He gave a small shrug. “I don’t know. Are you?”
“I don’t think it’s something you ever ‘get over.’”
“I agree. But we do have to come to terms with it and what it means in our own lives.”
“And now that Lucas has found someone else, I’ll have to focus my energies on my own life. And I’m not going to be able to avoid coming to terms with the loss of my brother and my parents anymore, am I?”
“Maybe, and if that’s the case, it’s an uncomfortable place to be. Speaking from personal experience.”
They sat in silence for a long while before she spoke again. “How hard was it?” she asked quietly.
“Hard to say,” he answered honestly. “I’m still working through it. I’m happy for Dani and Ty, and my relationship with her is really good now—more equal, more the way a friendship should be. But,” he paused, flexing his fingers against the cold. “But as for the rest, figuring out my career, my shit? I don’t know, I’m still working on it.”
“And how long has it been?”
He smiled. “Longer than I’d like.”
“Crud,” she muttered beside him.
Silence fell around them for a short while. Then she looked at him and said, “You’re a pretty smart guy, you know,” causing him to smile again. “I hate what you’re saying, but I hear it. I’m not ready to embrace it yet, but I think you’re probably right.”
She stopped speaking but he sensed she had more to say. A few seconds passed, then she continued. “Since Jeffery and my parents died, it’s been Lucas and me through a lot of it. Yes, we both have family, but no one else felt the loss the way we did. And since I could grieve in public and people would understand, I tried to be more aware around Lucas—aware of his needs and his wants—because he didn’t have the freedom I did. Or, to put it more precisely, he had the freedom, but no one would truly understand the depth of his grief because no one else had known they were together. No one else had seen how committed they were to each other. No one but a few of us knew how deeply they had loved. And now he’s found someone else to love . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“You’re angry. You want to be happy for him, and you will say you’re happy for him, but you feel abandoned and you’re angry,” he finished for her.
“But I’m angry because I’m scared, aren’t I? I’m scared about what it means to my relationship with Lucas and I’m scared because of what it means to my relationship with myself and my own grieving process.”
“I can’t tell you why you’re angry, but I can tell you that that is exactly why I was angry.”
She let out a deep sigh. “I hate this.”
He laughed gently. “I know it’s not a lot of fun. But you have good friends and, most importantly, you have a husband who I’d bet knows a thing or two about dealing with loss.”
She looked up toward the house. From where they sat, they could catch a glimpse of someone moving around in the kitchen every now and then.
“I do,” she agreed softly. “And you, who do you have?” she asked.
He didn’t miss her use of the present tense. “I don’t know.”
“I think you do,” she answered.
“It’s not about me, right now,” he countered.
“No, you’re right, it’s not. But when her situation changes, and you know it will, hopefully soon, what then?” she asked.
Drew’s eyes strayed back to the window, and for a brief moment, he caught a glimpse of Carly as she entered the kitchen. “I don’t know,” he repeated.
“But you’re going to figure it out.”
After a long hesitation, he let out a deep breath. “Yes, I’m going to figure it out, because one thing my job has taught me is that I don’t want to live with any regrets.”
He felt, more than saw, Vivi smile. “Good, maybe we can help each other stay on track,” she said, standing and reaching for his arm to pull him up.
“That sounds terrible,” he said, not liking the idea of having to revisit this conversation.
She grinned at him. “It does, doesn’t it? But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.”
He didn’t have a chance to respond and, even if he had, he thought it was probably better not to anyway; he didn’t want to encourage her. She pulled him back to the house and into the kitchen just as Naomi started serving dessert. Thankful for the distraction, he grabbed a slice of the warm apple pie and moved over beside Carly.
“She won’t always be there to shield you from me,” Vivi said, a friendly taunt as she brushed by him on her way to grab a few more forks from the drawer.
“You have no idea how many actual and metaphorical bullets I’ve dodged in my lifetime,” he said. “You will not be a problem.”
Vivi laughed. “Good then. I’m looking forward to it,” she said.
Drew groaned.
• • •
After stopping by Kit’s to pick up a few things and update Caleb on the investigation, Drew pulled into Carly’s drive. Night had long ago fallen and the air had taken on a winter chill. He saw the light from her sitting room glowing warmly and wondered if she’d made a fire. If not, he thought that might be the first thing on his list of things to do. Well, second, after he’d given her the proper greeting he hadn’t been able to give her at Vivi and Ian’s.
“Come in,” she called when he knocked.
Shaking his head with a smile and knowing better than to comment on her lack of security, he entered the house, locked the door behind himself, and set the alarm. After dropping his overnight bag on the floor by the stairs, he felt déjà vu when he walked into the living room and found her lying on the couch tucked under a blanket watching more videos.
His thoughts about making a fire died when he saw how cozy she already looked, so he walked over and dropped a kiss on her cheek, not wanting to interrupt her viewing.
She surprised him by hitting pause on the remote and pulling him down into a deep kiss.
