I found Encore’s folder and pulled it out. Sat there with it in my lap. If I opened it, I’d solve the mystery of where he had come from, probably some easy explanation to why my father didn’t want to tell me. But what if it wasn’t easy at all? What if it was something bad? Something that would change the way I thought about him? I could just put it back. Close the filing cabinet and lock it and its secrets back up but that would have been too easy and the secret would have taunted me. Made me feel like a chicken for coming this far and not going through with it.
I opened the folder and the lights suddenly flipped on, temporarily blinding me.
“Emily,” my father said. “What on earth are you doing?”
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
I was busted. There was no way I could lie my way out of this one. I’d been caught red handed, sitting on the floor with the evidence in my lap. I looked down at the open pages and there it was. The official looking letter I’d caught my father looking at the day I burst in on him. I’d forgotten how his face turned red and he shoved the paper into a drawer before I could see what it was. How he’d brushed me off and been glad to get rid of me but now I knew. It was because the letter was from the Equestrian Federation and it had temporary suspension investigation stamped across the top in big red letters.
“What is this?” I said.
I stood up, the paper in my hand. It wasn’t what I’d expected to find. I thought I’d come across some paperwork that said Encore had come from a shady dealer or that maybe he was a secret Grand Prix horse that had been smuggled here because he was supposed to have been killed in an insurance scam. My fourteen year old mind had wandered all over the improbable possibilities, each one more fantastical than the next but that wasn’t what I’d found at all.
“It’s nothing,” Dad said. “Nothing that you need to worry about anyway.”
“Nothing that I need to worry about?” I said. “I think you being suspended is a lot for me to worry about. How are you supposed to train me? How can we go to shows now?”
“Possibly suspended,” he said “And that’s not going to have any sort of effect on the kinds of shows that we go to.”
“Not now,” I said. “Not while we are hanging out here and going to local shows but what about the summer? The big show? Your comeback?”
“This will be sorted out long before then,” he said.
“But what is it that needs sorting out?” I said.
“I told you, you don’t need to know. Now put it away and come back to the house. Missy was worried about you. She sent me down here to get you.”
“Does she know?” I said.
He shook his head. “And you’re not to tell her either. I don’t want her worrying.”
“What would I even tell?” I said as he came over and took the folder from me. “I don’t even know anything.”
But as he put the folder back in the drawer and slid it shut, locking the filing cabinet back up and slipping the key into his pocket instead of hanging it on the back, I knew exactly what all this was about.
“It’s the drugging scandal, isn’t it?” I said softly.
He looked at me, his face tired and eyes suddenly vulnerable and sad.
“How do you know about that?” he said.
“Jess,” I told him. “And if you are in any sort of trouble, she’ll be behind it. She said this wasn't over. She told me you’d been involved in something in Europe. A drugging scandal but I didn’t want to believe it. I know that my father doesn’t have to drug horses to win. He doesn’t do things like that. He has honor and integrity.” I paused. “You do, don’t you? Tell me you didn’t do this. Tell me this is a mistake.”
He sank onto the big leather couch that sat against the wall, underneath all the ribbons and champion photos, and motioned for me to sit next to him.
“You’d better sit down,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I sat down for a moment but then got back up again. I was only just getting to know my father. I didn’t want to have the shiny image I had of him in my mind erased by something he may or may not have done in the past, especially when Jess was behind it. I’d come so far and learned how to stop letting her into my head and yet here I was, doing it all over again.
“You know what?” I said, getting up. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to know. Just forget it.”
“I’ll tell you if you really want.” Dad looked up at me and for the first time I realized that he wasn’t just a father. He was a person. A man with his own life and his own mistakes and regrets, mistakes that I certainly wasn’t about to judge him on when I had plenty of my own.
“Maybe another time,” I said. “But not now.”
“If you’re sure?” he said.
“I am.”
He locked up the office and we walked through the barn, checking on the horses one last time. Macaroni was sleeping in his stall, flat out on his side with his eyes closed and mouth open, snoring like an old man.
“You girls and your ponies.” Dad shook his head but he was smiling.
He put his arm around my shoulders as we walked back to the house. There were noises in the dark but they weren’t the same as the summer ones full of bugs and heat. Instead it was the creak of the trees as the wind whipped through them and the crunch of leaves as they blew together, swirling in the darkness for no one to see.
“Do you think Mom is okay?” I asked him.
“Why wouldn’t she be?” he said.
I shrugged, not wanting to admit that she was barely speaking to me but Dad already knew.
“She’ll come around,” he said. “In the end she always does.”
“Maybe one day you could tell me more about Summer?” I said.
His body stiffened beside me and his hand slipped from my shoulder.
“Or not,” I added. “Mom didn’t like to talk about her either.”
