Young Riders (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 16)

by Claire Svendsen

  There was silence for a moment and I thought he’d hung up but then he said, “You’re okay though, right?”

  “Yes Dad,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “Good. Make me proud,” he said and then he really did hang up.

  I sat there for ages sitting on the side of the tub, thinking. And by the time I was done I’d come to the conclusion that my father must have had no idea that Hunter and his groom had anything to do with the drugging. Otherwise why would he have sent Encore and me here in the first place? And surely if he did know then a panicked phone call from me would have clued him into the fact that I knew too. But he’d been completely oblivious to the whole thing. And what proof did I have anyway? None.

  I’d jumped to conclusions in the past and it had never worked out that well for me. Maybe I’d been mistaken. Maybe Hunter and his groom had been talking about something else entirely. If I was going to pursue this then I needed proof but I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to. My father didn’t need me to fight his battles for him and doing so could only backfire straight onto me and ruin my reputation as well. I’d heard what Hunter said. If he wouldn’t think twice about ruining his own grooms reputation so that he never worked in the horse industry again then what would he do if he caught a nobody like me snooping around?

  “Are you done in there yet?”

  There was an impatient knock at the door and Andy’s voice drifted through the wood and the makeshift sound barrier I’d made.

  “The girls are doing their hair in the other bathroom and I think they are going to be another five hours in there,” he said. “At least that is what it looks like anyway.”

  “Yes,” I called out. “Sorry, I’m done.”

  And I was done. I wasn’t going to do anything that would risk my reputation when I was only just starting to get one in the first place. My father could defend himself at his own hearing. He didn’t need my help and he hadn’t asked for it. I was just going to leave the whole thing alone. Well, I was going to try to anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Later that afternoon we were back out in the ring and this time there was a course set up.

  “Finally,” Tara said loudly.

  Paris spooked at the sound of her loud voice and bumped into Brookside, who kicked out, narrowly missing the chestnut mare’s leg.

  “Watch it,” Tara said. “If your horse injures mine, you’ll be in big trouble. My father will sue you.”

  Alice glared at her but moved the bay gelding to the other side of the ring. And I made sure to keep Encore away from everyone because I already had two horses at home that I couldn’t jump and I didn’t need another one.

  “I’m sure you are all glad to see an actual course of jumps set up out here,” Hunter said as he walked towards us. “I bet your little hearts soared when you thought you’d finally get to show me what you are made of. Am I right?”

  We all nodded but no one dared speak. By this point we already knew that Hunter could just be teasing us. Any minute now he might laugh and tell us to remove our stirrups, sending us around the ring for an hour at a posting trot instead.

  “Well you will get a chance to show me how great you are but if you thought I’ve been hard on you up until this point then just wait until I start pulling you apart over fences.”

  “Great,” Andy whispered. “Sounds like the best fun ever.”

  I gave him a weak smile. I’d had my position over fences picked apart and put back together repeatedly and I was relatively confident that Hunter wouldn’t have too much to yell at me about. After all, we were supposed to be the cream of the crop, the top up and coming riders in the region. If he was treating us like this how would he teach the people who hadn’t qualified for the clinic? Those who came second? He’d probably tell them that they had no place being on the back of a horse at all and pull them right off. Riding with Hunter Preston wasn’t turning out to be the education I was expecting. And just as I was bracing myself for another afternoon of torture, a young woman with short black hair hopped over the fence and went to stand next to Hunter.

  “So I’m sure you will all be very relieved that I will not be teaching you this afternoon.” He put his arm around the young woman.

  “That’s Leslie Green,” Alice whispered. “She’s won, well, everything.”

  “I know,” Becka whispered back.

  But no one needed to tell us. We all knew who she was. She was someone who rode in international competitions and had been short listed for the last Olympic team and she was going to be teaching us, which had to be a million times better than Hunter because he may have been a great horse master but he wasn’t a great teacher. At least not unless you liked being yelled at and put down and having your entire riding career criticized.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  It turned out that Leslie Green liked us and she liked our horses. She didn’t think we were losers who shouldn’t even be on the back of a horse and her teaching style was one of encouragement not criticism. I kind of wished she was going to be teaching us for the rest of the week. We all did.

  Under her nurturing tutelage we were able to ride like we all knew we were capable of. Leslie had us jumping difficult roll backs and technical lines and when she raised the jumps up again and again, we ate up that course like our lives depended on it. She even incorporated the water jump, which I knew wouldn’t give Encore any trouble as we’d jumped the one at home.

  In fact it was only Becka’s horse that decided the water might have a horse eating shark in it. But Leslie didn’t yell at her when Twizzle ran out or dug her heels in and refused to move forward. She talked Becka through the process of getting the mare to understand that the water was safe and that she should trust her rider and listen to her aids no matter how afraid she was. I didn’t blame the mare though. Becka hadn’t had her that long and they didn’t have any kind of bond whatsoever. But we all knew that by this point we were expected to be able to get on any horse and ride it decently.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure teaching you all and I’ll see you Saturday for the wrap up show,” Leslie said as we walked our horses around her.