An hour later, they were both ensconced on the couch, covered in the blanket with the video back on. He lay behind her on his side wearing only his boxers and she lay tucked up against him in nothing but his shirt.
He tried dutifully to stay awake as they watched round after round of horses, but the drone of the announcer’s voice combined with his long day and complete lack of knowledge of the sport had lulled him into near sleep. But his eyes shot open when he felt her tense up against him.
“Carly?” he asked.
She was so intent on watching whatever round was happening on the screen, she didn’t answer.
He said nothing as he watched her younger self finish the course, but when she hit the rewind button to watch again, he spoke. “Everything okay?” The video didn’t show much more than the horse and rider and he had no idea what had captivated her.
“I’d forgotten about this horse,” she answered as she hit play and the round started again.
His eyes went to the screen to see if he could see what was special about the animal she watched so intently. The video seemed to have been shot somewhere warm and near the ocean. He guessed Florida, based on what he’d picked up from her about where many of the shows took place, but he couldn’t be certain. What he could be certain of was that every time the horse cantered toward the ocean, its head came up. Even Drew could see the animal’s hesitation.
“Why is it doing that?” he asked, propping himself up a bit to get a closer look.
“Balking at the ocean?” she asked.
He nodded, knowing she could feel, if not see, it.
She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she leaned forward and reached for the case he presumed had held the video. After a moment, she fast-forwarded to another round with a different horse. The first horse had been brown with a big white mark down its face. This one was also brown, but had a black mane and tail. And a wild look in its eye that told Drew he wasn’t going to enjoy watching this round.
Sure enough, the horse seemed to gallop to e
very fence, come to an almost complete stop, then spring over the jump. Each time the horse approached a fence, Drew’s heart just about stopped.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
“That’s Charley,” she said. “Believe it or not, he went on to become an extremely successful grand prix horse. He represented the German team in the Olympics twice.”
His eyes strayed back to the screen—to the animal who seemed to leap more like a cat than any of the other horses he’d seen her ride. “And?” he asked.
“When we first saw him, he was horrible,” she said.
To Drew, it didn’t look as if the animal had improved much.
“He was on a farm in France and had more or less been abused,” she continued. “He was four years old at the time and we were there looking at a two-year-old when my mom saw him. They refused to show him to her at first, knowing the reputation my mom had for raising jumpers, they said he wasn’t fit for jumping.
“I don’t know why my mom didn’t believe them, but she pressed them until they agreed to bring him out. I remember my first thought about him was that he was incredibly unhappy. And he was mean because of it. He seemed to hate everyone and everything around him. It was more sad than anything else because horses, like people, aren’t born to hate. Sure, they have personalities, and some are grumpier than others, but hate doesn’t come naturally to a horse,” she said, then paused as she watched the rest of the round before rewinding it back to the beginning again.
“Anyway, my mom knew that too, and figured even if the horse wasn’t meant to jump, someone had taught him to hate, and she couldn’t stand that. So we bought him and brought him home with us.”
“What happened then? Clearly he learned to jump. Sort of,” Drew managed to say as he watched the on-screen Carly pop nearly vertically over another jump.
“We put him out to pasture for about six months,” she said. “We gave him treats, brushed him, loved up on him a lot, but didn’t ride him. When he started to trust us, we put the saddle on him and just walked. I spent hours on the trail with him. I didn’t ask him to do anything other than be who he was. Eventually, we got him back into work. We weren’t sure what we were going to do with him, but after a year, he was one of the sweetest, funniest horses we’d ever had.”
How a horse could be “funny” eluded Drew, but he took her word on it. “And then you got him jumping again,” he said, as the round came to an end.
She sat back against him but kept her eyes on the screen. “We did, and when we did, we figured out why he had behaved the way he had when we first saw him.”
“And why was that?” he asked, finding himself genuinely curious.
“You see the way he jumps,” she said with a gesture to the screen. “It’s different. Not at all correct, comfortable, or efficient. But it was the way he jumped and if left alone he was remarkable at it.”
“But the place you bought him from was trying to make him into something he wasn’t,” he said, catching on.
“Exactly. And because of that, he was lashing out and acting like a horse he really wasn’t.”
“But what about that brown horse?”
“The chestnut?” she asked, casting him a smile over her shoulder.
Apparently, they didn’t have brown horses, but they did have chestnut ones. “Yes, the chestnut one.” He could help the little eye roll that accompanied his correction, even though she’d already turned away from him.
She rewound the video even more, back to the horse that balked at the ocean. “That’s William. He hated the Florida season and we couldn’t figure out why for the longest time. Anywhere else, he was a champion hunter. A different kind of jumper than Charley—Charley was meant for the big fences and speed. William was built for the hunter ring where the fences aren’t so high and horse and rider are judged on form, confirmation, those sorts of things.”
