Sacred (17 page)

Will’s smile was tight. “Well, I didn’t save you that day, did I? So the headache came.”

“Oh, Will, I—”

He shook his head. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “You couldn’t have known. But now you do. Scarlett, every time you hurt yourself it hurts me, too. I don’t know how, or why, but there it is. And I’m not the only one you’re hurting.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t name my feeling. Shame seemed the closest fit.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone,” I offered lamely.

“Scarlett,” Will admonished. He crossed away from the window and knelt beside me. I felt tiny, so insignificant curled into a corner of the chair by the deadened fire. “You were trying to hurt
yourself
.”

I opened my mouth to speak, to deny, but the words wouldn’t come. How could I explain—hurting myself wasn’t ever the end, it was always just the means. A method to distance myself from myself.

“I’ve got to go,” I mumbled, untangling my legs and standing. They felt weak beneath me. “My dad will be up soon.”

Will stood too, and I wondered if he was going to stop me. But he just nodded. “Try to get some sleep.”

Back in my room, I forced myself to breathe regularly. My heart pounded wildly. I sat on the edge of my bed, then stood, paced the room, then sat again. I replayed what Will had told me in my head. Downstairs with Will, everything he said had been so easy to accept, but up here, alone again in my room, my agitation was overwhelming. Could it be? Could Will be blessed—or cursed, perhaps—to anticipate where violent crimes were going to occur?

I recalled his words—“It’s as if your body is the crime scene.”

My manicure scissors sang to me from the drawer of my desk. My heartbeat was too fast, too erratic, and it seemed that if I was to grasp those tiny silver scissors in my hand, if I was to draw their sharp edge across my wrist, or down the instep of my foot, maybe, then the beat would slow and settle to a more acceptable rhythm.

But I thought of Will, downstairs in the Yellow Room.
Was he lying in the bed, now that I had gone? Was he staring at the ashes of the fire? And my yearning for the scissors slowly seeped away, and I counted my breaths and forced them to slow, and my heartbeat slowed as well, until it was steady and strong. I lowered myself to my bed, imagining Will lying next to me, the length of his body warm and solid against mine, and the beat of my own heart lulled me to sleep at last.

TEN

I
slept like the dead until ten o’clock, when I heard from outside the window the urgent honking of Alice’s truck. At first I tried to block out the sound with my pillow, but it just sounded again, louder and longer this time.

Groaning, holding my head in my hands to keep it from splitting apart, I stumbled to the window and yanked it up. I waved weakly down at Alice. “Coming,” I called.

The effort of opening the window and calling to her wore me out completely. I collapsed back on the edge of the bed and tried very, very hard to sit perfectly still. The room seemed to slip sideways, and I did the best I could to bring it back to level with my brain. The effort was disconcerting. I figured the world could be slippery, for a while, if it wanted to be.

Looking down, I saw I was still wearing my jeans and sweatshirt. This realization brought with it a jolt of anxiety. Will had been here, in my house, in the Yellow Room.

“It’s as if your body is the crime scene.”

Was he still here? Finally, I found the motivation to stand on shaky legs and make my way downstairs, shoving my feet into my boots on the way.

Passing through the kitchen, I grabbed my silver water bottle and filled it from the sink. As an afterthought, I grabbed a bagel, too. The plain bread sounded pretty good, as if it might soak up the alcohol that still seemed to be sloshing inside me.

Mercifully, my parents weren’t around. I was certain if they saw me like this, they’d know for sure I was hungover. I hadn’t looked at myself, but it couldn’t be good.

Downstairs, I walked carefully down the hall toward the Yellow Room. The bed was empty, stripped of its linens, which were piled near the bathroom door.

Will was gone. But the stripped bed proved he had been here, that my memories were real. I wanted to sit in the chair by the fire and replay our conversation in my head, but another impatient honk from Alice’s truck compelled me out the door.

Alice was sleek and perfect as usual. She wore a button-down cardigan over a neatly pressed blouse, and her jeans looked as if she’d just picked them up from the dry cleaner.

Unlike mine, her boots were laced tight and done up in neat little bows.

She appraised me over the rim of her sunglasses. “You look like hell, Scarlett. Have a big night?”

I groaned and flopped into the passenger seat, pulling the door closed behind me.

The drive helped; the air blowing through the window began to wake me up, and I fed myself little bits of the bagel, checking carefully between each bite to see if it was going to stay down. By the time we neared the stable, I’d managed to eat half of it and drain my bottle of water. I was feeling better—not good, but better.

Alice did her best to mind her own business, but she wasn’t very good at it. She kept giving me sidelong glances and asking leading questions like, “So, did you have fun last night?”

Finally, my exasperation at her hedging reached maximum capacity. “Yes, Alice,” I said, answering a question she hadn’t exactly asked. “I got drunk. I am hungover.”

Alice tried to arrange her mouth into a stern expression, but it looked to me like she was biting back a smile. “Hungover, are you? Hmm …”

And then her hand reached out and twisted the volume knob to high, and she stepped on the gas and swerved at the same time, and she sang along with the music loudly, grinning at me.

I was too weak to fight. I leaned my head against the window frame and my hair whipped out the window, tangling in the wind.

When we made it at last to the stable, Alice grabbed my arm to keep me from leaving the cab of the truck.

