A Summer Without Horses (5 page)

Kip was a dream jumper. Carole’s always reminding me
that every horse has things they are good at and things they aren’t so good at. So far, Carole’s formula wasn’t working for Kip. It seemed to me that he was wonderful at absolutely everything. Max says that the most important thing in hunter jumping is to maintain an even pace and to leave the ground the right distance in front of the jump for the jump. Kip acted as if he’d listened to every word Max had said! Even Skye could tell that I was having a good time and was doing a good job. When I finished the jump course for the second time, I drew Kip to a walk and we ambled over to where Skye was sitting on the fence. I must have had a big grin on my face.

“Like him?” Skye asked.

“Oh, he’s wonderful!” I said.

“Good. Because he’s yours.”

“He’s what?” I asked, assuming I’d misheard Skye. I unsnapped my hard hat so I could hear better.

“Yours. He’s
yours.
”

“Mine?”

I couldn’t believe it. What Skye was telling me was that he’d just arranged with Mr. Ward to buy the horse for me. Mr. Ward was working on hiring a plane to fly Kip back to Virginia to Pine Hollow the following week.

Mine? Skye had bought the horse for me? He said it was because I’d helped him with Chris Oliver. It was the most incredible moment of my life. I know I started crying, but I didn’t pay any attention to the tears. There was too much else to think about. Kip wasn’t just some nag. He
was a really good horse and Skye was chartering a whole airplane just to have him flown to Virginia! For
me
!

Suddenly I felt like a different person. I wasn’t just Lisa Atwood, rider. I was Lisa Atwood, horse owner. Better still, Lisa Atwood, Kip owner. The words began to sink in. I leaned way forward in the saddle and gave Kip the biggest hug around his neck that I could manage. It also gave me a chance to wipe my tears of happiness off in Kip’s mane. I didn’t want Skye to think he’d just gone to a lot of trouble to buy a wonderful horse for a baby.

For a minute, I tried to protest.

“You don’t have to do that, Skye. I don’t really need a horse. This is much too expensive a gift. I couldn’t possibly repay you.”

“Lisa,” he said. “You’re my friend. I can afford a generous present for a girl who’s generous with her friendship. Elvis used to buy Cadillacs for strangers. The least Skye can do is to buy a horse for a friend. Please?”

What could I say, but “Thank you”? And then a minute later, “Thank you very much. More than I can tell you.” Then I hugged Kip again and told him he was going to have to learn to whinny with a gentle Southern drawl because he was moving to Virginia!

“B
E
CAREFUL
WHAT
you wish for. It may come true.”

I’d always thought that was a dumb proverb until it happened to me. My dream of a lifetime was about to be fulfilled and by the time I got out of Skye’s limousine at the hotel, I was beginning to see the bad side of it all.

I should have seen it right away, but it’s hard to be logical when a movie star gives you a horse and tells you he’s going to have it flown across the country for you. When something that wonderful happens, it’s hard to remember that there is any bad news anywhere in the world.

But there was bad news—and it was that Veronica diAngelo was about to become a member of The Saddle Club.

That was the thought that filled my mind as I walked
into the hotel lobby that afternoon. In the elevator, I began manufacturing stories in my mind. What could I possibly tell Stevie and Carole so they wouldn’t know I’d been riding in California? It seemed so cruel, like something out of a horror movie: Now that I finally had my own horse, I’d be stuck with Veronica diAngelo in The Saddle Club!

By the time I reached our floor I realized lying to my two best friends would feel terrible. I opened the door to our room and saw my mother sitting reading a book. Oh no, I thought. How are my parents ever going to afford what it will cost to feed and board Kip? Horses are expensive to own.

“How was your ride?” Mom asked.

“Great,” I answered truthfully. “Skye is the most wonderful, generous person I’ve ever known.”

My mother beamed. There’s a part of her that’s just thrilled that her daughter is friends with
the
Skye Ransom, and then there’s another part of her that just plain likes Skye. Skye is one thing she and I agree on totally.

“He had a picnic made for us and we rode up into the mountains and he kept telling me how much what I’d done had meant to him and I kept telling him how it really wasn’t any big deal and we just had a good time.”

Of course I didn’t tell her that Skye hadn’t just given me a picnic lunch. He’d also given me a horse. I felt so totally confused about Kip and what he was going to mean to The Saddle Club as well as to the Atwood family
that I just wasn’t ready to tell. I knew I had some thinking to do and Mom couldn’t help me.

Since we’d both had long days and were tired, we ordered dinner in the room. I haven’t stayed in hotels much, but I have to say I just love it when they wheel a table into your room and it’s got all this clean white linen on it and plates covered with silver things to keep the food warm. There was even a little flower on the table. It wasn’t exactly a picnic on a hillside overlooking most of southern California, but it was a nice dinner for my mother and me.

I’d ordered a steak and it smelled delicious. It was, too.

“How was Aunt Alison today?” I asked.

“She’s okay.”

That was all my mother said and it told me an awful lot. The fact that she gave me only two words meant that Aunt Alison really wasn’t okay and Mom didn’t want me to worry. That gave me one more thing to worry about.

We talked a lot, but said very little, mostly chatting about how we needed to send postcards to friends and family. I knew there was something my mother didn’t want to tell me about. I wondered if she knew there was something I wasn’t telling her. We finished up our dinner and were in bed early. We both wrote out a couple of postcards and then turned out the lights.