  “You’re not going to teach us again?” Alice said what we all were thinking and hoping, that Leslie would take over from Hunter for the rest of the week.

  “Sorry,” Leslie said, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s not that bad. Listen to him. Under all that criticism, he really is trying to make you all better riders. I’ve been where you are. I know what it feels like but you’ll get through it and come out a better horseman on the other side.”

  We all nodded politely but I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought that it was a load of baloney. The only thing we’d come out the other side was emotionally scarred if Hunter kept it up.

  “So who wants to go in the pool?” Andy said as we took our horses back to the barn.

  And as we all had sweat dripping down our backs and fronts and everywhere else and it felt like it was a hundred degrees out already, we decided that we all did.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  They splashed and played in the pool. I sat on the steps with my bathing suit on and a towel around me. I’d really wanted to go in the pool when I felt all hot and sweaty but now that I’d cooled off a bit, I was having second thoughts.

  “Chicken,” Andy said.

  He teased me but he didn’t push the matter and when Tara pulled him in and dunked him under the water, he forgot all about me. In the end I slipped back into the house.

  “Not interested in swimming dear?”

  Mrs. Morrison was in the kitchen cooking our dinner. There was rice boiling on the stove and some sort of vegetable stir fry in the pan. It was steaming and spitting as she stirred it. Her apron had a half-eaten apple on it and her gray hair was pulled back with a black ribbon.

  “Not really,” I said.

  I sat there and watched her cook, missing Missy. I wondered if she was trying to cook back at home in our kitchen with Owen balanc
ing on her hip or sitting in his baby seat crying.

  “Well never mind,” she said. “Here, taste this.”

  She held out a spoon with some kind of sauce on it. I tasted the creamy liquid and it was good.

  “I like it,” I said. “It’s sort of cheesy.”

  “It’s my secret recipe,” she replied.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t try and wrangle it out of you. I don’t know how to cook.”

  “I’m sure your mother will teach you, dear,” she said.

  “I doubt it. She lives in Wisconsin. She left me here so that I could live with my father and train with him. And she has a new husband and stepdaughter so I guess she didn’t need me anymore.”

  Mrs. Morrison put down her spoon. “I’m sure she misses you and loves you very much.”

  “She doesn’t.” I burst into tears. “She doesn’t love me anymore and she won’t even speak to me. She thinks I betrayed her by staying here instead of going with her. That I love horses more than her.”

  It all came spilling out along with the tears. Well almost all of it. I didn’t tell her about that day in the garage, the one where Derek threatened me with a wrench in his hand and menace in his eyes. The day I thought he would well and truly hit me. But I told her the rest and she sat there with her arm around me as I sobbed into her shoulder.

  “Mother’s don’t leave,” I sobbed. “Everyone says so.”

  “Nonsense,” she said, handing me a tissue. “Of course they do. Mothers are people too with their own feelings and problems and she let you stay with your father, she didn’t leave you.”

  “But she won’t speak to me.”

  Mrs. Morrison waited until I’d blown my nose before she continued on.

  “When I was five years old,” she said. “My mother left me with her sister, my aunt, and disappeared. No one knew where she’d gone or what had happened to her. She just vanished.”

  “What happened?” I said.

  “I grew up calling my aunt, mother and my cousins, brothers and sisters. No one talked about my mother but you can believe there were rumors. Some said she ran away to be a rich man’s mistress. Others said that she’d had mental problems and been checked into a psychiatric institution. In those days they gave you electric shocks and never let you out. My aunt thought that she’d been murdered or maybe even committed suicide. She said that her sister had always been a wild child and mentally unstable.”

  “Did she ever come back?” I asked, my tears all dry now.

  “Eventually,” Mrs. Morrison said, her voice flat. “I was eighteen and working in a clothing store but I knew it was her the moment I saw her. She had that same square jaw and steel eyes. Her clothes were worn and her face tired but those eyes were still as defiant as ever.”

  “Did she recognize you? Did she say why she left?”

  I leaned forward on my elbows, now intent on finding out what had happened to Mrs. Morrison’s mother. Feeling a sudden bond with the woman I hardly knew. It was like we were members of some secret club that no one ever talked about. The people whose mothers had left them behind.

  “She said that she realized she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. That she never had been and that was that. And she wanted to borrow some money from me.”

  “How horrible,” I said, now wanting to hug poor, unloved Mrs. Morrison.

  “Not really,” she said with a sigh. “I later found out that she did have mental health issues that she had self-medicated. She was basically an alcoholic and giving me up was probably the best thing she could have done. I had a good childhood. My aunt treated me well. I went to school and there was food on the table every night and clothes on my back. My mother could have never given me that.”

