“No way. I’m in the truck with Edgar.” Right then, I knew he and Kelly weren’t together anymore. He had stuck with her to get her through the finals because he was a gentleman.
“Come over this week,” I said. “We’ve got some horses that need work.”
Caroline congratulated me and let me switch her horse’s stall with Sub’s, so Sonny and Sub were right next to each other. They stuck their noses over the wall between them and sniffed each other. Caroline also gave me a handful of sugar cubes for Sub. I gave him a couple, which he sucked right out of my hand. I gave a couple to Sonny, too.
I took my collar off, removed my grandmother’s stock pin, and wrapped it carefully in tissue. I put it into the tack trunk to keep it safe. Then I straightened out the necklace Ruthie had made for me.
When I went outside with Mama and Wayne, it was getting dark. I went into a candy store and bought a big chocolate bar with hazelnuts for June. I watched the saleslady carefully wrap it in orange tissue paper with a shiny brown ribbon.
We bought hot pretzels covered in salt at a steaming cart on the corner.
Snow was beginning to fall, slowly at first, then harder, swirling around us.
“First snow of the year,” Wayne said, holding his hand out and catching some flakes. I held my hand out too.
A horse pulling a carriage with tourists clomped by in the snow.
“Poor old horse don’t have no pasture to graze in,” said Wayne.
“He’s lucky. He could be living at your house,” I said. Wayne and Mama both laughed—“Ha!”—and we continued down the snowy sidewalk.
We found a bench and sat down together, Wayne between Mama and me. Mama had tears in her eyes, and they started to roll down her cheeks. It tore me up inside to see her cry, but somehow this was different. I knew she was thinking about Jimmy, and I also knew it was the happiest she’d been in a long time. She had made it here. We were in New York City together.
Wayne looked tired but happy. I knew I wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for him believing in me. He wanted to see me succeed because he knew me and he loved me. And I loved him back.
I knew I was a catch rider now. It ran in the family. I could ride anything, anywhere. People in the horse world knew this, but most important, I knew it. Now I could hang out by the rail at a big show in case someone needed a catch ride.
I watched cars quietly coasting through the snow, people holding out their hands, catching flakes and smiling, and I felt as light as air.
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU, Adam, for everything.
I’m deeply indebted to Virginia horsemen Dale Stewart and Wayne Hooker for sharing their knowledge with me.
Thanks to Sandy Hooper Melnyk, Chester Cleek, Pete Criser, Mary Lynn Riner, Brian LaFountain, and all the people I met in Hot Springs, Virginia.
Enormous thanks to my editor, Dinah Stevenson, for believing in my voice and for helping me believe in it too.
To my agent, Alice Martell, for taking a chance on a new writer.
To Margo Meyer, Chandler Burr, Jane Hodges, Meg Roebling, Robert Attanasio, Kathleen O’Donnell, Marc Kompaneyets, Claudine O’Rourke, Kit Pongetti, and Mark Stegemann.
To my teachers Howard Pugh and Dale Bishop.
To Maribel, Jaime, Ashley, and Jimmy Zavala, and to Angelica Cotrina.
To Marcus, Denise, Vinny, and Isabella Di Lucia.
To Philip Hirsh for his authentic and hilarious book about Bath County, Voices from the Hollow.
To Mitch Gordon.
I wrote much of this story in Indian Road Café, a sanctuary at the top of the island of Manhattan—thank you, Jason Minter, for creating it.
To Vermont Studio Center.
To Darren Johnson and Elizabeth Riley.
To Kaitlin and Carol Parker for letting me watch your journey to the Maclay Finals.
To Sandy and Joel Watstein for the long hours of babysitting.
Thank you to old Submarine and all the other horses I’ve met, especially the mean ones.
About the Author
JENNIFER LYNE was raised in Virginia, where she spent a lot of time around horses and eventually managed a small barn. She worked as a location scout for 14 feature films and with her husband wrote and produced two independent features. She lives in New York City.
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