Bright, Broken Things, page 15
He was going to be the crazy guy they were talking about after he left. The one schooling a two-year-old on a ten-metre circle in a cloud of dust. Once the colt was accepting to the left, he changed direction, and went to the right. With just enough awareness to stay out of the way of the horses who still headed for the track, their riders gawking, he picked up his irons and jogged the colt through the gap like they were coming down the centre line of a dressage test. As if he’d ever ridden one.
After that, heading onto the track seemed like a picnic. The oval wasn’t busy anymore, so he backed the colt up into the chute, stopped to turn him with his butt to the outside rail and rubbed the hell out of his neck, admiring the trees and feeling the two-year-old’s pulse settle with his own, both of them dripping sweat. Then he walked him to the gap and off the track.
The assistant was there, throwing his arms in the air. “Why didn’t you gallop him?”
The colt shied and Nate channeled him forward. It was really, really tempting to hop off and throw the lines at this guy. You get on him.
“He had a nice time out there today.” Well… on the track, anyway. “Maybe if you give him a nice time for a few weeks, he’ll be happier about training. Obviously putting the rush on him isn’t getting you anywhere, so what have you got to lose?”
He bit back the rest, though he guessed he’d already done enough damage to ensure he never rode anything in the Faron barn again. He wasn’t sure he cared. He was supposed to be working horses, not installing basic software.
The assistant seemed to come around by the time they walked back to the barn, though, thanking him and asking if he’d be back tomorrow. Uh, that’s a no.
Trevor followed him to his car. “I mean it, you could be riding by the end of the season. Then I’ll set you up with a trainer going to Palm Meadows or Oaklawn to gallop for the winter. If Faron isn’t looking, I know a couple others still needing help. You could be top apprentice next year.”
Those were big promises, the names were like places he’d only heard of in fables, now his for the taking, when he didn’t think he’d done anything impressive except not die.
“I really want to go to California,” he quipped to postpone a proper answer, tipping off his helmet and running his fingers through his hair, damp and plastered to his head.
“You go there, you might never come back.” Trevor grinned.
“True.” He twisted the helmet’s harness between his fingers, stalling. “I’ll get back to you.”
Was he crazy not to want that? Why not now? Trevor was offering the chance to be associated with a trainer with the highest win percentage at Woodbine. It was a big, shiny opportunity. It was a safe bet he wasn’t going to like every conditioner he rode for. He’d have to pay his dues before he could pick and choose.
He needed to get out of here, find a convenience store and buy a big bottle of water; get himself hydrated so he could think properly. They didn’t sell that size in the track kitchen, and he wasn’t sure he’d want to make an appearance there anyway, after the attention he’d drawn to himself.
As soon as he hit the highway, he realized just how much the morning had exhausted him, but he was too amped up to return to the farm yet. It was early still, and it was his day off, so he pulled off the highway at the exit for Niagara Falls.
It was packed with tourists. Here he could walk and not turn heads, though maybe he’d buy a souvenir t-shirt because the one he wore was gross after his unexpected workout. He took some photos with his phone, because that was what you did when you visited one of the world’s wonders. And it was amazing despite the kitschiness of the town behind him — the thunderous rush of the falls, the rolling mist cooling him. In a moment of inspiration he started an Instagram post, then stopped himself, because though he had next to no followers, Emilie Lachance was now one of them. He didn’t want to have to explain how he’d ended up here. He sent a photo to his mom instead. Guess where I am? No prizes for the right answer.
He made it back to the farm early afternoon. He should’ve gone for a run, but weariness caught up with him, the coffee he’d picked up for the drive home long since metabolized. The early morning, the excursion, the decisions that needed to be made.
Staring out the picture window as he towel-dried his hair after a shower, he felt the tranquility of this place. It soothed a soul that all too often seemed broken, but he’d get over that with time, not with pretty views. It wasn’t necessarily right to be comfortable, because it would lead to complacency. Last time he’d found himself in that position — a year ago, it was just a year ago — life had beaten him down with a big stick.
