If she intended to stay awake for Don Qui’s debut as a carriage donkey, she’d have to avoid the Mimosas, which were lethal, as Geoff Wheeler could attest.
The meeting should go fast, a final check of who would do what at the show. Then she could drive out to the farm.
Dick wanted to drive Heinzie, the Friesian he had sold to Merry, and assist her in putting Don Qui to a real Meadowbrook cart instead of a truck tire if Merry decided it was time to try. If all went well, Dick might actually take the reins and sit inside the cart. That might be hair raising, but it would be fun to watch.
Merry
Don Qui sensed my disquiet. Horses—equines—can always tell. He started dancing on the wash rack. Peggy shoved me out of the way and took the curry comb away from me. “Go help Dick drag the Meadowbrook out from under the marathon cart in the trailer.”
Dick and I unfolded it once we’d horsed it down the ramp and onto the parking lot, then I pulled it around the stable. I was having second thoughts about putting Don Qui to today, but I didn’t have the nerve to say anything.
Particularly when Peggy and a harnessed-up Don Qui walked out the back of the stable as we pulled the cart around the corner.
“Shouldn’t he pull his tire for a while first?” Peggy asked. I could tell she was feeling nervous as well.
“Nah,” Dick said. He was running on adrenaline. “I’ll take the reins and walk behind the cart. I won’t try to get in unless he’s calm, and Merry will be holding the long line attached to his halter. We’ll tie the left seat up so I can bail if I have to. What’s the harm? He won’t do anything.”
“The cowboy’s obituary—‘Aw, he ain’t gonna do nothin’.” I said.
In the end Dick persuaded us.
After he was in draft, Don Qui felt the cart behind him, and as before, he stood considering it for a while. Then he walked forward. I held the long line attached to his halter. Dick held the reins.
It looked like a non-event. Dick inched forward until he could step on the back of the cart and ease into the right seat without halting the cart completely.
Don Qui hesitated when he felt Dick’s extra weight and bowed his little back preparing to buck, but Dick clucked and cajoled. A moment later he walked on. I started to relax.
Big mistake.
“Merry!” shouted a female voice. “Where are you? I have to talk to you right now.”
Talk about straws breaking donkey’s backs. Don Quit had definitely reached the point where one more distraction, no matter how tiny, would tip the balance.
“Whoa!” All three of us, Dick, Peggy and I yelled at the same moment.
Don Qui refused to acknowledge he’d ever heard the word. He kicked back, missed Dick’s cheek by an eyelash, and plunged across the arena in a series of bucks that would have done a rodeo proud.
“Oh, my God, Merry!” came the voice. “I’m so sorry!”
As she ran out into the sun I saw it was Catherine Harris. She was grabbing at her broad-brimmed hat, which skittered across the grass away from the arena and not into it. Thank God. A flying saucer in his path was all Don Qui would need to become airborne himself, cart and all.
The mice had been playing hide-and-seek in Catherine’s graying hair, and her jeans looked as though she’d slept in them. She was still wearing her driving gloves. She seemed to have forgotten she had them on.
None of us acknowledged her. We were busy. Dick stomped the brake while I hung on to the long line and Peggy wrung her hands.
It seemed to take eons to calm the little devil down. Actually, it probably took less than a minute, and then he did what he’d done before. He seemed to recall himself, stopped bucking and trotted off as though he’d been hauling milk wagons in County Cork all his life.
Dick was happy to let him trot. “He wants to go,” Dick said cheerfully. “I’ll let him trot until he’s sick of it.”
I had to run to keep hold of the line, but I needn’t have bothered. Finally, Dick brought him a walk right beside Catherine. I thought she was going to faint.
“I had no idea. I know better, but I’m so . . .” She burst into tears.
I could see Peggy rolling her eyes. Catherine was obviously here to cancel her participation at our weekend show. Where I was going to get another judge or clinician at this late date I had no idea. Maybe Catherine could recommend someone close and not too pricey.
