The Horsewoman (29 page)

DAD HAD TOLD ALL OF US
—me, Mom, Grandmother, Gus—to say our good-byes before Dad walked Daniel out of the courtroom and into federal custody.

“Trust me,” Dad had said, “what happens next happens fast.”

“How did the feds even know about the fight?” Gus had said.

“As soon as our friend Daniel got arrested,” Dad had said, “he went right into the system.”

“All because he screwed up some paperwork?” I’d said.

“Our tax dollars at work, kid,” Dad had said. “We all know the late filing for the DACA renewal was an honest mistake. But the fact is, he
was
late. Once he
was
late, he technically lost his Dreamer status. Which means that for now our friends in the government don’t care whether the assault charge is total crap. They’ve got him.”

“By the balls,” Gus had said.

“Now I’ve got to try to make things happen fast for our side,” Dad had said. “Get the charges dropped. Get a new DACA renewal filed. Get this kid’s feet back on solid ground. Goddamn, immigration law is a bear. The lawyers who do this full-time ought to get a medal.”

I’d seen the two ICE agents from Miami, short and tall—I’d blocked out their names—sitting in the back of the courtroom. They’d left before Mom and Grandmother had hugged Daniel and Gus shook his hand. I’d waited and then kissed him and put my arms around him and held on until Dad said, “Honey, let’s get this done.”

Then we were on the sidewalk watching the ICE agents walk Daniel toward the black town car parked out front, having cuffed him for no apparent reason other than they could. The shorter one opened the back door and Daniel got inside. The taller agent was making a phone call, maybe informing their boss that they’d apprehended a dangerous outlaw like Daniel Ortega, horse trainer.

“You have to make this go away, Dad,” I said.

“We’ve got to get rid of the assault charge,” he said. “Then we have a chance to stop any removal proceedings before they really get started. At least in theory.”

Removal. Deportation.

“But he still has to go into detention,” I said.

“Unfortunately,” Dad said.

“This sucks,” I said.

“That ought to be the legal definition of bullshit like this, for guys like Daniel,” Dad said.

We all watched as the taller ICE agent finished his call, took out his keys, and walked around to the driver’s side. The shorter one—Dolan was his name, I now remembered—opened the door and started to get in on the passenger side, but not before taking one last look at where we were all standing on the sidewalk.

For some reason, I felt as if he were looking directly at me. I wondered if the smirk were permanently frozen on his face. I wanted to give him the finger, thought better of that. I stared back at him until he shut the door and the car pulled away, wondering when I might see Daniel again.

THE HAMPTON INVITATIONAL
was the second week of June on eastern Long Island. By the time we arrived, Daniel was still in the federal detention center in Fort Lauderdale.

“Dad, when are you going to get him out?” I asked daily, to which he always replied, “Working on it.”

“When we get back I want to see him,” I said.

“He doesn’t want you to see him there, kid,” Dad said. “That’s still set in cement.”

Tess McGill was solidly in first place in the latest Olympic rankings. Then came Mom and Tyler and me, close enough to cover the three of us with Sky’s fancy horse blanket.

The last chance to move up, or down, or influence the selectors, would be on Sunday in Bridgehampton. As obsessed as Tyler had been about Coronado, he would end up top-ranked with Galahad if he won on Sunday and likely make the team for sure with a decent finish. Mom and I were right there behind him. Three of us would make the team. One would be an alternate.

Gus and Mom had arrived that afternoon at the house we’d rented a few miles north of the show grounds. The drive from Florida had taken them two days, having overnighted in Raleigh. I asked Mom if they’d booked the honeymoon suite at the Raleigh Hyatt. She told me to zip it. Grandmother and I had flown up and arrived on Saturday, when the horses did. So we were all in the Hamptons now. Dad was still in Florida, working Daniel’s case.