If he waited until it was all just right to make his move, it could be too late. Around here it would be easy to think this was his future, then end up watching what could have been his life pass him by. And if he ended up crashing and burning — almost, if not quite, literally — that would show his ex she was wrong, and his father would take great pleasure in telling him I told you so.
His phone rang, the name on the caller ID relieving his overwrought brain, a smile coming immediately to his lips. “Hi, Mom.”
“What were you doing in Niagara Falls?”
“Sightseeing. It was my day off.”
“I know you take Mondays off, Nate.”
Like he could keep anything from his mother. She’d never settle for the smartass answer.
“I was in Fort Erie, at the track there, getting on some horses,” he admitted. “I met an agent — like a rider’s agent — and he’s trying to give me everything I thought I ever wanted.” Before he’d decided he wanted a girl, one particular girl, more than anything.
His mother’s hesitation was a giveaway. She knew it all, the whole sordid story, had watched it play out. “Is that what you still want?”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Nate.” Called out on the smartass comment, again.
“Shouldn’t I?” he repeated, but his tone did a one-eighty, painted this time with a plea; pain and desperation he couldn’t submerge.
“Patience has never been one of your strongpoints. You could work on that. What’s the hurry?”
The hurry was, he was twenty-three and most guys started riding at eighteen. The hurry was, if he stayed here too long, he could see himself becoming so comfortable he’d never leave, giving up on the dream altogether. Was this farm even reality, truly? The morning he’d spent at Fort Erie was a lot closer to the real world. Reality was calling. He needed to give it an answer.
22
They gave her a do-over for her appointment simulation. Don’t think, just do. Play the game, get the grade. Same small room with the one-way glass, but a woman playing the part of the client. Coincidence? Probably not. The patient was her challenge this time and dealing with the recalcitrant feline took all her focus, trumping any residual nerves and claustrophobia.
It was a relief when she took a seat with her classmates on the other side of the glass. Chad caught her eye and gave her a thumbs-up. She managed not to make a face, nodding and finding a small smile. Support came from the most unlikely places.
The actor joining the next student in the room was easy to recognize, but from this point of view, the older gentleman didn’t set her senses into disarray. From here, the only resemblance he bore to her grandfather was his white hair and body shape. His expression, now that she actually watched his face, was softer, and his voice had a slight English accent. When she’d encountered him, she hadn’t stuck around long enough to hear him speak.
Still, afterward, tension crept up her spine, into her neck, clustering at the base of her skull. She needed to test her coping mechanisms — needed to prove to herself she’d dealt with this.
She’d rehearsed an apology; written up a script and memorized it, doing a little play-acting on her own in case she faced him again. In real life, she wouldn’t be able to prepare in advance for such things, so she hoped in time she’d get better at it.
She approached him and gave her speech without too much blundering. He was perfectly gracious, and she emerged on the other side still feeling uncomfortable, but it felt like a tiny victory just the same.
Claire was over a month into her training now, Liv starting the filly on a foundational conditioning program. Finally letting her gallop on the track — just a nice, easy canter — was the best ending to a stressful day. When she turned Claire back out with the other fillies, Claire dropped and rolled in the dusty patch near the gate, shaking it off in a cloud when she rose. It made Liv wonder what the human equivalent was to that clearly therapeutic action. Drop, grind away the day’s stresses, then get up and shake it off.
A text notification from her father pulled her focus from the filly. “See you tomorrow, Claire,” she called lightly, then turned and went to meet him.
When her father had business to discuss, more often than not, he asked her to meet him in the farm office. She appreciated he included her in these things, at least keeping her informed if rarely asking her to make final decisions. Hiring Nate had been the first time he’d left something up to her. He considered her ideas; had agreed with her admittedly sentimental argument to justify his own desire to breed Sotisse to Just Lucky. Sometimes you had to listen to your heart. They didn’t have to cater to the whims of the commercial market, so they could take chances like breeding a maiden to a first-year stallion.
