If Wishes Were Horses (20 page)

A
ND THEN THERE
was the time that Wyatt shot one of the ranch trucks!” Aunt Lou exclaimed. “So help me God, he really did! Can you imagine such a thing? He couldn't have been more than sixteen! I'll never forget it as long as I live!”

Gabby's jaw dropped. During their visits to the Flying B, she and Trevor had heard several stories from Wyatt's youth. Once he was caught as naked as a jaybird in the hayloft with some town girl. Then there was the day that he broke his right leg trying to barrel race one of the farm's fastest studs without proper instruction. But of all the tales about Wyatt, this was surely the most outrageous. Gabby couldn't help but look at him and laugh.

“You shot a truck?”
she asked.

When Wyatt nodded, Gabby turned to look at Trevor. Trevor seemed as shocked as his mother.

“My God!”
Gabby said to Wyatt. “Why on earth would you shoot a
truck
?”

From the other side of the table, Ram chuckled. “Maybe he thought it was an alligator. He's real good at shooting
them
. He's shot lots of gators, but he's only blasted the one truck that I know of. Nowadays whenever he visits the ranch garage, the Jeeps all cringe in terror.”

While everyone laughed, Wyatt sighed and shook his head. “It isn't what you think,” he said to Gabby. “At least…not for the most part.”

Eager to exploit this occasion, Gabby gave Wyatt a sly look. “So tell me about it,” she said. “This I have to hear!”

“Ram and I were out on a hunting trip, searching for gators,” Wyatt said. “I was about sixteen, and we were using one of the ranch pickups. We parked it near the lake then sat in the pickup bed in lawn chairs, waiting like that for hours. A couple of gators finally showed themselves, and I shot one of them. It was the first time I had ever been hunting, and I was as nervous as hell. Well, right after I shot the gator I lowered my gun. In my excitement I accidentally squeezed off another round, right through the bed of the truck and into the ground! It just missed the gas tank! If it had hit it, Ram and I wouldn't be sitting here today. Come to think of it, that might have been the same day that Ram's hair turned white!”

Gabby shot Ram a skeptical look. “Are you pulling my leg?” she demanded.

Ram smiled broadly. “Appealing as that might be, young lady, the answer is no. It's all true. I even kept that piece of the truck
bed to prove it. There's a nice, clean, thirty-thirty hole through it, and it hangs on my office wall. I'd be happy to show it to you sometime.”

Laughing uncontrollably again, Gabby covered her face with her hands. Wyatt just shook his head.

“I told Wyatt that I didn't mind him shooting the truck,” Ram added casually, as he fiddled with his coffee spoon. “But what I could never figure out was how on earth he was planning to skin it!”

Gabby was soon laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. She tried to talk, but couldn't. The best she could do was to shake her head and wave her hands, silently begging Ram to stop.

The six of them were finishing their pork chop dinners and Aunt Lou had again begun telling stories about Wyatt. Gabby knew how much Lou loved Wyatt, but that didn't keep her from brazenly relating some of the more embarrassing episodes from his past. Sometimes Gabby felt that the stories suited him. Other times they seemed quite out of character for the rather quiet, reserved man she secretly loved. That was partly because of how he had been tempered by the loss of his wife and son, she realized.

It would have been wonderful to have known him then,
she thought,
when his heart was light and free.
Then Wyatt smiled at her again as only he did, and she realized that knowing him in the here and now was all that truly mattered.

Gabby knew that she and Trevor should be going, but she was enjoying herself. Besides, if they missed dessert Trevor would complain about it all the way home. Today had been special. She had never seen Trevor ride like that, and she wanted to stay a bit longer and enjoy the moment. As Aunt Lou left the dining room
to fetch dessert, Gabby sat back in her chair and looked around.

Night had fallen in earnest. Butch and Sundance—awake for once—lay at Ram's feet. As the old grandfather clock struck nine times, Gabby wished she could stop that clock and with it time itself, so that she might stay here forever. Too few of these precious nights remained, and she was determined to make the most of them.

Soon the kitchen doors opened and Aunt Lou returned carrying a gorgeous-looking apple pie. Trevor grinned widely. No matter how much dinner he ate, he always had room for Lou's desserts. Lou placed the pie on the table.

“It looks wonderful, Lou,” Gabby said. “How I wish I could bake an apple pie like that!”

“Pish-tosh!” Lou said. “There's nothin' to baking a good pie, child. First off you gotta start with fresh apples, then—”

Everyone suddenly heard boot heels running down the hallway. Mercy came barreling into the dining room. She was out of breath, and there was an excited look on her face.

“Sadie's water just broke!” she shouted. “Her foal is coming!”

