Off Course (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 12)

by Claire Svendsen

  She ran off and I stood there with the wet dish cloth in my hands and my heart pounding, wondering if it was him. She came back a couple of moments later although it felt like much longer.

  “There is some guy at the door who says he’s Emily’s father,” she said, looking at me curiously. “I didn’t know you had a father.”

  “She doesn’t,” Mom said.

  I looked from Mom to Derek. She had a red face and he had a pale one. I couldn’t tell if Derek already knew about my dad or not but if he did, he was hiding it well.

  “I’ll deal with this,” he snapped.

  “No,” Mom said. “I will.”

  “But …”

  “I said I’d deal with it,” Mom interrupted him before he could say anything else.

  I trailed down the hall behind her, dish rag still in my hands.

  “Emily, go to your room,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Go to your room now,” she said again.

  Her voice had a steely tone that I hadn’t heard before. She really meant it but I didn’t care. I hung back, perched on the bottom of the stairs where I had a good view of the front door and could hear everything that was said without being seen by my father. After all, just because I wanted to see him, didn’t mean that I wanted him to see me.

  “What are you doing here?” Mom said.

  Dad was standing there in a clean pair of jeans and a navy sweater. He wasn’t wearing his usual barn uniform of breeches and polo shirt. He was neat and tidy and looked like he was trying to make a good impression.

  “We need to talk,” he said. “About Emily.”

  “No, we don’t,” Mom said. “She is none of your business.”

  “None of my business?” Dad said, his voice getting louder. “She’s my daughter.”

  “Well maybe you should have thought about that before you abandoned her.”

  “I didn’t abandon her. I left her with you and you know very well why.”

  Mom was silent.

  “But Emily doesn’t, does she? She doesn’t know anything. What have you been telling her all these years?”

  “I can’t talk about this right now.” Mom glanced behind her nervously.

  I slunk against the banister, hoping she wouldn’t see me but I got the feeling that she was checking for Derek more than anything. I could hear him in the kitchen, talking with Cat and was surprised that he wasn’t there next to Mom, getting rid of his competition. I guess he only had the guts to take on someone if they were half his size and a girl.

  “You didn’t have to come here,” Mom said. “You could have called me on the phone.”

  “But you don’t answer your phone, do you?” he said. “I did call and I left you messages but you never called me back.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Mom said. “We’re in the middle of moving.”

  “So I heard. Running away to Wisconsin, right?”

  “No,” Mom snapped. “Running away is your deal, not mine. We’re just moving.”

  “You can’t take my daughter away from me.”

  “I can and besides, she doesn’t want to see you.”

  “Because you’ve filled her head with all these horrible thoughts about me. My God Lily, what have you done?”

  Dad sounded upset and a million thoughts were spinning around in my head. What hadn’t my mother told me? What were they talking about?

  “What have I done? What have you done? I know what happened at that horse show. The police came here to check up on Emily. You didn’t even call to tell me what happened.”

  “Because you wouldn’t have answered anyway, remember?”

  Dad was being a smart ass. That was obviously where I got it from. Mom never said anything like that. She was far too prim and proper.

  “You try and take her away from me and I’ll sue for custody,” Dad said.

  Mom laughed, a shallow, hollow laugh that didn’t sound like her at all.

  “You really think you stand a chance after what you did? You’ve been gone a long time. You should have stayed gone.”

  And then she just slammed the door in his face. I ran silently up the stairs but not before realizing that my mother had burst into tears behind the closed door. I looked out the window at the top of the stairs, pulling back the curtain to see my dad standing there in the dark, only lit by our inefficient and flickering porch light. I wondered if he could hear my mother crying on the other side of the door and if he cared. And what was all the stuff my mother hadn’t told me. I looked down at the top of his head where a small bald patch was starting to form. Then, as if he knew that I was looking at him, he glanced up. I jumped back, letting the curtain fall into place but it was too late. I was sure he’d seen me.

  I stood there until I heard the door of his truck slam and the engine rev as he drove away. I didn’t bother and go back downstairs. Instead I just got into bed. I lay there thinking about my options. Mom said that I didn’t have a choice but she couldn’t forcibly drag me to Wisconsin. I could choose to go or I could choose to stay with my father. Neither prospect seemed particularly great. Too bad there wasn’t a third option. I didn’t want to go to Wisconsin but I didn’t really want to stay and watch the father I didn’t know fawning over a new baby. But time was running out. I was going to have to make a decision and I was going to have to make one fast. Perhaps the best way was to draw straws. There had to be an easier way to decide which direction my life was going to head in.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  I thought maybe Mom was bluffing about the whole going to Wisconsin over Thanksgiving thing. Last year we had a whole family meal and my uncle came and everything but this year he was in Sierra Leone, volunteering to help with the Ebola victims. Mom said that even if he came back for the holidays, he couldn’t come over because she didn’t want us all catching it. The trip had been booked and even Cat was going. She was all excited because she wanted to check out her new school.

  “I thought you liked living here by the beach?” I asked her.