It seemed my dead sister was a touchy subject with both my parents and by now we were already at the cottage door with Missy waiting inside.
“Maybe some other time then,” I said.
“Maybe,” he mumbled.
It wasn’t fair. I wanted to know more about her. I missed her. It was like there was a hole in my life that wasn’t supposed to be there. A void that couldn’t be filled with friends or horses or new baby brothers. I needed to find out what happened to her. What caused her accident? Why did she die? But Dad wasn’t telling any of his secrets and I didn’t know how to make him.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
“Do you want ketchup or mayonnaise?” I asked Mickey.
“Mayonnaise? Gross. Who has mayonnaise on their burger?”
“I do,” I said, loading ten packets onto my tray.
I’d asked Mickey to meet me at the local burger joint. I needed to tell her about Ethan and I couldn’t do that out at the barn. We could have ridden out on the trail and I could have told her then but I didn’t exactly think it was fair on Hampton if she happened to have a meltdown while riding him and also Mr. Rivers had ramped up the work on the cross country jumps which meant there were students out there at all times of the day. You wouldn’t think that many kids would be keen on performing manual labor but Mr. Rivers was too smart for that. He’d thrown in free lessons as a carrot on a stick to dangle in front of them and it had turned into some kind of contest to see who could do the most work and in doing so get the best free advice. I guess he was good after all.
The burger joint was crowded and we snagged the last booth which was in the corner by the play area where kids were fighting over the slide while another was sitting in the middle of the ball pit, crying and stuffing French fries into his mouth at the same time. The mothers were talking amongst themselves, ignoring their children completely.
“That will be Missy one day,” Mickey said.
“Hardly,” I replied. “Her kid is going to be a barn rat. She’s already looking for a tiny pony so that Owen can start riding the moment he walks.”
&n
bsp; “Oh my gosh, that is going to be so adorable,” Mickey said. “How cute. You’ll get to take him in his first lead line class and dress him up in teeny tiny breeches and a little jacket.”
“He’s not a doll,” I said.
“I know.” She rolled her eyes. “But it’s still so cute. Didn’t you ever play with Ken when you were little?”
“Who?”
“You know, Barbie and Ken?”
“Um, no,” I said. “I did not.”
“No wonder you don’t have a clue about boys.” Mickey shook her head.
“Speaking of boys.” I poked a fry into the mountain of mayonnaise that I’d squeezed out of the packets. “I need to tell you something.”
“You talked to Ethan?” she said, her voice excited and face bright. “I knew you would. You asked him didn’t you? What did he say? No, don’t tell me yet.” She settled herself in her seat and flattened her hair. “Okay, now tell me.”
“Well it’s kind of complicated,” I said slowly.
“Complicated? How can it be complicated?”
“Well, I saw something,” I said.
“What? Unless he’s got a tail or twelve toes or something, I don’t care.”
I took a deep breath. “I saw him kissing someone else.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Mickey didn’t say anything. She just sat there not blinking or speaking. I wondered if she’d stopped breathing. I’d broken her. I’d broken my best friend.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” I said.
“It’s a mistake,” she said, her voice wavering. “You couldn’t have seen that. I bet it wasn’t him. It was just someone who looked like him.”
“It was him,” I said sadly. “Trust me, I wish it wasn’t. I totally wanted him to like you and go to the ball with you and everything but I saw it with my own eyes. He was kissing someone else and he asked her to go to the ball with him.”
Tears welled up in Mickey’s eyes. If she started crying, I didn't know what I was going to do. This was why I’d brought her to a public place, so she wouldn’t have an embarrassing meltdown but Mickey didn’t seem to care that there were other people around us or that her crying would make everyone look at her and at me.
“How could he do this to me?” she said.
“Well to be fair, he doesn’t know you like him, does he?” I said, trying to make her feel better even though I knew very well that Ethan didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.
“So I could still ask him to the ball,” she said, looking bright again. “Maybe he’ll change his mind and go with me instead of, wait, who did you say he was kissing again?”
“I didn’t,” I said, not looking at her.
“Well?” She leaned forward on the table. “Who was it?”
I didn’t want to throw Fern under the bus, after all she had no idea that Ethan was playing the field. It wasn’t exactly her fault.
“I shouldn’t say.” I shook my head.
“You have to,” Mickey said, her voice raising again. “I’m your best friend. You owe it to me. I need to know. You have to tell me and you have to tell me now.”
“Okay,” I said, looking around nervously as people started staring at us. “Don’t freak out. It was Fern, okay?”
“What?” Mickey cried. “The squirrel loving hippie girl? No way. He wouldn’t like her. Not in a million years.”
“What is wrong with Fern?” I said.
I hadn’t been too happy to find her kissing Ethan either but that didn’t mean she was a bad person. I kind of liked her. She was cool and different and it wasn’t her fault that Ethan was a player.