Without a word, Ram, Wyatt, Big John, and Mercy hurried toward the open French doors. As the others started running across the lawn, Wyatt stopped and stared back at Gabby and Trevor.

“Aren't you coming?” he exclaimed.

Trevor jumped to his feet. “You're goddamned right I am!” he shouted.

“Trevor Powers!” she shouted. “That will be quite enough of that language!”

When Trevor reached Wyatt, they both turned and stared at
Gabby with equal incredulity.
God,
Gabby thought.
They're like two peas in a pod.
She suddenly realized that this wasn't the time for chastising Trevor, and she hurriedly joined them.

Wyatt shot a quick look at Aunt Lou. “Aren't you coming?” he asked.

As if nothing special was happening, Lou calmly poured another cup of coffee.

“Nope,” she said. “I've seen it a hundred times before. Big John's been bringin' foals into this world for nigh on forty years. But my prayers go with you, just the same.”

 

BY THE TIME WYATT,
Gabby, and Trevor arrived, Big John and Mercy were already tending to Sadie. As the others huddled together on the far side of the stall door, no one spoke. Gabby knew nothing about birthing foals, but she realized that the scene playing out before her was important. Sadie was lying on one side in the clean straw that Trevor had laid down only hours before.

“Do mares always lie down to give birth?” she asked Wyatt.

“Usually,” Wyatt answered.

As Gabby looked over at Trevor, she suddenly realized that he had never witnessed a birth of any kind. He was fixated on the scene, his expression a mixture of worry and fascination.
This is indeed a day of firsts,
Gabby thought.

Soon Sadie's contractions started. As everyone watched, over the course of the next twenty minutes Sadie's foal was born. When the new colt arrived, everyone cheered. He looked perfect, with a gray coat like his mother's. Brushing tears from her eyes, Gabby
laughed. Aside from when she'd first held Trevor in the hospital, she had never seen anything so wonderful.

“My God, Wyatt,” she said. “He's beautiful.”

Wasting no time, Big John cut the umbilical cord and Mercy painted the umbilical stump with iodine. They then gave the colt a quick examination to ensure that he was breathing regularly and to rule out unseen abnormalities. Soon he sat up on his hocks and elbows. When he started mouthing, Gabby realized that his suckling reflex had arrived.

“How many days before he stands all the way up?” Gabby asked.

When everyone laughed, she didn't understand. She gave Trevor a curious look.

“What's so funny?” she asked her son.

“He'll be up within two hours,” Trevor said, his eyes still locked on the foal. “And soon after that, he'll be nursing.” Trevor turned and looked apologetically at Ram and Wyatt. “Never mind my mom,” he added casually. “She's still a city slicker.”

As Ram and Wyatt laughed again, Gabby remained stunned by all that Trevor seemed to know about horses. “Did you learn those things here at the ranch?” she asked.

Trevor nodded, then returned his full attention to the foal.

Twenty minutes later, the foal was on his feet and eagerly suckling from his mother. When he had his fill, Sadie started licking him all over. Moments later, Ram beckoned Wyatt into the corridor. When they returned, each wore a mischievous smile. Gabby was about to ask what was going on, but Ram stopped her with a timely wink.

Ram cleared his throat. “So what do you think we should name him, Wyatt?” he asked.

“Well, I've got an idea about that,” Wyatt said. “Do you suppose that Trevor should name him? After all, he's been taking care of Sadie for some time now.”

Trevor immediately spun around and looked Ram straight in the face. Although words failed him, his delighted expression said it all.

Ram took a deep breath while making a great show of rubbing his chin. “I don't know. It's a big responsibility. Foals like this don't come along every day.”

After silently torturing Trevor for a few moments longer, Ram smiled. “I suppose that it would be okay. Assuming Trevor suggests something we can live with, that is.”

Trevor was so happy that he literally jumped up and down.
“Yes!”
he shouted jubilantly.

Big John and Mercy left the foal to his mother's care then walked over to join the others. As Big John hung his thumbs in his overalls, he gave Trevor a questioning look.

“So, young man,” he said. “What's his name going to be?”

Unbeknownst to everyone else, Trevor had already selected a name. Since the day he'd first met Sadie and learned that her foal would be male, he had thought long and hard about it. He had even done extra research in the school library to help him decide. It was to have been his secret name for the foal, the name that only he whispered to him when no one else could hear. And now to his great amazement he had been granted the wonderful and unexpected chance to
actually
name Sadie's colt. His mind made up, he turned around and took a deep breath.

“We'll call him Doc,” Trevor said simply.

This time Ram's skepticism was genuine.
“Doc?”
he asked. “That's all? I don't mind it, I guess, but it seems a pretty simple name for such a magnificent foal as this. What do you think, Wyatt?”