  “Sand is over rated,” she said. “I’m sick of the heat. I want to live in the snow for a while. Don’t you think a change would be good for all of us?” she said.

  “No,” I replied.

  She hadn’t asked anymore questions about my mysterious father who just showed up out of the blue, which I thought was considerate of her until I realized it was just because she didn’t care. And the whole snow thing was a lie too. I heard her talking on the phone to her best friend about the fact that their favorite indie band was based in Wisconsin and played at clubs pretty close to the house Mom had put the deposit on. Apparently she had a crush on the drummer, some gnarly guy called Rocket, which couldn’t possibly be his real name. At least someone was excited about the move. I still wasn’t sure that I was going at all and I definitely wasn’t going to go on their little field trip to check it out.

  “You have to come,” Mom said. “You can’t stay here.”

  I was in the kitchen eating breakfast. We only had a couple of days of school left and then four glorious vacation days stretched out in front of me and I had plans to ride every day.

  “I’m fourteen, Mom. I’m old enough to be left alone.”

  “Of course you’re not,” she said. “Fourteen isn’t old enough to stay in a house all by yourself overnight.”

  “When is then? When I’m eighteen? Or twenty one? Or forty?”

  “Whatever you may think, you’re still my little girl,” she said, looking all misty eyed.

  “But that is the problem.” I swallowed the last of my toast and grabbed my book bag. “I’m not a little girl anymore.”

  “You’ll always be a little girl to me.”

  But in the end there was nothing she could say to make me go and there was nothing that I could say to change her mind about letting me stay in the house alone so we reached a compromise. I would stay at Mickey’s house. I almost thought about asking to stay with my father. After all, what better way to get to kn
ow him than to be there during one of the most stressful holidays of the year but I didn’t want to push my luck. If I mentioned him, I’d probably find myself dragged onto the plane kicking and screaming.

  “This is going to be so awesome,” Mickey said as she helped me pack a bag.

  Her mother was waiting down in the car. It was Tuesday night. Everyone was leaving for the plane after they picked Cat up from school on Wednesday and I was glad to get out of the house. There had already been quite a few arguments about who was taking what and why they needed so many bags when they were only staying for a long weekend, with Cat insisting that she absolutely needed to take almost the entire contents of her closet. I knew that it was because she was planning to sneak away to see Rock Bottom, Rocket’s band, play. She didn’t care about things like our new house or the school she’d be going to. She was playing them but then again she wasn’t the only one. I was hoping that at some point I’d run into my father again.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  Thanksgiving at Mickey’s house was sort of like eating dinner in an insane asylum. She had so many aunts, uncles and cousins that I started to lose count and it was pointless to try and remember all their names. I silently gave them all nicknames in my head like Chubby and Baldy and Squeaky but then had to remember not to call them those names to their faces. It didn’t really matter though because they wouldn’t have heard me anyway. Everyone talked over everyone else all the time and those with the loudest voices dominated the conversations. Since I had a soft voice and wasn’t prone to interrupting people, I didn’t really have to say anything at all.

  But despite the company, the food was awesome, probably much better than my own mother could have made. There was a big fat glistening turkey and bowls of creamy mashed potatoes. Glazed carrots and green bean casserole and a honey baked ham. And since no one in Mickey’s family could agree on what kind of pie they liked, there was apple pie and pumpkin pie and some sort of berry medley pie that Mickey’s mom found at the store on sale and that no one would touch.

  In the morning we sat around the TV watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. Every year, I kept my fingers crossed that one of the giant balloons would break free from its tethers because what would be cooler than having a giant Snoopy floating over Manhattan and out to sea? Only this year was another bust, although it was a bit touch and go with the Smurf balloon when a particularly strong wind gust swept a couple of the balloon handlers off their feet. But they cut away when one guy landed face first on the asphalt and didn’t pan back to the Smurf until everything was back under control again.

  “They’re no fun,” Mickey said, which launched her family into a rowdy debate over the safety of giant balloons.

  Mickey’s family drank too much at lunch and then fell asleep in front of a football game in the living room. We helped wash and dry the dishes because their dishwasher was broken but I didn’t mind. It was cool to be part of a really big family and I loved every minute of it and Mickey’s mom was so grateful that we had helped that she offered to take us out to the barn to give our horses their Thanksgiving carrots.

  “You know this would be easier if we were both at the same barn,” Mickey said as we bundled into the car.

  “Sorry,” I said, feeling guilty.

  “It’s okay dear, don’t worry about it,” Mickey’s mom said.

  We stopped at Sand Hill where Esther wasn’t around. Bluebird was in his field and came galloping when he saw me coming with carrots. We stood there in the cold breeze and shoveled them into his mouth as fast as he could eat them.

  “Happy Thanksgiving my handsome boy,” I told him. “Of all the things I have to be grateful for, you are the one I am the most thankful for. If you hadn’t come into my life, I don’t know what I would have done.”

  I hugged his warm neck tightly until Mickey pried me off.