“She’s crazy,” Mickey said.
“She is not. She’s cool.”
“Oh so I should just let her have him then?” Mickey said.
“I don’t think it works that way,” I said. “I may not know anything about boys but I think Ethan is going to take whoever he wants to the ball and I don’t think you’ll be able to stop him and besides, wouldn’t you rather go with a boy who really likes you, not one you’re going to make like you?”
“You don’t know anything,” Mickey said, her voice now steely and cold.
And I guess I didn’t because she wouldn’t talk about it anymore. She said that someone who had never even been on a date couldn’t possibly understand how boys worked and that I should keep out of it. I agreed. The last thing I wanted was to get in the middle of Mickey’s love life since she obviously wasn’t going to listen to a word I said anyway. I was just glad that Fern had taken the heat off me. Now Mickey would never have to know that Ethan had originally asked me to the ball and I had to make sure that it stayed that way because if she ever found out, she’d kill me.
“So,” I said after an unusually long, uncomfortable silence in which we both ate the rest of our food without looking at one another. “Do you want to go to the tack store?”
“My mom is picking us up in thirty minutes,” she said, looking at her watch.
“Well that should give us enough time, don’t you think? And it will be fun.”
“I guess,” she said.
“You might be able to pick up some cool things for the show,” I said.
“I already have everything I need for the show.”
She got up to throw our trash away and I thought about what would happen when I told her I was taking Arion to the dressage show. It would be just as bad as her finding out about Ethan, only worse because I was her best friend. I was going to have to tell my father that there was no way I could ride. I was going to have to sit this one out to save my relationship with my best friend.
“Are you coming then?” she said.
“Yes.”
Taylors Tack Emporium was a couple of blocks down on the other side of the street. Mickey texted her mom while we walked, telling her to pick us up there instead of at the burger joint. The town was busy with cars belching smoke and people all over. It made me miss the quiet hush of the barn and the sounds and smells I loved so much but at least stepping into the tack store was a relief. The noise faded away as the door chimed our arrival and the scent of leather washed over us.
“So,” I said brightly. “What do you want to look at?”
“I dunno.” Mickey shrugged glumly.
“Come on.” I threaded my arm through hers. “You must need something. Cookies for Hampton or tape for braiding?”
“Not really.”
“Alright.” I sighed. “How about we just check out the sale rack then? Maybe they’ll have some cute shirts or something.”
I dragged Mickey to the back of the store, intent on finding something that would cheer her up. In fact, I was so intent that I wasn’t looking where I was going and I walked right into a boy. A boy who smelled suspiciously of horse and expensive cologne.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
It was dark in the back corner of the tack store where they kept the sale items. The only light was from a window high up near the ceiling that filtered blinding sunlight through it. For a moment I thought that the person I’d walked into was Will. He was about the same height and build and felt familiar. But as I backed away, mumbling that I was sorry, I realized that it wasn’t Will at all, it was Jordan, Taylor’s son.
“What are you doing here?” Mickey said, her voice flat.
She sort of had a passing thing for Jordan back in the day and that flirting had let to the fateful day when she tried to ride Hampton to the beach by herself, fell off and ended up in a coma. She’d sworn off boys for a while after that but it hadn’t stuck, as was evidenced by her current infatuation with Ethan. But she clearly still blamed Jordan for her lengthy stay in the hospital and the fact that she nearly lost her horse over it.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said.
“It’s a tack store, isn’t it?” Mickey snapped. “We’re here to buy stuff, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he replied with a grin.
“You’ll have to excuse her,” I said, gra
bbing Mickey’s arm. “She’s not in a very good mood today.”
“And what about you?” he said. “Are you in a not very good mood too?”
I looked at Jordan, weighing him up. Trying to figure out if he was mocking me or not. He had grown a little taller than the last time I’d seen him and his face had filled out more. Gone were the studs and nose rings. He was tanned and fit and wearing breeches.
“No,” I said. “But what’s with the get up? You ride horses instead of motorbikes now?”
“Well my mother does own a tack store,” he said, leaning against the shelves of bell boots. “I get all the free stuff I want so it seemed kind of silly not to at least give it a go.”
“Are you any good?” I said.
I was curious about the boy with the sly smile and sparkling eyes. He was interesting and cute. I couldn’t help wondering if he was going to the ball for like one second. Then I suddenly realized I’d been sucked into the whole stupid boy crazy thing without even realizing it was happening. This Valentine’s day deal was like some kind of curse or a really bad virus that you caught and couldn’t get rid of. I couldn’t wait for the whole thing to be over.
“I guess you’ll find out at the next show,” he said.
“The next show we’re going to is a dressage show,” Mickey said.
“Why on earth would you go to one of those?” He laughed.
Half Halt (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 15) Page 6