involved.
“All right, where are you, you little brat?” she asked aloud.
Sadie looked a little guilty as she emerged from beneath the saddle racks.
“You little snot… is this lovely gift for me?”
The excited terrier wagged her stumpy tail and jumped up on her hind legs.
“Well, a rabbit’s foot is supposed to mean good luck. God knows I need it. Thank you.” Mary Jo reached down to stroke Sadie’s head. “Why don’t you hold on to this for me, okay?” She offered the rabbit’s foot to Sadie, who didn’t hesitate to take it into her mouth. Sadie returned to her hiding place, her tail still wiggling from side to side.
Mary Jo pulled her coat close around her as she opened the door. The cold dampness of the evening had settled in, and so had the clouds. She was looking forward to the warmth of Chris’s house. She trotted to her truck to retrieve the steaks, thinking the crackling fire would be a welcome sight after spending hours in the barn. Although she remained a bit nervous about the atmosphere between herself and Chris after that performance in the round pen.
She ran up the porch steps and opened the door. The moment she walked inside the house, a wave of warmth enveloped her. She set the steaks on the table next to the door, hung her coat on the coat tree, and removed her boots. In stocking feet, she went first to warm her hands at the fire.
As she rubbed her hands together in front of the flames, she glanced up and saw a beer bottle on the mantle. “Wow. Chris was that uncomfortable?” She began to wonder about her friend. If Chris felt the way she’d looked, why didn’t she act? “I certainly wouldn’t turn her away,” Mary Jo said to herself. She pushed her feelings of doubt and confusion to the side and concentrated on making dinner.
Chris’s kitchen setup seemed straightforward. Mary Jo soon located the broiler pan and heated the oven. After some searching through the cupboards, she found the steak seasoning and sprinkled some on both steaks. She paused in her preparations for a moment and decided a glass of wine would taste good. She helped herself, chuckling as she repeated a saying she’d heard, “I cook with wine, and sometimes I even put it in the food.”
For side dishes, she found a boxed rice dish that could be table ready in a short time. She filled a pot with water, and by the time it came to a boil, she heard the dogs and Chris at the door. Once the steaks were under the broiler, she began to set the table.
Out of the corner of her eye, Mary Jo saw Chris shed her boots, feed the dogs, and disappear. A moment later, she walked into the kitchen with an empty beer bottle in her hand.
“Starting to smell good in here, Cav,” Chris said. She put the bottle on the counter and, in the same motion, opened the door to the wine refrigerator. After pouring herself a full glass of wine, she leaned against the counter with an amused expression as she watched Mary Jo. “You like to cook, huh?”
“Absolutely. When I was in high school, Mom and Dad always got home from work late. I’d get home way before them, so I used to surprise them with dinner on the table. I learned to cook through trial and error.” Mary Jo laughed as she recalled those early times. “Sometimes when it was more error, Dad would get up and call for a pizza delivery.” She smiled at Chris. “You and Frances might get to be my guinea pigs when I’m back into the swing of things.”
“As long as we have the local pizza place’s number handy, I don’t care.”
Mary Jo picked up a kitchen towel and playfully swatted Chris with it. “Shit, Martel, you eat so fast you’d never know if you liked it or not until it was already down your throat.”
“Uh-huh, we’ll see.” Chris emptied her glass in a few long swallows and reached for the bottle.
Mary Jo checked the steaks and flipped the meat over. “How do you like yours?”
“Medium is good for me.”
“Me, too. I think we’re just about done.” Mary Jo stirred the rice a final time, turned off the stove, and handed a hot pad to Chris. “Will you take the rice into the dining room? I’ll be just a sec with the steaks.”
Wineglass in one hand and the rice in the other, Chris went in and sat down at the table. Mary Jo soon joined her with perfectly done steaks. And not a minute too soon, she thought. She was famished.
She and Chris ate the meal in a companionable silence broken only by the occasional grunt of satisfaction.