“Dick, can you and Peggy take care of this while I talk to Catherine?”
“Go,” Dick said. Peggy nodded.
“Come on,” I took Catherine’s arm and half dragged her to the clients’ lounge. She kept looking back over her shoulder at Don Qui.
“You’re not going to show that donkey Saturday, are you?” she asked.
“Good lord, no! This is the first time he’s ever been put to. He’s a long way from showing.” I shoved her down on the leather sofa in the clients’ lounge, pulled a pair of diet sodas from the fridge and handed one to her. She looked at it as though she wasn’t certain what to do with it, so I took it, popped the top and handed it back to her.
She drank half of it in one long pull. “I didn’t realize I was so thirsty,” she said.
“Okay, Catherine. Lay it on me. Are you backing out of this weekend?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course not. That would be unforgiveable.”
I let out my breath. She sat staring at me without speaking.
“Did you manage to get Troy out of jail?” I asked.
She leaned back and dragged her hand over her eyes. “Thank heaven, my lawyer called a judge we know. My husband Paul saved his life a few years ago when he ruptured an appendix, so he let Troy out on his own recognizance. That sheriff didn’t want to let him go, but he didn’t have a choice. There’s no real evidence Troy had anything to do with Raleigh’s death. And domestic terrorism? Puh-leeze!”
“Where is he?”
“He went on back to school. I’m still afraid that stupid sheriff will try to tie him into Raleigh’s death simply because he can’t find anybody else to charge.”
“What did Troy have to say about the banner?”
She raised both hands against her chest as though she were warding off an expected blow. “It’s that damned Morgan. She’s bewitched him. He’s older than the other freshmen, but he’s incredibly naïve. He begged me to forgive him. Of course I did.”
I squashed the can the way I would like to have squashed his neck and made another stab at hitting the garbage can. I missed. Again. “No ‘of course’ about it. In my book he should be fired and left to twist slowly in the wind.”
“I can’t.” She dropped her head in her hands.
“Sure you can.”
She whispered through her fingers. “I can’t abandon him again.” She sucked in a shuddering breath. “He’s my son.”
I must not have heard her right. “You love him like a son?”
She looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Troy Wilkinson is my son. You have to help him, Merry. Talk to Agent Wheeler, talk to that Sheriff person. Tell them he’s innocent.”
“If he’s innocent, he’ll be fine.” I was reeling. My mouth was operating, but my brain was several steps behind.
“He’s bewitched by Morgan and acting all stupid and gallant, and he’s willing to own up to that banner nonsense. I’ll pay whatever fine they want. If you want a settlement . . .”
It hadn’t felt like nonsense to me when I was trying to keep my horses from drowning. “Of course I don’t want a settlement. Dick’s carriage didn’t get a scratch. Nobody was hurt. If he’s innocent of Raleigh’s death . . .”
She snapped, “Innocent people are convicted all the time. The snap turned into a whine. “I’ve only just got him back, Merry. I can’t lose him again. You have to help me.”
No, I didn’t. “Be sensible, Catherine. Nothing I say cuts any ice with Geoff Wheeler, and Sheriff Nordstrom is still half convinced I killed Raleigh. I’m staying under his radar. I don’t see what I can do.”
She grabbed my free hand and held it hard for an instant before I took it back. “I swore I’d never tell you this, but I’m at my wits end. You have to help him. He’s your half-brother.”
At first I didn’t think I’d heard properly. I backed away from her as though she were contagious. “No way.” I felt as though my legs wouldn’t hold me.
“It’s true, Merry. Hiram Lackland is Troy’s father.”
“You’re maybe two, three years older than I am, and Troy is twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“So you’re saying Hiram, my father, got you pregnant when you were how old?”
“Eighteen.”
The only way I was going to stop my head from shaking like a metronome was to put my hands on either side of my skull and physically hold my brain in. “Hiram went for married women with experience. He was no pedophile.”
