Bright, Broken Things, page 1
BRIGHT BROKEN THINGS
ADVANCED REVIEW COPY
LINDA SHANTZ
Bright, Broken Things
Copyright © 2022 by Linda Shantz
Cover Artwork by Linda Shantz
www.lindashantz.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manor. Any resemblance to actual person, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-990436-12-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-990436-11-6
CONTENTS
HELP WANTED:
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
HELP WANTED:
Experienced help for two positions available on Thoroughbred breeding farm in King, Ontario.
* * *
General farm staff (Full-time, permanent) Position involves turnout/in, feeding, mucking and other general farm maintenance. Must be comfortable handling Thoroughbreds of all ages: mares and foals, yearlings and track layups. Six days a week, 7am-4pm with breaks and an hour for lunch. This is not a riding position. Must be reliable with own transportation. Accommodations may be available.
* * *
Part-time, temporary, afternoons, starting yearlings. Possibility of winter employment.
* * *
To apply, please email triplestripestables@ gmail.com
1
Minutes, hours, days. They rushed past like the air outside his window — his arm outstretched, flat palm providing little resistance to the vehicle’s speed. He half expected pieces to start flying off his rusty old Mustang, like parts of a spaceship’s fuselage burning up in the atmosphere.
Fleeing the scene of the train wreck that had been his life had been easy. The beat-up car put miles between himself and his native Calgary readily enough, but the distance had done nothing to dilute his feelings. They clung to the roof of his dusty vehicle, cackling along to a soundtrack he had no one to blame for but himself. He’d picked the tunes, the Mustang vibrating with pounding bass, the lyrics keeping his torment as fresh as an open wound.
The truth was, he had no one to blame but himself for any of it. Why had he stayed so long?
Because there was still hope, wasn’t there? Until the minister said those words, there was still hope.
He’d stared at her profile from where he stood at the back of the church, willing her to look at him. But she didn’t. She didn’t waver in her conviction as she spoke the last part of the vows.
Till death do us part.
It felt dramatic. It felt like his own death.
He’d left his hangover behind somewhere around Winnipeg, chased away by caffeine and sleeplessness. Dropping into the US might have taken a few hours off his trip, but he wasn't exactly in a hurry to get where he was going — because he wasn't even sure he knew where that was. All that mattered was getting away, like a sore horse sprinting from pain. If you ran fast enough, you didn't feel it. Run now, think later.
Plus, he didn't have a passport. Did he need one? He hadn’t bothered to check. But, crossing the border, he would’ve been tempted to stop in Chicago — he’d heard Arlington Park racetrack was nice — or to keep heading south. It would be easy to find a job working with horses in Kentucky.
But he had one remaining friend in this world — not counting his mom — and if ever he needed a friend, it was now. So he'd stick to the fragile remnants of his plan — a plan that had become instead an escape — and keep traveling east.
Manitoba gave way to Northern Ontario. Kenora, Thunder Bay, Sault-Ste Marie, Sudbury, the Trans-Canada Highway his constant companion. He really didn't see any of it, and a tiny part of him felt bad. He might never make such an epic journey across this great country again. But there was no room right now for appreciation; he was too consumed with flight.
He should have taken off on New Year's Day. But he'd remained, hoping she'd change her mind. Hoping she'd reverse her refusal and pick him. Hoping until there was no hope left.
And what a beautiful wedding.
It's what the people who didn't know the sordid story said. The ones that did — which was most of them — looked at him with pity, whispering behind hands meant to muffle their words, like they could spare him the torment. Being there on her oh-so-special day had been a special kind of torture.
Had they omitted that part about “speak now or forever hold your peace” because of him? Because they'd feared he'd stand up with some desperate last-minute plea and ruin everything?
Pick me. Love me. It was supposed to be him up there, gazing into her beautiful face, saying those words. Sealing it all with a kiss.
Part of him didn’t want to hide from the pain. Didn’t want to be rid of it. He wanted to feel it all, let it be part of him. Remember it — her — forever. And never, ever let himself be so taken again.
Diesel fumes overpowered his nostrils as he walked out of the ON Route rest stop somewhere north of Toronto, the country’s largest metropolis. Humidity clung to his skin like his emotional baggage. His most recent Tim Horton's coffee burned his palm as he clutched it, a searing reminder his ability to feel pain was probably bottomless at this point. He was the guy who felt too much. It was exhausting.