I had finished flatting Sky in a practice ring about twenty minutes before. Now while Mom and Gus checked out the stalls, I was taking a walk around the place, amazed at how much bigger it had gotten and how much it had changed since Mom used to bring me up as a teenager when she’d ride in the late-summer Hampton Classic. My first time competing here would be on Sunday at one. The main event. Money on the table. Gus training both Mom and me.

Our lives were overlapping. Gus was her former trainer, current boyfriend. He was my current trainer. Daniel was Mom’s trainer, or had been until he ended up in jail. My dad, Mom’s ex-husband, was now Daniel’s lawyer. And there were more layers than that. Mom had a horse that had come up lame when she was on her way to the London Olympics. Gus had been injured, permanently, when he was on his way to Beijing.

Here we all were, anyway, a long way from home.

All of us except Daniel.

In the late afternoon I walked all the way to the Grand Prix ring at the east end of the property. It was empty, except for me.

I climbed up to the last row of the bleachers and surveyed the whole scene, from the distant railroad tracks to the grade school across the street to the fences and rails stacked against side walls covered with sponsor names. Imagined how it would look and feel on Sunday when the bleachers were full.

What if it somehow did come down to Mom or me for the last spot on the team?

How would I feel if I got it and not her?

Or she did?

And not me.

I made my way back down the stairs then, hopped the fence, walked to the middle of the ring, imagining myself down here,
in
here, on Sunday afternoon. What the view would be like then. What I would be feeling like
then.

Walked back over to the fence, hopped it again, sat down in the first row of bleachers this time. Leaned back, closed my eyes, tried to see Sky and me here, late in the jump-off, imagining what Sunday afternoon would look like and feel like—and sound like—if we made it that far.

I felt myself smiling.

“Long time no see.”

I looked up to find Steve Gorton standing over me.

GORTON WAS RIGHT.
I hadn’t seen or talked to him since the night Daniel had punched him in the face. Until now.

Mom hadn’t had any contact with him, either, nor had Grandmother, even though they both had plenty they wanted to say to him. Coronado hadn’t competed since the Mercedes, so there had been no real reason for him to show his face—and what I could see was a still swollen nose—around WEF. But now he was standing right in front of me. I had read somewhere that he had an oceanfront home in East Hampton. And he had his horse going Sunday.

Lucky me.

“Mr. Gorton,” I said.

“I came up here about a week ago,” he told me without being asked. “So I’m a little behind the news. How’s your boyfriend doing in prison?”

I felt the sudden urge to hit him in the same spot Daniel had. I took a nice, slow, deep breath instead. Somehow managing to smile at him as I did.

“Listen,” I said. “I am respectful of the fact that you’re the majority owner of Mom’s horse. And I know how close we all might be to making it to the Olympics. So I’m not looking to mess with you or have you mess with me. But I hope
you’ll
respect that I’m not talking about Daniel with you.”

Gorton had a plastic cup in his hand. He took a healthy sip of whatever was in it, then acted as if he hadn’t heard a single word I’d said.

“Guy’s a hothead,” he said. “Must be that Latin blood. Probably gets your engine running, am I right?”

I told myself to get the hell away from him and do it
right now.
Nothing good could come of me staying here, not for Mom, not for me. Certainly not for Daniel. I’d already seen how little it took to set Gorton off. The real hothead, I knew by now, was him. But I didn’t walk away. Stayed where I was instead. Bad Becky. Don’t give an inch.

“He’s not a hothead,” I said. “You’re the one who provoked him.”

“Is that what he told you?” he said. He put his index finger to the side of his head, as if suddenly curious. “But if I did, how come he’s in the slammer and I’m on my way to Bloomberg’s house in Southampton for a party he’s throwing for his kid?”

“You know you provoked him,” I said.

“Says him,” Gorton said. “It’s like Jack Nicholson said in that movie with my friend Tom Cruise. Your boy messed with the wrong Marine.”

“I saw that movie, too,” I said. “Wasn’t the colonel the one who got locked up in the end?”

He raised his glass and toasted me.