“And I was no child. Merry, neither of us intended for it to happen.”
“Big whoop.”
“Please, let me explain.”
“Hey, have at it. I love a good story.” My crisis calm set in. Later when and if I told Peggy, I’d probably have hysterics.
I edged back to the overstuffed chair in front of the couch and slumped into it.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You have to understand how miserable Hiram and I both were that summer. Paul had just left to spend thirteen months finishing his military service in a hospital in Germany. We’d promised my parents we’d put off marrying until he got home, and my mother wouldn’t even let me go visit. She was afraid if I went to Germany, we’d elope while I was there, and she wouldn’t get to put on her fancy wedding.”
That might sound ridiculous to some people, but if Catherine had eloped in Germany, her southern society mother would have considered it treason.
“You’d cut your father out of your life,” Catherine continued.
I bristled. No way was this my fault.
“Your mother had remarried. He was still in love with her. He was miserable too and as lonely as I was.”
“I’ll buy that, but not that he’d drown his sorrows by getting a teenager pregnant. How did you even know him?”
“I was a working student that summer where he was training in Virginia. I groomed for him and cooled his horses down in exchange for lessons. He was there for me, and I guess I was there for him. We both needed somebody to talk to. We got to be friends.”
“Is that what you call it? A teenager and a forty-something man? An authority figure and his student?” Lord, this was getting worse and worse. As much as I didn’t want to believe Hiram could have done something so unethical, so stupid, I didn’t really know my father at that point, so I couldn’t rule it out.
“Please, Merry.” She reached across the coffee table to grasp my hands. I pulled them away before she could. I was afraid of what I’d do if she touched me.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen, Merry. You know how exhibitors’ parties are. Open bar. Nobody cared how old I was. I was drinking a lot. So was he. One night after a party, he took me back to his trailer to keep me from driving back to my rooming house, and it . . . happened. Only once. It ruined our friendship. Hiram was horrified, especially when he discovered I was a virgin.”
“He didn’t use protection?”
“Apparently the condom failed. I didn’t think you could get pregnant your first time, so when I missed my period in August, I didn’t think anything about it. I went back to William and Mary in September for my sophomore year and didn’t get scared until I’d missed my second period. Then I took one of those home pregnancy tests.”
“What did he say when you told him?” I could see him arranging an abortion for her, or even offering to marry her. Now that really would have infuriated her mother.
“I didn’t tell him.” She sounded appalled at the suggestion. “I never told him.”
“He never knew he had a son? Catherine . . .”
“At first I decided to get an abortion. But I simply couldn’t. I didn’t want to tell my parents. I didn’t dare tell Paul. I was afraid he’d dump me. He always talked about how I would be his virgin bride.” She snorted. “Not that he was a virgin. Not by a long shot.”
“But you couldn’t hide it from your folks. What about Thanksgiving? Christmas?”
“I wasn’t showing at Thanksgiving. My mother accused me of waiting until my sophomore year to put on my freshman fifteen pounds. I kept hoping I’d miscarry. I tried all the old wives’ remedies. None of them worked. Then one of my sorority sisters who realized what was going on gave me the name of a lawyer in Philadelphia who arranged private adoptions. He’d pay my medical expenses, and I’d give up my baby for adoption when it was born.
“I told my parents I was going skiing in Aspen over Christmas. Mother was furious, but Daddy said I was growing up and to leave me be. Mother hates to travel, and Daddy wasn’t able to by that time, so they couldn’t come up to Williamsburg to visit me. I’ve always been thin, and until late spring I could wear loose, bulky clothes.
“My sorority sisters knew, of course, and everyone suspected, but nobody said anything. I went to Philadelphia for spring break and they induced labor two weeks early.” She covered her face with her hands. “They didn’t even let me see him or hold him. They said it was better that way. When I went home after the semester, I told my parents I’d had a terrible bout of the flu, which is why I was so thin and peaky and cried all the time. By the time Paul came home, I was physically fine. Mother got her twelve bridesmaids, and Paul got his virgin bride. Or so he thought.”