I don’t think I slept at all that night. First, I’d think about lying to my friends and when that made me feel really awful, I’d think about Kip. Then I’d think about
ruining The Saddle Club by having Veronica in it and when that made me feel really awful, I’d think about Kip. Then I’d think about how much it was going to cost to house, feed, and care for Kip and when that made me feel really awful, I’d think about riding Kip. And then I’d think about not having Kip and the fact that I was already planning to lie to my friends, because not telling something can be just as much of a lie as telling something and when those thoughts made me feel really awful, I’d think about Kip again.

Nobody in the world could sleep with thoughts like that tumbling around in her head. I’d gone to bed feeling miserable and confused and by the time the sun came up, I felt miserable, confused,
and
tired.

S
INCE
I
HADN
’
T
decided yet what I was going to do, I decided not to think about it for the whole day. Mom had our day all planned. We were going to visit the Los Angeles County Museum in the morning, then have lunch in Beverly Hills at a nice little restaurant she’d read about, then we’d go visit Aunt Alison.

I know it sounds boring, but it really wasn’t at all. I had a good time with Mom. She knows a lot about art and was able to help me see and understand things I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. We spent a long time studying the Impressionist paintings, which I used to think just looked fuzzy—as if the painters needed new glasses. Mother explained to me that they were experimenting with light and color, showing what light did to and for perception. Also they were painting the things of everyday life—people,
objects, places, and that was very different from the painters who came before them who tended to deal with grand or famous or historical subjects.

After that, we looked at some paintings of horses and hunting. I explained some of the finer points of horses to her. She’s always thought that how a horse looks is the most important thing about it. I was finally able to convince her that looks were the least important factor. It’s how well the horse performs the job he’s expected to do, whether that’s pulling a heavy wagon to market or jumping over a fence after a fox.

The restaurant in Beverly Hills had an outdoor garden with tables in it. I know I spent too much time looking at the people around us and wondering if any of them were rich and famous, and I was aware that my mother was doing the same thing. But there must have been some people there who wondered if Mom and I were rich and famous! Star-gazing is a two-way street.

Then we went to see Aunt Alison. Mom seemed relieved the minute we saw her and that confirmed my suspicion that Aunt Alison had been having a bad day the day before and Mom hadn’t wanted to tell me just how bad it was. My great-aunt was sick, of course, but she had a warm smile on her face when we walked into her room.

“Lisa, tell me about your ride yesterday!” she said eagerly.

She wanted every single detail of every minute of it and I was only too happy to fill her in.

“Kip sounds like a wonderful horse!” she said.

“He absolutely is. I think he’s the best all-round horse I’ve ever ridden. You should have seen how he took the jumps. I mean you should have felt it!”

“Oh, that’s right. It’s English riding you do, isn’t it? We never did much jumping in Montana. We just rounded up cattle.”

That got me talking about my Western riding—the times I’ve gone with Stevie and Carole to our friend Kate’s dude ranch.

“I’ve been on some cattle drives and I’ve camped out. In fact, we even had a race with a forest fire!”

“Fires on a dry day can be deadly,” Aunt Alison said.

“Especially when there’s a breeze,” I agreed. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it.”

“Now, now, Lisa,” Mother said. “Don’t you go making up stories for Aunt Alison.”

“I’m not making it up, Mom. It happened.”

“It did?”

The look on my mother’s face reminded me that I might not have given her exactly all the details of our pack trip, and the look also reminded me why. My mother could be so overprotective sometimes. It was too late now and besides, what did it matter? I was home safely.

“There was a fire near our ranch one very dry summer,” Aunt Alison went on. “It came across our land and killed half the herd of cattle, but it jumped over most of our garden. They do that, you know—jump, I mean.”

“I know. It’s one of the reasons they can move so fast sometimes.”

“Oh, that land,” she said. Once again, she sounded wistful. “It was truly God’s country. I can remember thinking sometimes that land went on forever. Sometimes all I could see were the mountains, sometimes just the prairies. And everywhere there was the blue sky. It stretched on for all eternity.”

“Big Sky country, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, sighing.

I realized that the very thought of Montana was comforting to her.

“You think about it a lot, don’t you?” I asked.

“All the time,” she said. “I think it’s because it occupies so much of my mind and fills my heart with happiness that I don’t have room in my brain to think about this disease and the pain it’s causing me.”

Aunt Alison shifted her position in her bed and although she didn’t say anything, I could see that the movement had been painful to her. She pulled the covers up with her thin, white hands. It was a simple movement, one I make every night, but I could see that it wasn’t simple for her and the whiteness of her hands reminded me that she’d been in this bed and in this hospital for a very long time. That, more than anything, made me sad, because I’ve always loved being outdoors—especially when being outdoors included being with horses.

I didn’t say anything then. I just waited and watched. Aunt Alison wanted to say something else.

“At night, I close my eyes and pretend I’m in Montana. I know the place I grew up isn’t there anymore, but a lot of the state is still just about the way I remember it: wild, mountainous, craggy, open, and beautiful. It’s as if it calls to me. Sometimes I wonder what heaven is like and if I’ll get there. One night I decided that I only want to go there if it’s just like Montana.”