The brew was probably higher octane than the gas he pumped into his ancient car and he'd consumed enough of it over the past few days — was it two or three? — to keep him awake for a week. Sitting behind the wheel again, the dusty bucket seat molding to his back, he had to at least be grateful for the fact the battered car had made it this far. One day, maybe, he'd restore it properly so it could be called vintage. But that would have to wait until he cared again.
Now he pressed his phone to his ear, listening to the ringing drone until a friendly chuckle interrupted it. “Miller. Thought I might be hearing from you. Where are you?”
“I don't know. Barrie?”
“You made good time. I'm not gonna ask how.”
“Yeah. Don't.”
“You're about an hour out. I'll text you the address. See you soon.”
When the text came, he copied the address into Google Maps and let the GPS-lady voice tell him where to go, wishing the direction of the rest of his life was that easy. Driving south on the 400 Highway toward Toronto, he started seeing signs for the big airport. Woodbine, Canada's largest racetrack, was over there somewhere, buried amid urban sprawl and industry, jets flying low above.
That's where he should head. It's where she'd said he belonged, back when they had plans. Plans he'd thought were theirs. Now, somehow, he had to reframe them as his alone.
The best thing he'd done when he’d rebuilt the old Mustang — only the most recent of one of its many lives — was sink his money into an aftermarket stereo, the memory of those days when his father and brothers had helped him now tainted with irony. It was the music that had gotten him through. He used it to manipulate his moods. When Three Days Grace and Cursive left him feeling too battered, he'd find some Switchfoot, though the California band could still pierce him with agonizing truth. Because this was indeed a beautiful letdown, and he had gloriously crashed and burned.
Will Callaghan greeted him like the old friend he was.
“I've gotta go to work. Don’t wait up,” Will apologized. “Make yourself at home. “
Will probably thought he meant it, but having your morose buddy crash on your couch in your one-room apartment would get old pretty fast.
“Thanks,” Nate said, setting a tired overnight bag, the original colour of which he’d long ago forgotten, just inside the door.
Will paused next to him. “You all right?”
His friend meant that too. It wasn’t just a platitude; his compassion was genuine. But Nate clamped his teeth together and forced one corner of his mouth up, sending the deadness he felt to his eyes with a grimace. He couldn't answer, because he wasn't, not really. He didn't miss the concern in the look Will returned as his friend rested a hand on his shoulder and slipped into the hall.
Will's downtown Toronto loft was one big room in an old converted red brick factory building, though he'd curtained off a corner next to the bathroom for a bedroom area. Nate felt like Goldilocks, peering at the queen-sized bed, which looked far comfier than the couch. But Will worked late — said he'd be home at some ungodly hour — and it would definitely be bad to exploit his hospitality by stealing his bed. The couch was a step up from the back seat of his car, anyway.
He didn't shower; he didn't change, he just collapsed on the warped and worn sofa. Any doubts he'd had about being able to sleep after three days of too much coffe
He’d thought when he came to this city it would be to conquer. There had been a plan. But when he left Calgary, the only plan was to get the hell out.
2
The safest place in the world was on the back of a racehorse.
Some might beg to differ. Being five feet from the ground on an inherently unpredictable animal, with stirrup irons so short her knees rested against the horse’s withers — it might seem to others a dangerous place to be. For Liv, though, it was sanctuary.
There was a well-known quote; she didn’t know who’d said it first. In riding a horse, we borrow freedom. But borrowing it wasn’t good enough. She wanted to capture it; devise a method of encapsulating it so it was forever at her disposal.
It was a barrier, or at the very least a buffer, from those around her; this powerful, vivacious creature her equalizer and shield. The connection she shared with the animal beneath her made up for what she failed to feel for the humans in her periphery. Behind goggles, under a helmet, her long dark hair tucked neatly beneath a navy kerchief, she could pretend she was invisible, or at least invincible. When someone did venture to talk to her, the horse was her translator, the common ground which let her feel a little less of an outcast, though she would never be one of them.
She called the filly in to the clocker. “Just Stellar, five-eighths.” It was as much as she needed to say to anyone. Her horse’s name and the distance. No more, no less.
“’Morning.” A middle-aged exercise rider on a horse that was tall and dark bay and devoid of white markings greeted her as he materialized from the darkness of the tunnel, returning from the track as she headed for it.
She nodded and gave a slight smile, though she didn’t manage to push words from her throat. With her dark goggles, he wouldn’t know she wasn’t making eye contact. Her gaze dropped instead to the neat line of his mount’s mane, the slight lift of the dark bay’s head before it dropped with each step. Each encounter was an assessment: how much to give? How much to trust? It kept others at a distance. That was how she wanted it. Call it self-protection.