She was aware she was being groomed. Welcomed it. While her father wasn’t terribly hands on, leaving most things to Geai and their trainer Roger, he was the guy with the money, so ultimately he ran the show. One day he’d step back and just be the bankroll behind the outfit, leaving Liv to assume said show-running… one day when she’d established herself as a veterinarian.
She silently acknowledged the oil painting behind the desk, her eyes remaining on it as she dropped into the overstuffed chair — the same one Nate Miller had occupied the day of the interview. He’d woven himself into the fabric of this place. Not that he was tied to it. Those threads were easily broken.
Her father was locked into something on the computer, so she let herself study the portrait. It had been important, of course, to find an artist who knew anatomy. Liv couldn’t paint anything like that, but she’d judge the rendered figures as hard as she would real animals standing in front of her. She’d entrusted her mother, who had more of an artistic eye, to select potential painters, but she and Geai and her father had narrowed the shortlist to choose the one who depicted horses best.
Claude finally looked up, smiled at her, and sat back in his chair. She didn’t know what this meeting was for. Perhaps to talk about breeding decisions for next year. School came under “family” so she endured those questions at meal times. It was the downside of living at home while she went to university; the trade-off for getting to spend time, any time, with Claire.
As usual, he didn’t waste time getting to the point. They weren’t dissimilar in that way.
“I’ve talked to Roger, and we’re going to send Claire and Gemma to Florida for the winter. Claire might be small, but you’ve done such a good job with her, and Gemma, of course...”
He didn’t have to expand on the full sister to Just Lucky and she tuned out whatever he said next, the ringing in her ears distracting her. Claire was going to Florida. Without her.
“Have you decided on a name for her?” her father asked, the drone fading away.
Liv shook off her disappointment — an unwarranted emotion when she’d known better all along. Back to business. She often helped name the horses; everyone had assumed she’d christen Claire.
“L’Éclaircie,” she said quietly. The Lightening. Because of the lightening the filly provided her heart, as ironic as that seemed at the moment.
Claude nodded. “Have you submitted it yet?”
She shook her head. “No. I will.”
Her father left her there, in that room, her eyes returning to the painting of Just Lucky and Sotisse. Her father’s legacy, that magical fusion of DNA growing inside the chestnut mare. If Claire wasn’t going to fulfill Liv’s dream, maybe that foal would. After all, she’d be done vet school by the time it was old enough to race. Surely she could manipulate her schedule once she was practicing to, at the very least, be the one starting it as a yearling.
Pushing herself up from the depths of the chair, she slipped around the desk to the seat her father had vacated and signed into the Jockey Club’s interactive site, making a single name claim for L’Eclaircie. At the house, she changed into running gear, slipping in and out silently.
She ran to get away from the noise in her head. She ran for the endorphins, acceptable self-medication. She ran because it was solitary; there was no partner to steal your heart.
She felt things she had no right to feel. Hurt. Anger. This is what she got for letting herself get attached. Breaking bonds hurt when you were human, and she was feeling so disappointingly human right now. This was right for Claire. Sending the filly south wasn’t part of her mother’s plot to keep her focused on her degree, as easy as it would be to let herself think this was some kind of conspiracy. It was a testament to the filly’s progress and potential.
If she didn’t make it, Liv could claim her for her own; keep her to ride. Maybe she’d go back to eventing. She’d adopted Twizzle after her father had retired him from the track. He was her gateway drug to a faster, freer world than the hunters and jumpers she’d grown up with. It was a natural progression to racing, especially with Geai’s ready encouragement.
Or, she could just be a casual rider. Not worry about ribbons and accomplishments, speed and adrenaline. In the end, it was about being together; sharing a heartbeat, right?
Would it be enough? Coming home after a long day and just riding? Not for the exhilaration, but for the companionship alone?