Later, with the table cleared and the dishes put in the sink, Chris grabbed the wine bottle and, with another full glass in hand, went to sit in front of the fire. Mary Jo followed close behind and chose a seat next to hers. The dogs had already settled into their beds and were sound asleep. They’d had quite a workout on their hike up the mountain and back.
The fire crackled and threw glowing red sparks that disappeared up the chimney. Mary Jo detected a hint of cherry smoke as the logs snapped and burned. “Chris?”
“Hmm?”
“How’d you get to be so good with animals?”
“Bill taught me a lot,” Chris answered, too quickly.
Mary Jo suspected there was more to the story than that. “No, that’s not what I mean.” She watched Chris take a long swallow of wine. “Anybody can learn how to work with animals, but you…” She paused, searching for the right words. “It’s like you’re part of them and they’re part of you. The dogs obviously look to you as their pack leader, and they seem to know instantly what you’re thinking. The horses are always calmer when you’re near them. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Chris didn’t respond. She just stared into the fire, apparently paying no attention, and Mary Jo wondered whether she would answer.
At last, Chris sighed deeply and gulped down the remainder of her wine. She poured herself another glass—her fourth, Mary Jo noted—and took a deep breath. “I guess it was going to come out eventually.”
“What? That you were a runaway?” Mary Jo asked softly.
When Chris turned toward her, Mary Jo was shocked at the transformation in her face. Haunted eyes stared back at her. Chris’s shoulders sagged.
“Chris, if you don’t feel like talking, I understand.”
Chris gazed back into the fire. “I guess Doc would have told you what little he knew. There’s a lot more to the story.”
Chris took another healthy swallow of wine and briefly closed her eyes. The Chris Martel Mary Jo thought she knew had disappeared. In her place sat a woman whose memories, it seemed, had returned to claim her. Her normally soft, confident voice turned raspy, filled with pain.
“I was born in Red Oaks Mills, a little town south of Poughkeepsie,” Chris said. “I was the oldest and had two sisters. I think my mother hated me right from the beginning. From what my Gram told me, I wasn’t too fond of her either. Maybe we just didn’t do the mother/baby bonding thing. I honestly don’t know. I don’t remember much about my early years, but Gram told me she watched me a lot. By the time my sisters were born, my mother was completely preoccupied with them, and Dad was heavy into the bottle.”
“You must have been so lonely.”
Chris shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess. Life was normal for me, so I didn’t know what loneliness was. One day I found a stray dog in the woods behind the house and brought her home. The only way I could keep her was if she stayed in the barn with my sisters’ two show horses.”
“So you had horses growing up.”
“No, I didn’t get a horse of my own until a few years later when I’d saved up enough money.” Chris smiled wanly. “I had a little help from my Gram.”
“That was nice of her.”
“When my parents found out she’d helped me, Gram caught all kinds of hell, but t
hat never stopped her from doing what she wanted. She stood up to my mother more than once.” Chris paused for a moment and took another swallow of wine.
Liquid courage, Mary Jo thought.
“I was thirteen when the beatings started. If my sisters got into trouble or something wasn’t right in my parents’ world, they’d take it out on me. I stopped talking and spent as much time as possible outside with my dog and horse. I guess that’s when I learned the most about myself. The guardedness and suspicion I had for my family dimmed when I was with my animals. Their personalities seemed to change after a while, too. When I realized it, I started wondering how and why it happened. It took me a while to figure it out. They read me like a book and trusted me. Eventually it was my turn to learn how to read them. They taught me a lot.”
“Your parents actually beat you?” Mary Jo found the idea of Chris as an abuse victim difficult to accept.
“Yeah. I remember one day my mother decided to cut my hair. I wanted to grow it long so I could braid it like an Indian.” Chris’s mouth turned downward. “She came at me with the scissors, and when I tried to push her away, Dad threw me up against the wall. He pulled my arm so far behind my back that he dislocated my shoulder. She cut my hair short before they took me to the hospital. They yelled at me the entire way and told me it was my own fault.”
