Miracle Beach (15 page)

Moving back toward his head, Macy again patted the horse’s neck. Gounda responded with a deep exhale, licking his lips. She liked to think Gounda liked this time as much as she did—just the two of them, preparing for battle together. Their own little team. Every other rider she had ever met had their own groom, sometimes several, and she always felt like the oddball for doing it all herself. But Macy wouldn’t trade those stolen moments with Gounda for all of the convenience in the world. She couldn’t imagine someone handing her the reins as she walked into the ring, not knowing what kind of mood her horse was in until she got on his back.

Macy held the bridle in her right hand while guiding the simple snaffle bit into Gounda’s mouth with the left, slipping the brow band over his forehead and the crown piece over his ears in one fell swoop.

She pressed her brow to Gounda’s forehead, big as a dinner plate. “Just you and me, big guy,” she said, remembering too well the last time she had said those words—sitting on the floor of his stall, trying on the word
widow
for size, and how it seemed to fit like a too-small dress, itchy and stifling.

Gounda shook his head free of hers and nudged her shoulder, as if to say, “Come on; let’s go already.”

Macy held the reins at arm’s length, taking one last look at her horse. Gounda’s seal brown coat seemed to shine with added intensity, independent of the fading sunlight. He towered above her with chiseled muscles stretched over a refined frame. And his head—his head was perched elegant and regal atop a thick, powerful neck lined with tiny veins. He was stunning. Gorgeous. Wholly and completely beautiful. Macy wondered if this was how parents felt about their children; every time Macy looked at Gounda, she was awestruck by what she saw. His elegance, his softness, him.

She patted his neck twice, and Gounda moved forward with her, taking their first steps toward the show ring together.

 

Martine was waiting for her in the chute. Macy let him give her a leg up and, once aboard Gounda’s broad back, she took in the course as a whole one last time.

“Okay?” Martine asked her.

She was not okay. She still didn’t want to be here, to be doing this. Her stomach seized. She felt dizzy, fought the urge to vomit. Macy nodded in spite of herself.

The gate steward’s voice boomed: “Painter on course. Armstrong Allen on deck. McGill, Farell, and Jensen to follow.”

Oh, sweet Jesus
, Macy thought.

“This course is straightforward, Madame Armstrong. Nothing to trick you up.” He fixed Macy with a hard, serious stare. “Now,” he said, “you ride.” With a pat on her boot for encouragement, Martine excused himself to find a seat.

If only it were that easy
, she thought.

Macy reached down to check the girth, pulled the billets up one more hole, and fastened the chin strap on her helmet. Then she reached into her coat pocket for her gloves and pulled those on.

She closed her eyes and breathed deep. Every time she visualized the course, rogue scenarios sneaked their way in: Gounda refusing a fence and her flying into it; her pulling Gounda up, too hard, before a plank vertical and him crashing through, sending the whole thing toppling down around them; Macy losing her balance and getting behind the motion, only to be bounced off of Gounda’s back like a rag doll upon landing and watching from the ground as her horse tore riderless through the ring.

She heard clapping, which meant that Ian Painter had just finished his round. Clean, of course.

“Macy Armstrong Allen? You’re up,” the steward said, standing with a clipboard by the gate.

She clucked to Gounda and adjusted her reins as they walked up the chute. An argument raged in her head:
Just breathe
.
Oh, my God I can’t do this. Just breathe. I don’t want to breathe and I don’t want to do this. Breathe
.
Oh, God, look at all of those people and fence seven looks gigantic and the bicycle fence looks airier than it usually does and what if he runs out on it? Breathe. Just breathe. Oh, God.

Ian Painter walked Rosetta out of the arena on a loose rein and toward them. “Nice go,” Macy said, so quietly that she didn’t know whether he had heard her. As soon as the words escaped her lips, she wished he hadn’t. Then she could have just sneaked on by him.

“Be careful out there,” he said with a wink. “That last combo’s a real doozy. If you get long . . .” Ian Painter shook his head and drew two fingers across his throat and whistled ominously.

Macy glared at him.
You jackass
, she wanted to say, but she held her tongue. She probably had that much coming, if not more.

Riding into the ring, she heard the announcer boom, “Macy Armstrong Allen from British Columbia and her Hanoverian, Gounda.” She squeezed her legs to Gounda’s sides and they were off.

She pointed Gounda at the first jump, a straightforward ascending oxer with green-and-white-striped rails and a small forest of miniature evergreens on either side. Macy pitched the reins at Gounda and closed her eyes, but he took the jump easily, seamlessly. She exhaled.
Time to ride
, she thought. Then it was on to a simple vertical painted red and white like a candy cane, with a long distance leading up to it and no set number of strides to make the distance in.
Ride with impulsion
. Martine’s words—a small stock of them that he used often—rang in her ears. But Gounda’s head was up, his ears pricked forward. He lived for this. For jumping. Macy didn’t need to help him in the least with his impulsion. So she held still, waiting.

Land. One-two-three
, Macy counted in her head, each word matching one of Gounda’s strides. Almost always, riders had to cover a specific, preferred distance between the jumps. One of Macy’s first riding instructors had taught her to count the landing, which wasn’t a full stride, and then continue the count to help her gauge the distance. She didn’t need to anymore, but the counting was habit, security.

From there it was on to a bending line from jump three to jump four, a box oxer and a Liverpool.
Keep his eye up. Keep his focus on the top rail. Use some leg in the air.
Martine’s voice inside Macy’s head was calm and assured. She felt herself starting to settle in. The rhythm, the constant evaluation of distance, and Martine’s meditative voice all demanded a level of concentration that didn’t allow for stray thoughts.

