Horse Shy (12 page)

“What are we going to
do
?” Lisa asked Stevie, almost desperate, after Mr. Thompson had left the coffee shop.

“Do?” Stevie echoed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, now we know Max’s story, and it’s not worth telling.”

“We’re not going to tell it,” Stevie said. “But now we won’t have to bother with the rumors other people started. We can start our own!” Stevie’s eyes lit up. “Max was kidnapped by pirates, you know. They stole everything he owned and abandoned him on a South Sea island where the only inhabitants were horses.
When he was finally rescued by the Tasmanian Navy, he refused to leave unless he could bring some of the horses—” she said, remembering a dream she’d had on the MTO.

“That’s the idea!” Lisa said enthusiastically. “Now we’re in business.”

They drank up the last of their sodas and headed home. On the way out of the coffee shop, Stevie dropped the scribbled and scratched draft of her letter into the garbage.

“H
ONEY
, I’
M GOING
out now. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?” Colonel Hanson asked Carole.

“No thanks, Dad. Have a good time playing tennis. Mrs. Lerner’s your partner today, huh?”

“Yes, and she’s got a mean backhand!” he said. “We beat the Morrisons in straight sets last week. Tennis is a great sport. Would you like to try some lessons?”

“No, but thanks anyway,” Carole said. She knew her father was trying to be helpful. It was Saturday—the day she used to go horseback riding. For the last few weeks, her father had been full of suggestions for Saturday activities. Carole hadn’t wanted to do any of them. “I have to read about pyramids for my term paper. I think I’ll do that today.”

“After tennis, Barbara and I are going out to dinner with the Morrisons.”

Carole’s ears perked up. “Is that a date?” she asked.

“Well, I’m not sure I’d call it a date. It’s just sort of, you know, like a—well, a date, I guess.”

Carole laughed at her father’s stammering. “It’s okay, Dad. I like the idea of you going out on a date—even with Mrs. Lerner. As long as she doesn’t use her mean backhand on you!”

“Thanks for your concern,” he said, giving her a hug. “We won’t be late. There’s a frozen pizza in the fridge and
Sands of Iwo Jima
is on TV tonight at ten. That’s the John Wayne movie about the Marines in World War Two. I’ll make the popcorn this time. Is it a date?” he asked slyly.

“Well, er, uh,” Carole stammered, teasing her father. “I’m not, uh, exactly, well, sure I’d call it a—er—
date
.”

“Okay, then
you
make the popcorn. I’ll see you later, you rascal.”

“Okay, it’s a date,” Carole told him, grinning. She and her father loved to watch old movies together and her father was never happier than when the movies were about the Marines. That would be a fun evening to look forward to.

In the meantime, Carole was very pleased that her father was spending the day with Mrs. Lerner. He’d been talking about her a lot recently, so Carole wasn’t surprised they had a date.

So, that took care of her father. But what about her?

Carole didn’t want to read about pyramids. She wanted to ride Cobalt. She wanted, once more, to feel the magnificent horse beneath her, flying across a field, lofting over a jump, moving surely and gracefully, responding to her every command.

Carole put her hands over her face and shook her head, but she couldn’t shake the image of Cobalt from her mind.

Then, almost without thinking, Carole stood up, went to her room and changed her clothes, got her wallet and her house keys, and left the house, locking the door behind her.

In a short time, the bus drew up to the curb where she waited. She dropped her fare into the box and found a seat at the rear of the bus. It was six stops exactly. How well she knew them! Almost blindly, she descended from the bus at the shopping center and walked across the lot, down the street, across the field. To Pine Hollow.

It was still early on Saturday. People were riding already, but the class of her own friends wouldn’t ride until afternoon. Carole was pretty sure she could get into the stable without anybody seeing her. She wasn’t in the mood to talk and she didn’t want to answer any questions. She’d come to find answers to her own questions.

She slipped into the side door of the stable. Mrs. Reg was in the tack room, but she didn’t look up as Carole passed the open door. Patch and Pepper were out of their stalls—in class or on the trails, Carole thought.

And there was the third stall, the empty one. It was Cobalt’s stall. It had been cleaned out completely, with fresh straw covering the floor. The clean feed and water buckets had been turned upside down to dry the last time they had been washed, and they’d been left there. It was empty, unoccupied, waiting.

Carole slid the door open and stepped inside. She breathed deeply, loving the pungent scent of the stable. For a moment, she thought that if she closed her eyes very tight and then reopened them, maybe, just maybe, Cobalt would reappear. She shut her lids, blocking out the streams of sunlight that came through the window. When she opened her eyes again, Cobalt wasn’t there. And then Carole really knew for the first time that Cobalt was gone and he wasn’t going to come back. No amount of wishing would change that, ever.

She leaned against the wall of the stall and slid down to sit on the clean straw. Then, for the first time since Cobalt had died, Carole cried. She sat there alone in his empty stall, her body racked with sorrow. Tears streamed down her face in silent anguish.

When all her tears were spent, she lay down in the straw and slept, exhausted by her grief.

Carole didn’t know how long she slept. When she awoke, the sun was no longer coming in the window. That meant it had to be afternoon, but she didn’t know what time in the afternoon. For a moment, she wondered what had awakened her, and then she heard the voices.

“No, Daddy,
no
!” the girl’s voice whined. It was Veronica. Carole hated the idea that Veronica might find her in Cobalt’s stall. She shifted from the side of the stall, cowering against the front wall where she couldn’t be seen by somebody walking by. But she could hear everything.