Mary Jo couldn’t hide her shock. “I can’t believe anybody would treat their own child like that.” Tears welled in her eyes. She felt chilled to the bone despite the warm fire. “Your sisters watched all of this without saying anything?”
“What could they say? They knew they had it good and did their damnedest to stay on her good side.”
“Were you close to your sisters?” Mary Jo laid her hand on Chris’s thigh for reassurance. Whose, she wasn’t sure.
“I can’t really say. We played together sometimes. But to be honest, I’m not sure what I felt for them.” Chris refilled her glass and offered the remainder of the bottle to Mary Jo, who nodded. After she’d filled both glasses and set the empty bottle on the floor, she stood up to throw another log on the embers. She faced Mary Jo. “One day they sat me down at the kitchen table and preached to me about how God would punish me because I was a lesbian. I’m not sure how they thought they figured it out. Hell, up until then I didn’t even know it myself.”
“Ah, the tomboy syndrome.”
“Could be, I guess.” Chris laughed bitterly. “Later on, I looked it up because I didn’t even know what it meant. I’m surprised they used the word ‘lesbian’ instead of ‘gay.’ But they were convinced.” She shook her head. “They said if I didn’t go talk to our priest, God would make me pay. I spent hours at that table, me denying it and them screaming that I was a liar and to admit it. I finally gave up and said I would go. Of course I didn’t. I went out and hid in the woods with my dog and horse, like my parents wouldn’t figure out I hadn’t gone. I got beat something terrible when I got home.”
“Jesus, I don’t know how you dealt with them.”
Chris braced herself against the mantel with her hands clenched into fists. Even in the dim light, Mary Jo could see her knuckles turning white as she battled her demons.
“There was so much yelling going on in that house all the time,” Chris said. “My one sister asked me why I was doing that to our family. When I told her I wasn’t making them mad on purpose, she walked away and rarely spoke to me again. It got so I didn’t talk to anybody, even Gram, though I’d spend hours in the barn talking to the animals. My mother hated my dog. I think she was jealous because the dog wouldn’t mind anybody but me. She’d get so mad when the dog wouldn’t come to her, so she’d throw stuff at her and try to scare her.”
Mary Jo was unaware Chris was crying until she saw her wipe her eyes on her sleeve. “Chris?”
“One time they sent me to spend the night at Gram’s. I was thrilled to be away from them, even for a night. But when I got home the next day, I ran toward the barn and found…” Chris sobbed as tears coursed down her cheeks.
Mary Jo got up and went to her. She put her arm around Chris’s shoulders and pulled her close.
In a voice hoarse with emotion, Chris continued talking through the pain. “I found a pile of smoldering, charred wood that used to be the barn. My horse and dog were inside. They didn’t have a chance.” Chris took a deep breath and leaned into Mary Jo’s comforting embrace.
Mary Jo was speechless as tears ran down her own cheeks. “Oh, my God, you were so young. I can’t imagine how you survived all that on your own. Were your sisters’ horses in there, too?” Mary Jo asked gently.
“Conveniently, they’d gone to a horse show and were boarded at a show barn. I always thought my parents set that fire, but I didn’t know of any way to prove it.”
“I am so sorry, Chris. I can’t imagine how you lived through it all.”
“After that, I started to pawn my stuff for money. I had to get out of there.”
“Have you seen your Gram since you left?”
“No, and that’s been one of the hardest things I’ve had to live with. I wanted to, but I was afraid they’d find out where I was and drag me back to that hell.” Chris wiped her eyes on her sleeve again. “So there you have it. My dog and horse were my only links to sanity. I avoided people like the plague for a long time because I didn’t trust anybody.” She reached up and wiped away Mary Jo’s tears with a caress of her thumb. “Don’t cry. That part of my life is over. When I ran, I ran hard and never once looked back. Thank God Bill found me when he did.”
Mary Jo slid her arm from Chris’s shoulder and took both of Chris’s hands in hers. “I don’t know what to say other than I am so, so sorry. God, if I’d gone through what you did, I’d have nightmares for life.”