Wyatt was also hesitant. “I don't know…are you sure about this, Trevor?”

Trevor nodded. “We'll call him Doc,” he insisted. Then he smiled. “But not just any Doc.”

“What are you talking about?” Ram asked.

“We'll call him Doc
Holliday,
” Trevor answered gleefully. “You already have Wyatt and Morgan. It just seems right, don't you think?”

For several moments, no one spoke. Then Ram laughed uproariously. Soon everyone followed suit.

“By God, the boy's on to something!” Ram said. He grabbed Trevor's shoulders and gave him a strong hug. “Doc Holliday it is! And well done, too!”

As Trevor smiled from ear to ear, Gabby was overcome again. “Good job,” she said quietly. “But we should head back to the house now.”

Trevor looked at Sadie. “You did just fine, girl,” he said quietly. “I'm proud of you.”

Soon everyone save for Big John and Mercy started walking back to the mansion. This had been a momentous day for Trevor. But before the night ended, he would hungrily gobble down two big slices of Aunt Lou's apple pie, complete with vanilla ice cream.

It would be the best he had ever tasted.

T
HREE WEEKS LATER,
on a Saturday afternoon, Trevor sat alone in his bedroom doing homework. The New Beginnings Program would end soon, and he already knew that he would miss the ranch badly.

His stomach growled, reminding him that he had skipped lunch. His mother had gone to run errands, promising to return in time to make supper. She would try to re-create Aunt Lou's Cajun chicken, she had said. Then she had laughed, adding that she could make no promises about the results.

Trevor sighed and turned the page in his geometry book. To his dismay, yet another group of incomprehensible problems stared back at him, daring to be solved. Prior experience told him that they were exactly the sort of thing that might prompt a surprise quiz. But as he examined them, he didn't care.

Whether his restlessness came from hunger or from pure lack of interest, he didn't know. He only knew that he missed the Flying B, and that Monday couldn't come quickly enough. Bored to tears, he decided to switch to his English homework. He was behind on his reading of
Moby-Dick,
anyway.

When he reached for his books, his elbow struck them, causing them to slide off his desk and onto the floor. They were still bound tightly by his father's belt, and had landed alongside his trusty red Windbreaker and beloved cowboy boots.

He started to reach for the books, then he stopped and sat back in his chair. There was something odd about the belt, the Windbreaker, and the boots all lying together like that. He couldn't remember ever seeing them that way, and he found it jarring. The belt spoke of his late father, the Windbreaker reminded him of his anger, and his boots took him back to the Flying B. He stared at the disparate objects for a long time, realizing that they represented very different parts of his life.
But which of them means the most to me?
he wondered.

No easy answers came, and the longer he wondered, the more the mystery deepened. Although the sudden realization had been nearly twelve weeks in the making, not until this moment had he felt so torn between different worlds. Feeling sad and powerless, he left his bedroom to sit on the town house balcony.

Although he had always enjoyed the balcony, nowadays it felt cramped. The view was nice enough, but it didn't compare with the one from the front porch of the big house. As Trevor reclined on one of the lounge chairs, he looked out over the canal that lay before the town house complex. To his left lay the swimming
pool, its cool water filled with fellow residents and their children. Trevor sighed, again wishing that he was out at the ranch. It always seemed cooler there, and less crowded.

Wyatt, Aunt Lou, Big John, Mercy, and Jim Mason had all taken root in his heart. But it was Ram who had given him his treasured pocketknife, taught him to face down Tim Richardson, and allowed him to name Sadie's colt. It had again been Ram who was the most patient with him, and taught him the manly rules of the ranch. Of them all, it was that old, bowlegged codger with the shock of white hair he cared for most.

He also knew that he had learned more than equestrianism. He had come to realize that the Blaines were good people, and not the monsters he had believed them to be. That last thought again caused him to remember his father's death. For a long time he had tried hard to bury that special hurt, but it continued to haunt him. He sat there on the balcony for some time, again feeling threatened by it.

After staring blankly out at Boca Raton for another half hour, he finally decided. Leaving the balcony behind, Trevor walked into his mother's bedroom. Because she wasn't home, he felt like an intruder. When he reached the far side of the room, he slid open the closet door with unnecessary stealth.

On the top shelf of the closet lay a cardboard box. Reaching up, he gently took it down and placed it on his mother's bed. Gabby had often mentioned the box and where it could be found, but until this moment he had never wanted to see it. His mother called it “the Jason box,” and she said that it contained mementos of Trevor's late father.