  “So you think my mother left me for my own good?” I said. “Because I’m pretty sure she’s not an alcoholic.”

  “She could have had other reasons. You’ll find out eventually. Everything comes out in the wash.”

  I wasn’t really sure what that was supposed to mean. It sounded like something old people said when they hoped everything would work out for the best and I hoped that everything would work out for the best between me and my mother too, wash or no wash.

  She went back to finishing the meal and the others came in trailing water from the pool behind them. She scolded them and chased them out of the kitchen but I just sat there mulling over what she had said. I’d thought my mother hadn’t noticed the way Derek treated me. How the verbal abuse was getting worse and it was only a matter of time before he actually struck me. Had she really agreed to let me stay for my own good? But why wasn’t she talking to me? I was starting to wonder if Derek was controlling her more than I’d realized. What if he was the one who wouldn’t let her talk to me?

  And so now I was worried about both my parents, one who was trapped up north with an abusive husband and one who was about to go before a committee that held the fate of his career in their hands. Life was getting complicated fast. I thought teenagers were only supposed to worry about their grades and boys but it turned out that life was so much more than that.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  I snuck down to the barn after dinner to see if Hunter was riding again but the ring was empty. Not that I really wanted to watch him ride anymore anyway. Not if he was the one who had sabotaged my father and his horse. So instead I went into the barn and hung out in Encore’s stall, watching him eat and wishing that I was back home at Fox Run with my pony. I missed Bluebird so much that it hurt. There was a hole in my heart that could only be filled by his happy chestnut face and I couldn’t wait to get back to him. I wondered if I could leave early. But then I thought of my father’s disappointed face and I knew that I couldn’t. It would embarrass him and he’d want to know why and I couldn’t tell him. Not yet anyway.

  It started to get dark. The sun was a bright orange ball sinking fast on the horizon and then suddenly it had gone and the mosquitos came out in full force. When I couldn’t stand slapping them away anymore I made my way back up to the house. I had my hand on the door, about to push it open when my phone rung. It was Mickey.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked as my breath caught in my throat.

  “Chill,” she said on the other end of the line. “Nothing is wrong. What’s wrong with you?”

  “You have no idea,” I said.

  I slipped around the side of the house and sat on a little metal bench that was nestled under a tree instead of going back inside. I didn’t need the others listening in on my conversation.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Bluebird is alright? His legs look okay? Have they been changing his wraps and walking him? Has Arion been eating alright?”

  I didn’t want to sound like one of those desperate paranoid horse owners but I couldn’t help it. I needed to know they were okay and I missed them. Besides, I didn’t care if Mickey thought I was crazy because she already knew I was anyway.

  “They’re fine,” she said calmly. “I was there today when Henry changed Bluebird’s wraps and his legs look really good. The swelling has gone and the cuts are healing. I bet you’ll be able to ride him when you get back.”

  “And Arion?” I said.

  “I think he misses you,” she said.

  “But he’s okay?”

  “Yes,” she said but her voice was hesitant and I knew there was something she wasn’t telling me.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Missy took him out on the lunge line. He didn’t like it very much. He reared up and almost hit her in the head with his hoof.”

  “What?” I cried. “What on earth was she thinking? I told them no one was to work him. He was supposed to get the week off. Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know,” Mickey said. “But I bet she won’t do it again.”

  “But she’s already done it. She’s messed him up. I bet she’s set his training back and upset his ulcers and everything. I could kill her.”

  “Just don’t tell her I told
you,” Mickey said. “I don’t want to get into trouble too.”

  “Alright,” I said, trying to swallow down the anger that was boiling up inside me. “Thanks for telling me though.”

  “I thought you’d want to know. So how is the clinic? Is it all lots of congratulating each other on how awesome you all are?”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  I told Mickey how the clinic sucked and Hunter Preston thought we were all incompetent. She told me that Miss. Fontain, her dressage instructor, pretty much thought the same of her because after the last show Hampton had suddenly forgotten how to do a turn on the forehand.

  “Hunter doesn’t think we are capable of doing anything,” I said. “And I just want to come home.”

  “Well you only have a few more days,” Mickey said. “Then it will be over.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  And in a way it would be. By the time I got back my father would have had his hearing and would know if he was really suspended or not and I would know whether or not I had qualified for the Talent Scout series of shows that was to be held over the summer. It was a really big deal. Talent Scout winners got noticed. They qualified for the Young Riders Championship at the end of the year. They got big sponsors, much bigger than Taylors Tack Emporium. Companies that would pay for me to travel around the country and compete in bigger and better shows. That might even foot the bill for me to take my horses to Europe. But that was all so far away that I didn’t even dare let myself believe it would happen. I had to live one day at a time. I didn’t really have any other choice.

  “I should go,” I said. “We have an early start tomorrow because it is supposed to rain and I’m exhausted.”

  “Aright,” she said. “But try not to worry.”