Chris pulled herself free and stood gazing into the flames with her hands shoved deep in her pockets. “The dreams wake me up sometimes.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I’ve never told anyone parts of that story, not even Bill.” She turned around and added with a forced smile, “I’m glad you know.” She smacked her lips together. “Um, I’m also a little drunk from all that wine.”
Mary Jo said tenderly, “I’m not surprised. You drank an entire bottle by yourself, Martel. It’s getting late. Will you be okay, or would you like me to stay?” She sensed what Chris would answer but thought she’d offer anyway.
Chris smiled wanly. “Yeah, I’m fine. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“You bet.” Mary Jo got up and walked to the door.
Chris stayed where she was for another minute and then followed Mary Jo to the mudroom where she was busy pulling on her boots. “Thanks for making dinner.”
“It was my pleasure.” Mary Jo laced her boots and stood up. She pulled on her coat and stood very close to Chris. She cupped Chris’s chin in her hand, leaned in, and gently kissed her on the lips.
“Go to bed and take care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.” As she walked out, she heard the latch click behind her. How would Chris react tomorrow?
Chapter 16
Mary Jo was almost home when she received an emergency call: a truck towing a horse trailer on the interstate had slid off the road and flipped over. She immediately turned around and headed to the clinic to switch trucks. Thankfully, since she’d restocked the vet box before going to Chris’s farm earlier, she got back on the road promptly.
She found traffic backed up about a mile, but a police cruiser waited to escort her. Following the officer, she drove on the shoulder to the overturned trailer. Emergency vehicles were already at the site, blue and red flashing lights reflecting off the black sky.
Mary Jo parked her rig as close as possible so she wouldn’t have to go far for supplies. She’d seen horses walk away from accidents like this with barely a scratch, and she hoped the poor animals inside the overturned trailer were as lucky. The two horses had been trapped for an hour before she arrived.
When an officer approached with a grim look on his face, she knew it wasn’t
good.
“I’m Doctor Mary Jo Cavanaugh,” she said. “I got here as soon as I could.” She took a deep breath to quell her sudden nervousness. The situation seemed serious, and everyone would be looking at her for direction. She blew her breath out slowly, and her tension subsided. She could do this; she had trained for it.
“Hey, Doc, I hope you can do something for those two buggers,” the officer said, clearly worried. “There’s blood everywhere, and the owner thinks one of them broke his leg. If I can help in any way, just yell.”
Mary Jo noted the nametag on the officer’s uniform. “Okay, Jerry. I called and arranged for a horse ambulance to be dispatched from Cornell. They’ll transport them once we get them out and stabilized. Can we get a police escort to Ithaca?” As she spoke, she opened a side door on the vet box. She grabbed her stethoscope and a pen light in lieu of a flashlight, which she thought might cause the horses to panic.
“Sure. That’s a reasonable request. I’ll call my lieutenant and do it myself. By the way, the driver and his wife are over by the trailer. I’ll tell them who you are so you can get right to it.”
“Good. Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” She trotted over to the trailer which lay on its side. Shards of safety glass lay strewn over the road, and her boots crunched with every step. Eerily, she could detect no sounds from inside the trailer.
A diesel tow truck with a bright halogen light mounted on the roof idled nearby. The rest of the world disappeared in the utter blackness at the edges of the ring of light, as though nothing else existed.
Mary Jo climbed up onto the trailer, careful not to alarm the horses with too much noise. She talked softly to them as she worked her way to the front. The windows were completely gone, probably shattered on impact.
When she looked down, she could see glass covering a dark inert form. Unfortunately, the light from the tow truck didn’t extend far enough into the trailer. She pulled the pen light from her shirt pocket and shined it around.
A warm, metallic smell hit her, mixed with the scent of horse sweat and manure. Jesus. There’s blood everywhere.
Laurie Salzer - A Kiss Before Dawn Page 16