“And Hiram never knew he had a son?”
She shook her head. “But I never stopped thinking of my child, wondering who had adopted him, whether he was happy, whether he had a warm coat in the winter or went to the beach in the summer. Then I had Paul, junior, and Sandra, and Big Paul and I were building his practice. I was working in the office full time and being a wife and mother and life got in the way. I saw Hiram at shows, but neither of us ever mentioned that one night.”
“When did Troy find you?”
“He didn’t. I found him.” She leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes as though telling the story had worn her out. I didn’t doubt it.
“When Paul died so suddenly, I was devastated. We had a good marriage.”
Except for one whopping big secret.
“Then one morning a couple of months after Paul died, I woke up and realized I could finally go find my son.”
“So you did? Just like that?”
“Hardly. With computers, it’s a lot easier to get information about adoptions now than it used to be, but I had no idea how to go about it, so I hired someone. He found Troy in a little over a month.”
“Where?”
“Beckley, West Virginia. His adoptive parents are both high school teachers. Not rich, but he didn’t suffer from poverty. He had started college at Blacksburg, but dropped out after one year to take a job in construction when his father had a heart attack. He said he couldn’t justify even in-state tuition and expenses. He planned to go back, but you know how that is.”
I nodded. Once he left, it would be hard for him to go back.
“It took months before he’d agree to meet me. He didn’t want to upset his adoptive parents. I respected that, but they finally persuaded him he needed to at least meet me.”
“And the rest is history. Happy ending, nice and tidy.” I was getting pretty tired of Catherine. I wanted to go hug a horse and get my head around this.
She shook her head violently. “Not at all. He was so angry. He accused me of abandoning him. But we talked and talked and emailed and took baby Facebook steps to know about each other’s lives, and little by little he saw who I was and that I meant it for the best and forgave me.” Her nose and eyes were red, and her tears had cut paths through her makeup.
“So how do we get from Beckley to Atlanta?”
“I wanted to do something for him, to get t
o know him. I offered him full tuition and expenses to Emory. He didn’t have any trouble transferring, although his credits were a couple of years old. And I offered him a job working for me at shows on the weekends.”
“You know everybody thinks you’re sleeping with him?”
She shrugged. “Seemed simplest that way. We both thought it was funny.”
I’d bet her mother didn’t think it was one bit funny. “So does your family know?”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, no! Not yet. It’s just Mother and Sandra and Paul, junior, now. Paul’s at Princeton Law and Sandra’s at Randolph Macon. I’ve worried about the best way to handle introducing Troy. We were thinking maybe Thanksgiving.”
Had the woman lost her mind? Then it hit me. Troy was a nice young man, but he had the social polish of a West Virginia trout. Catherine hadn’t only been getting to know her son and introducing him to the driving and social crowd, she’d been grooming him.
“Where does Morgan fit into your plans?”
Catherine snapped to attention. “She doesn’t. I know better than to turn her into Juliet to Troy’s Romeo by forbidding the relationship, but I’ve got to make him see that she’s destroying his chances for a good life. That banner… My God, he could have drowned your horses!”
When a knock sounded on the door of the clients’ lounge, we both jumped. Dick stuck his head in and said, “Sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to tell you that Don Qui’s back in the pasture and I’ve locked the Meadowbrook in the barn out of the way. With the show and clinic coming up, I didn’t figure you’d have time to drive the little devil before Monday or Tuesday.”
“Thanks, Dick. Catherine and I were just going over some final tweaking for the show Saturday.” I glanced at her. She gave me a grateful look.
“Yes, I really have to go. Mother’s coming to dinner tonight,” Catherine said.
I followed her out to her bright red crew cab truck.
One Hoof In The Grave Page 19