Aluminum-shod hoofbeats on the rubber bricks underfoot echoed with the voices of exercise riders coming and going, bouncing off the cool concrete walls of the passage beneath the expansive turf course that surrounded the main synthetic surface. Her nostrils filled with leather and manure, warm horses and humans, the mingling smells trapped in the damp space.
Just Stellar followed the horses in front of her, up to the track. Glancing left to be sure no one was coming out of the chute, Liv negotiated traffic, finding her own space on the outside rail to back up — jogging clockwise toward the tall white finishing post across from the grandstand, staying clear of the gallopers going the opposite direction in the middle of the track.
Once she was out here — pausing at the wire to face the infield, Just Stellar standing until Liv gave the okay to join the flow of gallopers, together but separate — nothing else mattered. Not school, not the people around her, not a list of names applying for the job she’d posted for her father’s farm. With the air rushing past her ears, carrying her mount’s mane, the only sounds that registered were the thrum of hooves on the Tapeta surface and the steady rhythm of the filly’s breathing, cycling in time with her own heart. This was where she belonged. The only place she felt truly herself.
Like one of the jets taking off at the nearby international airport, when they reached the backstretch she checked the flight path was clear and dropped the filly to the rail, crouching low so they were up to speed when they reached the five-eighths pole and the clocker started timing. In front of her Just Stellar’s long neck pulsed faster, ears laced back, black mane whipping. The filly skirted the turn, legs like pistons firing, the oxygen sucked into her lungs through flared nostrils feeding each stride and the stretch opened in front of them, wide and welcoming and all theirs. At that moment, there was nothing else. No gallopers, no looming empty grandstand, no landscaped infield and massive tote board. Just real estate to be conquered, a stopwatch to record a number — a number that could never capture the feeling of being one with such a remarkable creature, one that almost allowed her science-filled head to think such an animal had to have been created by something caring and intelligent. This was no random freak of nature.
If only the feeling wasn’t so temporary, so fleeting. All the more reason to cherish it. She should be satisfied she got to play a part. Happy she got to come here in the summer, and some weekends once she was back at school, to share, in some small way their lives. But she wanted more. Was that selfish?
It felt wrong. So many twenty-two-year-old women would covet her life. Living on a beautiful farm in the heart of King Township’s Thoroughbred horse country, about to enter her third year at the prestigious Ontario Veterinary College, her future secure. She’d endured enough sly talk at school about her connections getting her admitted to the program, because grades alone didn’t get you in. And there was some truth to that, because maybe those connections had helped smooth over the social deficits revealed during the interview process. It made her feel as if it was all a ruse, like she’d fooled everyone somehow.
Up here, she didn’t have to pretend. This, here, was the real her. The one who would soon be back in OVC’s lecture halls was an imposter. And it wasn’t that she hated school, it was just that it felt like a performance. Acting had never been her forté. Note to self: get better.
“Hey, Liv. When are you going to get your license?”
She snapped her head toward the voice, relieved when she connected it to Dhruv Patel. Dhruv was an unlikely representation of a jock’s agent. He was tall and handsome, always well-dressed — and happily married with three teenage sons. Dhruv didn’t try to flirt. She never heard Dhruv making off-colour comments about anyone. He was completely professional. She liked him. He was trustworthy.
And he meant her apprentice jockey license, of course. Her smile came easily for him as Just Stellar sauntered past. “You’ll be the first to know.”
The smile lingered as she headed back to the barn, both her and the horse sated, for now. But it soon faded, because this was when they all raged: the voices in her head that told her she didn’t want to be a vet.
This is what she wanted. To get her license. To ride.
But it was just a dream. That was all. It wasn’t as if she was entitled to it. Summer was almost over, and soon she’d pack the dream back up and tuck it away where it belonged.
3
So here he was. Happy birthday to him, waking up on the couch of the only person he knew in a strange metropolitan city — with no prospects.
He folded the throw he’d covered himself with and went to the kitchen, stomach rumbling. He couldn’t remember when he’d properly eaten last. In his sleep of the dead, he hadn’t heard Will come home, but there was evidence in the refrigerator: a couple of takeout containers. There were advantages to working in a restaurant. Will probably never went hungry.
One had two big chunks of cooked salmon; the other roasted potatoes. He opted for the potatoes, throwing them in the microwave. Grabbing a beer as he waited, he checked the drawers until he found the cutlery. With the steaming container in one hand and cold beer in the other, he returned to the couch. Looked like a fine breakfast.
“Find something to eat?”