It was better this way. Once Claire was gone, she could immerse herself in her school work, because Claire kept that nagging voice in her head alive. The one that said I’d rather be riding.
She realized it, then. It wasn’t so much about the filly herself, the heart horse status Liv had given her — it was what Claire embodied. She stood for everything Liv wanted, but could never have. Claire would go to Florida, then probably, next spring, to New York, if she continued to show promise. Liv had to let go.
Her head was down, negotiating that last big root jutting into the trail right before it opened into the weanlings’ pastures, and she almost collided with him. His eyes probably hadn’t adjusted to the shade, so he hadn’t seen her either.
She didn’t stop, and neither did he. He hopped to the side with a quick look, his expression mirroring hers — wary, humourless, no cheeky comments like we have to stop meeting like this — and she leapt forward, carrying on, his presence merely an impression, a flicker in her periphery, a trick of the light. Here one second, gone the next.
But it was as if an essence of him drifted in his wake and now wisped around her. Nate had dropped out of school to play with horses. He’d run away from the expectations. He was going after what he really wanted.
She’d heard more than rumours. He was being recruited. That was the chance you took when you hired someone overqualified; they might leave when they found something more in line with the picture they had for their future. She couldn’t blame him for seizing the opportunities presented to him. Didn’t she long to pursue the same goal? But she couldn’t quit vet school to follow a yearling to Florida.
Dusk was falling, the fringes of long shadows softening before they disappeared entirely. But she wasn’t ready to go inside yet, to resign herself to her books and the future they represented.
She dragged Twizzle from his babysitting duties, threw an exercise saddle on him because she’d sold his good saddle when she’d started vet school. He’d become too creaky to do much work, anyway. A hack once in a while was fine, though she’d been shamefully negligent in that department, opting instead for younger, sounder horses.
Twizzle was up for it, on his toes as soon as her seat hit the saddle — he’d always been spicy, and age had done nothing to dilute that. He made her forget the post-run chill she felt, her boots pulled unfashionably over the tights she’d worn to run. Racetrackers did not wear boots over their pants like English riders did — their boots went under jeans. So not cool, but when had she ever been cool? And what did it matter? There was no one out here to see her, anyway.
The perimeter of the hayfield was clear and while the second cut had come off, she didn’t want to risk damaging the fragile alfalfa, so she kept to the margin. A neighbour had permission to ride out here, so there was a worn track, the footing relatively consistent. It wasn’t the meticulously groomed racetrack surface she usually rode on these days, but it was safe.
She let Twizzle think he was running off with her, the wind rushing past her ears sweeping away the feelings. Just for a short stretch, because he wasn’t fit, even though, ex-racehorse that he was, he might think so. Better give him a bit of Bute tonight.
After a good curry and a brush, she returned him to his babysitting duties. Instead of going back to the house, though, she went to Geai’s. Geai would know about the decision for Claire. He would console her, then chastise her and tell her to get over it.
His back was to her, settled in his favourite chair, the beer in his hand propped on the armrest; television on, volume low. Napoleon roused himself from a deep old-dog slumber, long black tail sweeping the air, and she crouched to greet him. Then the Lab waddled back to his person, resting his chin faithfully on Geai’s knee. Geai automatically placed a hand on his head, scratching him behind one ear.
Liv was just about to ask Geai if he was feeling okay, her arrival not rousing his customary greeting, when she caught sight of the old black and white wedding photo on the end table next to him. Then she remembered, and felt terrible for forgetting.
Four years today, it had been, since his wife Francie’s death, rapidly consumed by a voracious cancer. As much as Liv knew losing his soulmate had torn him apart, he’d carried on stoically, only taking a week away from the farm to bury her at his hometown in the Laurentians. When he’d returned, he’d never left again, save for quick trips for groceries or the feed store. Maybe it was just as well he didn’t let Liv shop for him; otherwise, he might never step off the farm at all.