  “Come on,” she said. “Hampton needs his carrots too.”

  So we left Sand Hill and drove on to Fox Run and all the while I had a knot in the pit of my stomach in case my father was there but it turned out that he was a family man after all. As soon as we got there one of the grooms apologized that they were running a skeleton crew as Rob had given nearly everyone the day off so that they could spend Thanksgiving with their families and he was at home with Missy. I wondered if maybe he had tried to invite me but Mom had refused. Or maybe he had thought that Thanksgiving wasn’t the best time to get into a ‘why I abandoned’ you speech.

  Hampton was just as happy as Bluebird with his carrots but instead of being out in a field, he was tucked into his gleaming stall that was bedded down with shavings that almost came up to his knees.

  “He looks happy here,” I said as Mickey fed him the carrots.

  “He is.” She grinned. “We both are.”

  “I’m glad everything worked out for you,” I said and this time I meant it.

  We walked back out to the car, passing Wendell and Macaroni in their stalls. They looked happy too and I couldn’t help wondering if Bluebird would be happy here. He liked being outside due to his past bad experiences in a stall thanks to Jess. He’d go in one if he had to but he much preferred his field. Fox Run was all about keeping the horses inside. I didn’t know what he would think of that. I was deep in thought, trying to imagine how it would work out when I walked straight into my father.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  “What are you doing here?” I replied.

  Neither of us sounded angry, just curious and a little surprised.

  “I live here,” he said.

  “You what?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would be living at the barn and when the groom said that my dad was having the day off with Missy, that he was literally yards away from us. He pointed out the back of the barn where I caught sight of a tiny cottage.

  “Oh,” I said. “I didn’t know. Well, I wasn’t spying or anything. I came with my friend Mickey.” I looked around only to find out that Mickey had disappeared. “We were feeding her horse his Thanksgiving carrots.”

  “And what about your pony? Did he get his too?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “And he recovered from his little adventure in the woods?”

  “Yes.”

  I felt like I was answering a teacher at school about whether or not I’d done my homework.

  “That’s good then,” Dad said, rubbing his hands together in the cold and looking around awkwardly. I realized that he was just as hopeless at this whole thing as I was.

  “Well, I’d better go,” I said. “Mickey’s mom is waiting in the car.”

  “Alright,” he said. I was walking away when he called after me. “Wait.”

  I stopped, heart pounding in my chest.

  “I tried to talk to your mother.”

  “I know,” I said. “But she won’t listen to anything you say. She’s in Wisconsin right now, renting us a house.”

  “You don’t really want to move to Wisconsin, do you?”

  I looked around the barn at the horses nestled in their stalls and then breathed in the heady scent of horse. This was where I belonged. This was where I wanted to be. There was no place in the world that I’d rather be and the fact that my father could help me realize my dreams? That was icing on the cake.

  We stood there looking at each other. I could see parts of myself reflected in his face, the way we both had a slightly crooked nose and tiny dimples. I’d never seen myself in my mother. In fact, for a while I’d suspected that I was adopted or that maybe she snatched me from the hospital when I was a baby and that my real family was out there somewhere still looking for me. But this man was someone I was clearly related to. He had passed on his passion for horses and given it to me. It was in my genes. And so what if he’d left? He had his reasons and whatever they were, that was water under the bridge. I didn’t need to know why. I just needed to know that he was back.

  “I want to ride
in the Olympics,” I said. “Can you help me do that?”

  “Are you kidding?” he said. “Between me and Missy, we’ll have that sloppy seat of yours whipped into shape in no time.”

  “Hey.” I laughed.

  I thought of Missy. The only black cloud in my rosy future with my father but maybe she didn’t have to be. I didn’t have to think of her as anything other than a big sister and maybe one day we could be friends. After all, she couldn’t be any worse than living with Cat and Derek.

  “I don’t want to move to Wisconsin,” I said firmly. “I want to come and live with you.”

  “Great,” Dad said, smiling. “Now how are we going to convince your mother?”

  THE END

  COMING SOON:

  SHOW JUMPING DREAMS BOOK #13: WINTER WONDERLAND

  Emily Dickenson finally has everything she’s ever wanted. At least that’s what she thought. But it turns out that living at Fox Run isn’t nearly as glamorous as she imagined it would be, especially now that she is the hired help. Looking after everyone else’s horses wasn’t exactly what she had in mind when she found out she’d be living at the prestigious boarding and training facility. And even though her father is the top trainer there, it seems like he barely has time to give her any lessons at all. In fact, she’s not even sure he wants to fix their broken relationship.

  But it is Christmas vacation and all anyone can talk about is the Winter Wonderland show. Whoever wins will be guaranteed a spot in the Young Rider clinic, a chance to train with top Olympic riders and the possibility of competing in the Talent Scout Show. And Jess wants to make sure she wins at any cost, even if it means cheating.

  Only Christmas isn’t just about shows and winning. It’s about helping others and believing in things beyond yourself. Because there is a very special horse out there who needs rescuing and sometimes, Christmas miracles do come true.