For the last five years, Trevor had been torn about whether to look inside the Jason box. He knew it contained things of his father's he wanted to see, and that knowledge heightened his curiosity. But knowing that certain other items were also there had always stopped him. For some reason that he couldn't explain, he suddenly needed to examine them all. With trembling hands, he removed the lid from the box and looked inside. What he found brought back painful memories, and he wiped away a tear.

He saw a lock of his father's sandy hair, its strands tightly collected by a red ribbon. There were two gold wedding rings, also bound with ribbon. Next to them was a white gold wristwatch that Trevor vaguely remembered. The watch crystal was smashed, its bent hands permanently frozen at 3:21. He saw the flaking remnants of a withered red rose, some wedding pictures of his mother and father, and a small stack of letters and greeting cards addressed to his mother in her maiden name.

When Trevor removed these things from the box and looked at them, his hands trembled because he knew what would come next. He tentatively looked back into the box. To preserve the precious documents, his mother had secured them in plastic zip bags. After gently putting the first objects aside, he removed the press clippings and the police report, and started to read.

 

GABBY HAD BEEN AWAY
longer than planned, and night had fallen. As she juggled her bags with one hand and unlocked the front door with the other, she was surprised to see that save for a shaft of light coming from the hallway, the town house was bathed in darkness.

She quietly placed the packages on the kitchen table then tiptoed to the hallway corner. The door to her bedroom lay open; the lights were on inside. For several moments she was afraid that an intruder had entered the house. But her maternal instincts quickly overcame her fear, and she had to know if Trevor was all right.

“Trevor?” she called out.

“I'm in here,” he answered softly.

Gabby walked down the hallway and into her bedroom. When she saw Trevor sitting cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by the contents of the Jason box, she drew in a sharp breath.

For several moments, mother and son simply stared at each other. Then Gabby crossed the room and sat down on the carpet alongside him. Before looking into Trevor's eyes again she picked up the two wedding rings, remembering. After a time she gently placed them back on the floor.

Gabby realized that Trevor had finally read the press clippings and the police report, because they had been removed from their zip bags and lay unfolded on the carpet. Traces of Trevor's splotchy tears could be seen here and there on them, and his eyes were red. Gabby gave her son a compassionate look.

“So you finally read them,” she said softly. “That's good.”

Trevor sniffed and rubbed his nose. “If it was so good, then why does it feel so bad?”

“Because the old adage is right. Sometimes the truth hurts.”

Trevor's face darkened. “My father was a drunk, wasn't he? He was a drunk who went out and killed two innocent people. The accident was his fault, not Mrs. Blaine's.”

“That's right,” Gabby answered. “And yes, your father had a
drinking problem. But he never meant to kill Danny and Krista, any more than he planned for himself to die. He wasn't a bad man, Trevor. He loved us both very much, regardless of what you might think.”

Trevor blinked back some fresh tears. “Why don't the Blaines hate us?” he asked. “Especially Wyatt…I can't believe that he let me into the New Beginnings Program.”

Gabby tried to smile. “Wyatt realizes that we aren't to blame. But he wasn't the only hurdle. Do you remember that day in Principal Marshall's office? It was like you
wanted
to get kicked out of school.”

“I know,” Trevor said. “And I'm sorry. I just didn't know who I was supposed to be, or how I should act.”

Gabby nodded. “You've been through a lot. But tell me—do you see things more clearly now?”

Trevor looked down at the yellowed papers and nodded.

“And do you still love your father?” she asked.

He nodded again. “Yes. Despite what he did.”

“That's good,” Gabby said, taking Trevor's hands into hers. They felt warm, their palms still damp with his tears.

“And the Blaines?” she asked. “How do you feel about them now?”

“I love them, too. Is that wrong?”

Gabby shook her head. “No. We owe them more than we could ever repay. And now that you've told me all this, I realize something else about you.”

“What?” Trevor asked.

Gabby placed her hands on either side of her son's face and
lifted it to hers. “You've forgiven
everyone.
You've come full circle, and you've made me proud.”

For the first time since the car crash, Trevor laid his head on Gabby's shoulder. Seated among the aging mementos of her previous life, she held her son close.

“But the day after tomorrow starts the last week of the program,” Trevor said quietly. “What will I do without the ranch?”

It had suddenly become Gabby's turn to become emotional. While fighting back tears, she searched for the right words.

“Oh, we'll go back once in a while,” she said, her voice nearly cracking as she thought about Wyatt. “I've already asked Wyatt, and it's fine with him. But we mustn't go too often, or we'll wear out our welcome. And don't forget—the Flying B annual ball comes soon.”

“But it won't be the same,” Trevor said. “I'll miss it all so much.”

So will I, Trevor,
Gabby thought.
And in a special way that you will never know.