The rest of the course flew by, with Gounda seeming to float over the jumps. A tight rollback, a triple combination that could trip up inexperienced horses or those with a tendency to jump flat, another couple of verticals and an oxer across the diagonal with a gigantic spread. Through it all, Macy focused on the basics: keeping Gounda’s inside shoulder up through the turns, not letting him rush, letting the distance come to her instead of trying to force it—and letting Gounda do his job.
Breathe
, she had to remind herself, and she gulped in a lungful of air. Galloping up to and over obstacles that loomed well above her line of sight, even atop Gounda, never got old. That thrill, that rush. That was what she rode for. But it required a level of concentration so high that at times she finished riding a course as out of breath as if she had sprinted a mile.

And it dawned on Macy, coming out of the final turn with only a triple combination striped loud like a bumblebee left to go, that they were on the brink of a completely clean round. Not one takedown, not even a rub.

Macy gave herself over to the rhythm. She let her concentration drift. And then Ian Painter’s words landed in her mind like cannonballs of snark and doubt:
That last combo’s a real doozy
.

And right then, with the whole of Canadian show jumping as witnesses, Macy forgot how to ride.

She gulped for air. Panicked, she legged Gounda forward. Then, at the last minute, pulled him back hard.
Combo’s a real doozy.
Gounda took off long, farther from the first fence in the combination than he should have. That put them landing too close on the other side of it, with three strides to get in before the second. Macy could see there was far too much distance stretched before them to make it happen.
Combo’s a real doozy.
Gounda did the only thing he could: jumped long into the second fence. It was a short, friendly jump—one that on a normal day in normal circumstances they would’ve sailed over with all four of their eyes closed.

But he had jumped long, which meant that Gounda again landed too close to the base of the second fence. It was one stride to the last and final fence, but they needed one and a half, which wasn’t a readily available option.

Macy closed her eyes then. Against what she couldn’t make happen. Against what she knew was coming. Against the whole world at that one, brief moment.

She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to tell this horse beneath her who, day in and day out, placed every ounce of his faith and trust in her without a fight and without question. She didn’t know because Ian Painter’s sneer had filled her whole head.

And just then, another voice stepped in. Quiet at first, then louder. Until it drowned out every last murmur of Ian Painter.
You can do this, munchkin. Giddy up now!

Nash.

Macy gathered the reins and closed her legs hard around her horse. Gounda surged forward, then lifted up with his shoulders. Up . . . up . . . up.

And over.

That’s my girl
, the voice said.

Macy heard the sound of a repeated shrill whistle. Martine. He was jumping up and down with pinkie fingers sticking out from either side of his mouth. And if she hadn’t known better, Macy could have sworn that right beside him sat Nash, elbows on knees, smiling in approval. Just as he had all those years ago.

But something was wrong. Gounda wasn’t galloping away from the base of the fence. He stumbled and his neck disappeared under Macy. She saw ground in front of her where brightly colored jumps and a cheering crowd and sky should be, right before she felt herself leave the saddle and her world went black.

JACK WOKE TO BRIGHT LIGHT STREAMING THROUGH HIS BEDROOM window and a loud knocking on the door.

“Yeah?” he called out.

“Jack? You up? We’ve gotta get going.”

He rubbed his eyes, put on his glasses and pulled on a pair of jeans, and opened the door of his room to find Macy standing there, looking impatient. For what, he wasn’t sure. He had gotten used to Macy being gone to horse shows. But after she had returned from Spruce Meadows the week before with a broken collarbone, not only was Macy around more, but she was around with nothing much to do. Boredom didn’t suit her.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Almost three. I’ve been checking on you all afternoon to make sure you weren’t dead. Are you sick?”

“No.” Jack yawned and shook his head. “Not sick. Just didn’t get to bed until after seven.”

“Again? That crazy old bat is going to get herself killed one of these times, out fishing in the middle of the night, and now she’s taking you right along with her.”

Jack eyed Macy, her arm still in a sling and the leftovers of a black eye, now yellow, still obvious from her and Gounda’s crash. “You fly a horse over five-foot obstacles and we’re crazy for fishing at night?” He chuckled, but Macy didn’t. “Listen, everyone’s A-okay and we’ve got a great slab of salmon for dinner tonight. No harm, no foul.”

“You’re welcome to have salmon tonight, but you’ll be eating alone,” Macy said. “Mama Sophie and I are going to the extravaganza.”

The “extravaganza,” as Macy had explained to him the week prior, was actually the Campbell River Salmon Festival—a fitting celebration, given that their small town had rightfully earned its place as the salmon capital of the world. Long before the HMS
Plumper
—carrying Captain Vancouver and surgeon Dr. Samuel Campbell, who would later map the Vancouver Island coast—ran ashore, the First Nations people who had settled there had been fond of saying that you could cross from present-day Campbell River to Quadra Island across Discovery Passage on the backs of the salmon. Since then, salmon fishing—and other related tourism oddities, like swimming in the Campbell River with hordes of salmon that returned every August to spawn—had secured the town’s place as a salmon mecca.

Jack had always thought of Campbell River as his own well-kept secret. He loved telling people his son lived there and watching them try to figure out exactly where this place could be. He loved knowing he had a reason to keep going back to it. But while waiting for Sophie to check her guiding schedule at Painter’s Lodge the week before, Jack had come upon picture after picture of celebrities, from Bob Hope and John Wayne to Goldie Hawn and the Prince of Luxembourg, adorning the lodge’s walls. Apparently, people had been coming there for decades to try their luck at bagging a sockeye, coho, chum, pink, or chinook. It shot Jack’s “well-kept secret” theory to hell, but he gave selfish thanks that the town had managed to maintain a good deal of obscurity.