“You’re being silly, Ronnie,” a man said. Carole realized that was Mr. diAngelo. It was a little surprising to hear him call her Ronnie. Veronica certainly wouldn’t let anybody else call her that!

“Daddy, the answer is no, and I mean it.”

Were Stevie and Lisa wrong? Was Veronica giving up riding, too? Was that what she was fighting with her father about?

“Delilah’s a good horse!” Mr. diAngelo said. “Isn’t she the mare that girl—what’s her name, Carole?—rides?”

“Yes, Daddy. Carole used to ride Delilah. She’s stopped coming to lessons, though.”

“If Carole was the best rider in your class, then I’m sure Max gave her the best horse in the stable. And, pet, you’d look so good on her—she’s got that beautiful creamy mane and the golden coat.…”

“That’s not the point, Daddy.”

“Well, if Delilah’s not the right horse, I’ll have my agent buy you another Thoroughbred at the auction next month. We got enough out of the insurance for Cobalt to buy you the best horse at the sale. You want one that looks like Cobalt?”

“Daddy, what a horse looks like doesn’t matter,” Veronica said, echoing the thought in Carole’s mind.
“It’s how a horse rides that’s important. But even more important is how the
rider
rides.”

“What are you saying, Veronica?” the man asked his daughter.

There was a long silence. Carole held her breath, waiting for Veronica’s answer.

“It was my fault, Daddy,” she said at last. “I caused the accident that broke my arm and that killed Cobalt.”

“Nonsense!” her father protested. “You said it was Max’s fault. He shouldn’t have set up the jump the way he did.”

“I was wrong,” Veronica said. “It was a tricky jump, all right, but Max had told us how to jump it, and I decided not to pay any attention to him. If I’d had any sense, I would have told him I didn’t know how to make that jump. Cobalt would never have refused the jump. But I went ahead anyway. And it cost Cobalt his life.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that, lamb,” Mr. diAngelo said, comforting his daughter. “After all, we got the insurance money, didn’t we?”

“Money doesn’t have anything to do with it, Daddy! Cobalt’s dead—and I don’t want to own another horse until I can take care of him!”

As long as Carole had known Veronica, she’d never heard her admit that she’d made a mistake. In this case, Veronica was absolutely right. She wasn’t a very good rider. She didn’t deserve a horse like Cobalt.
She didn’t listen to instructions. Her carelessness had cost Cobalt his life. Carole shook her head in wonder. She never would have thought that those were lessons Veronica could learn. Now, not only had she learned them, but she was trying, without success, to teach them to her father.

“You don’t have to worry about taking care of your horse, Ronnie,” her father said, completely missing his daughter’s point. “That’s why Max has all these stableboys here.
They
can take care of him for you.”

“But they can’t ride him for me, Daddy,” she said. “Thanks for wanting to buy me a horse, but I’ll keep on riding the stable horses until I’ve learned a lot more about riding. One day I’ll own another horse. But not until I’m ready.”

“I can just see you on that pretty palomino, Ronnie,” Mr. diAngelo said, his voice dripping with temptation.

“
Daddy
!” Veronica said.

Stunned, Carole remained hidden in Cobalt’s empty stall.

“I
CAN DO
it,” Carole said to the empty stall, after Veronica’s footsteps had faded away. “And even more important, I want to do it.”

In a rush, all of her dreams came back to her. For as long as she could remember, her love of horses had been the one thing in Carole’s life that had never changed. With her father in the Marines, she’d spent much of her life moving from one base to another, or living alone with her mother while her father had duty someplace they couldn’t live. Her mother sometimes used to joke that they ought to “take up residence” in a moving van. But Carole hadn’t minded, because wherever they lived, there were always horses.

She’d first learned to ride at the stables on the bases. When the bases didn’t have stables, her parents always found a stable nearby. Then she’d found that
taking classes at a private stable was a good way to make friends in a new town. Pine Hollow was the best of all, too. Max always had really good horses and he was a strict but good teacher. Max and his father and grandfather had trained quite a lot of national championship riders—and even a few Olympic riders.

Her whole life, all Carole had ever wanted to do was to ride horses, own them, breed them, train them. And yet, she had been willing to give it all up just because of Cobalt.

Now she knew that she couldn’t give up on her dreams, but maybe it wasn’t going to be so easy to make them come true. After all, she’d just about walked out on Max and Mrs. Reg. Max wouldn’t take just anybody as a student and he required a real devotion from his riders. Carole realized that it was possible Max would tell her she wasn’t welcome.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” she asked herself.

She stood up in the stall and brushed the straw off of her blouse. She was more than a little surprised, when she looked down, to see that she was wearing her breeches and riding boots. With a start, she understood that she’d made up her mind to ride again the moment she’d decided to come to the stable that morning. Without realizing it at all, she’d changed into her riding clothes!

She swept the straw off her breeches, plucked a final strand out of her hair, and peered over the stall door. Until she had talked to Max—and until she’d
ridden again and proved to herself that she could still do it with the same commitment—she really didn’t want to talk to anybody or answer anybody’s questions. Fortunately, the coast was clear.

Carole stepped out into the aisle and headed for Max’s office. But as she passed the tack room she saw Mrs. Reg. Mrs. Reg didn’t see her, though. She was entirely too busy retrieving a little black kitten from a rafter in the tack room.