She killed the engine and turned to me, pulling off her sunglasses. “I hope this isn’t going to become a habit.”

I shook my head carefully, trying to keep my brain from
rattling against the sides of my head. “No, Alice. I’m not going to become a drunk. I don’t plan on drinking again, ever.”

“Good girl. Now, if you’re up to it, maybe you could work with Traveler this morning. He could use some time under saddle in the arena.”

This perked me up a little. Traveler was the colt out of the same mare that had mothered Delilah. He was going to be big; at nearly three years, he was already well muscled. He was red, like Delilah, but with a more orange cast. His eyes, still, were a little wild.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll take him out first.”

“Put the stud chain on him,” Alice warned. “Don’t give him an inch.”

One thing that I really liked about Alice was that she got on with her work and stayed pretty much out of my hair. She trusted me with the horses—and her trust was well placed.

I passed Delilah’s stall on my way to Traveler’s, and she nickered after me.

“Sorry, girl, I’ll get you out later,” I called. Now that I was up and moving, my headache was receding.

I visited the tack room first and pulled out the lightest-weight saddle. This would be Traveler’s first time wearing tack, so I wanted to be sure to make the experience as pleasant as possible. I grabbed a thick, soft saddle pad, too, along with the brush bucket, a halter and lead, and, finally, the stud chain.

I hated to use a stud chain. Alice was old-school; she viewed the nasty metal chain as essential to breaking a horse. Maybe it was, but I was against the whole concept of
“breaking” anything. I preferred to look at my relationship with a horse as a building of trust, of reciprocal respect. Still, I put the stud chain, slippery as a snake, into the bucket along with the brushes.

I grabbed a couple of sugar cubes and left the equipment at the cross-ties, taking the halter and lead to Traveler’s stall at the end of the barn. He was standing with his head out, rocking agitatedly back and forth, rubbing his chest against the rubber edge of the door.

“Hey, big guy,” I called. His ears pricked forward and he lifted his chin as if in greeting. I palmed a sugar cube and held it under his nose. He took it gently with his lips. The other cube I popped into my mouth while I slipped the halter over his head, fastening the buckle and clipping on the lead before sliding open the door to his stall.

At the cross-ties, I took my time about grooming him. I showed him the brush and the hoof pick, holding each tool slightly to the side of his head so he could see them clearly. I explained what I was doing, step-by-step.

It didn’t matter if he understood my words; he felt the calmness in my tone, and gradually he slowed his heavy pawing on the rubber mats and sighed, leaning into the strokes of my brush. When he was so calm that his lower lip began to dangle a little, I told him, “Now we’re going to try something new, okay, big guy?”

Slowly, I stepped around his side and picked up the fuzzy saddle pad. I showed it to him, and he spooked a little, trying to feint to the right, but the ties attached to the halter held him mostly still. I made soothing little noises and rubbed the saddle pad all over his body, starting high up on
his neck, then across his shoulders, along the barrel of his chest, across his flanks, down each of his spindly Arab legs. Slowly, he calmed, accepting the touch of the saddle pad on his body.

Then I balanced it on his back, high up between his withers. Back in the tack room, I’d taken the stirrup irons off the saddle; Traveler didn’t need anything thumping around on his sides, not this first time. Gently, slowly, I hoisted the saddle up and onto his back, square on top of the saddle pad.

He quivered a bit, but he did not shy. “Brave boy,” I soothed. “Such a big, brave guy.”

We stood like that for several long moments, Traveler getting used to the weight of the saddle on his back. I steadied it with one hand and stroked his neck with the other, talking softly to him the whole time.

Then, when his lip began to flap in relaxation again, I maneuvered around to his right side and attached the girth. Back around on his left, I grabbed the girth from under his belly and fastened it on its loosest set of holes, just to get him used to the feel of something rubbing against his belly.

It didn’t seem to faze him, which was a good sign, but I waited a long moment anyway before tightening it a notch.

Mares are usually more girthy and irritable about the whole process than their male counterparts, and Traveler was taking his first girthing like a man. He barely seemed to notice as I ratcheted the girth another hole tighter, and then one more.

It was tight enough to keep the saddle from slipping while we worked in the arena, though not as tight as I would fasten it if I planned to climb up on his back.

I moved to grab the longe rope and spied the stud chain curled in the bottom of the tack bucket. I hated the thing, truly I did. So I left it there, winding the longe rope instead through the chin ring on the halter, then looping it up behind his ears before clipping it to the ring on his right cheek.

I unhooked him from the cross-ties and led him toward the arena. We had to pass in front of the office, and I wondered guiltily if Alice would see that I’d eschewed the stud chain.

In the arena, I made my way to the center and let Traveler out several lengths, careful to keep the circle tight so that he couldn’t get too wild.

Eagerly, he picked up a trot. He was a gorgeous mover. His hooves flew through the sand, his head dropped naturally into a lovely arch. The weight of the saddle didn’t seem to bother him any more than a fly would have.

I couldn’t help but feel a little smug after fifteen minutes had passed uneventfully. I kept Traveler to a trot, tugging mindfully at the longe rope when he quickened his pace. He seemed eager to listen and obey, his ears rotating as if to show me he was paying attention.

Finally, I slowed him to a walk and shortened the longe rope length by length until he was beside me in the center of the arena. “Good, good,” I told him, thumping his neck with my palm.