Drew nodded, despite the fact that none of what she said meant anything to him. He could see the difference between the kinds of fences Carly jumped with William versus what he’d seen her jump with Charley or Athena, but he didn’t know the importance of that difference. “And?” he asked.
“And after having him down in Florida for three seasons and having him perform so poorly there when he won everywhere else, my mom and I did some digging into his past. Turns out he was born in Holland and brought to England when he was a yearling. The problem was, it was by boat, during a storm. The boat foundered on the sand when coming into the Thames and got stuck. The non-live cargo was left on the boat until they could haul it out, but the horses, the only live cargo, had to be brought in by hand.”
“By hand?”
“They made the horses swim.”
Even he could see how that could traumatize an animal. “Why couldn’t they bring food for them and keep them on board? That seems a lot easier, doesn’t it?”
“They could have if the storm hadn’t been so severe. They were worried the boat would capsize. They weren’t worried about it sinking, the water wasn’t deep enough for that. But if the boat tipped over, they knew the horses would injure themselves and they weren’t sure if they would be able to get them out.”
“So they swam them to shore, in a storm,” he said quietly, feeling empathy for the huge beast.
“They did, and in the process traumatized at least William, maybe some of the others as well.”
“So what did you do?” he asked.
“My mom had a friend in Florida who lived on the beach. We let him live there for a few months, had someone take him on walks near the water. He never grew entirely comfortable with it, but eventually he wasn’t as anxious about it and that’s what we wanted for him. He loved to show and we hated to see him anxious about anything. After another year or so, he was able to show the Florida circuit without any issues.”
Drew liked this insight into her life with her mom and with the horses, but he didn’t know why it seemed to have such an impact on her now, so he asked. “What made you react when you first saw William on the screen?”
She tilted her head in thought, then shifted onto her back so she could see him. “Do you remember what Vic said tonight?”
It would be a hard scene not to remember. “Of course.”
“He said he’d had to choose between himself and his family, and that, because he wasn’t who they thought he should be, he had hated himself. And then he’d turned into a man he hated even more because of how he’d treated Ian and, to a lesser extent, me.”
“And?” he asked.
“And I asked Joe earlier if he thought Vince had ever had a partner when he was manipulating my uncle. He doesn’t think he did, but he’s also said, on numerous occasions, how Vince’s behavior surprised him. That no one thought he’d be violent. His actions on the night he killed my mom were like the way Vic treated Ian, out of character for him. The way hate was out of character for Charley and William’s behavior in Florida was out of character for him.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Carly, your mom and uncle were threatening to expose him, that’s motive enough to kill them. We don’t need to dig into his past to figure out why he acted out of character, we know why.”
“But what about before that?” she asked.
“Before what?”
“Before he killed them. Why did he get into the game in the first place? We know he had a big ego and big egos like to take risks, but the ego is also supposed to be responsible for self-preservation. Using his badge, his real name, his position of authority—those actions don’t seem driven by someone who is interested in self-preservation.”
“No,” he agreed. “But they are the actions of a man who has delusions about his status in life, a man who thinks he is untouchable.”
She studied him, then let out a long exhale and turned back onto her side, away from him. “I guess.”
Drew let out his own sigh as he tugged her onto her back again, so he could look her in the eyes as they spoke. “Carly, what is this really
about?”
He watched her struggle with her answer. After a few beats, she spoke, “I don’t really know. All I know is that something isn’t sitting right with me. We all agree he was, he is, motivated by power. But wanting power makes you vulnerable. And I can’t help but wonder if someone else was involved—not a partner in the traditional sense—but maybe someone who used that vulnerability and manipulated him into acting in a certain way. Maybe even without knowing it. I know it sounds weird,” she said, raising a hand to pre-empt any objection he might have. “Even to my ears it sounds far-fetched, but after witnessing Vic’s confession today and then watching William and Charley, I guess the consequences that can come when someone takes advantage of another’s vulnerability—intentionally or not—are just on my mind.”
Knowing the trust she’d put in him in sharing her unformed thoughts, worries, and even her own vulnerabilities, he gave her words some consideration. And he had to admit that what she had said, as crazy as it might be, did make a little bit of sense. If Repetto had been manipulated from the beginning, intentionally or not, it would explain some of the inconsistencies they’d encountered between his profile and his actions.
“So, what are you thinking?” he asked.
Again, she let out a deep breath, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Maybe I don’t want my mother’s murder to be the result of one man’s mission to gain power. Maybe I want it to be part of something bigger—part of some larger conspiracy—so that it has more meaning somehow.”
“When in reality, there may be no reason, or meaning, to any of it?”
“Or none that would satisfy me, at any rate,” she conceded. Turning away from him for a moment, she turned the television off then shifted to face him more fully. “Maybe my thoughts are just the ravings of a distraught child, but if there’s a chance someone else was involved, someone intentionally using Repetto’s thirst for power against him, someone who set this whole thing in motion, I don’t want to let them get away with it because we’re only focused on Repetto.”
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