“Touché,” he said.

And drank.

“I need to go find my mom and Gus,” I said.

“The other two lovebirds,” he said. “The odd couple.”

I sighed.

“She’s lucky he’s here to train her now that Daniel isn’t,” I said, “at least if you’re still interested in your horse winning on Sunday.”

“She’ll be fine,” Gorton said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned watching this sport, it’s this: In the end, it’s not about either one of us, honey. It’s about the goddamn horse. You don’t have that, you have shit. And not just horseshit.”

“I’m not your honey.”

I felt incredibly tired all of a sudden.

“You got that right,” he said. “Not my type. Too mouthy.”

“At the risk of getting even mouthier,” I said, “I am curious about something. If all that matters is the horse, how come you were so fixated on getting me off Coronado after Mom got hurt? And then getting
her
off Coronado when Mom was back on him?”

“Rookie mistake,” he said. “Bought into Cullen’s bullshit for a little while, is all.” He shrugged and finished his drink. “Live and learn. But want to know my biggest mistake when I got into this business? I should have gone after McGill’s kid.”

“Wouldn’t she be the lucky girl,” I said.

I walked away then, the way Daniel should have. If somebody was watching us, I didn’t want them to get the idea that I was the jackass.

But Gorton couldn’t resist shouting after me, as a way of getting the last word.

“It must kill you,” he said, “knowing that if your mom wins on Sunday, I do, too.”

I waved without looking back and kept walking, picking up the pace as I made the turn at the end of the bleachers.

The truth was, I had nothing.

Even Steve Gorton was right once in a while.

BY THE TIME MAGGIE
heard her name called by the in-gate announcer, Becky had just gone clean, and was on her way out of the ring as Maggie was on her way in.

Becky smiled at her mother and nodded. Maggie smiled back. Nothing left to be said, by either one of them. This was as close to the Olympics as Maggie had been since Lord Stanley. She didn’t want to think about that now, or Daniel, or how much might be on the line today. Tried to clear her mind, but couldn’t, couldn’t stop it from racing as she walked her horse out, and heard the public address announcer formally introducing her and Coronado.

All she had to do then was wait for the buzzer to sound.

When they were out there, Coronado was nearly perfect, fast and clean, running as well as he had all spring, no worries for Maggie, none, about the possibility of a time fault. Not today. No, this already felt like one of those dream days when everything was in sync between her and her horse, when Coronado knew what to do before Maggie even had to ask him.

They were four fences from the end when her left foot came out of its stirrup.

It happened out of nowhere, Coronado landing awkwardly after clearing the rollback fence. It had happened to her before. Happened to all riders from time to time. The last time for Maggie was her first time in Gus’s ring, when she’d first gotten back on her horse. Now she jammed the foot back in, same as she had that day. It was what you did. Remembered it hurting like hell at the time.

Today the pain felt as if the knee had exploded, as if she’d done something to the ligaments all over again.

Like stitches popping.

The pain shot up her leg, intense enough to momentarily blur her vision. Maggie bit down on her lip so hard she thought it might be bleeding.

But she rode through the pain. Had to. Pretended it was a bad muscle cramp. Three jumps left. Two a combination.

Keep going.

“Come on!”
she yelled.

Not yelling at the big horse. At herself. The power in her riding came from her legs. She just couldn’t do it now, at least not with both of them. It was all Coronado now.

No problems on the combination. Just seven strides now to the last jump. Maggie told herself not to rush him. He had this.
They
had this.

Goddamn, her knee hurt.

One last long stride to the fence.

Coronado did all the work from there, even though Maggie’s heart briefly dropped a couple of floors when she felt one of his hind legs brush the rail.

It stayed up.

They’d made it around clean.

Maggie whipped her head around, saw her time, saw that she was a second under the time allowed. She was into the jump-off. The knee wasn’t hurting any less. But in that moment, it wasn’t hurting any more, either.

As she passed Gus, he looked up at her and said, “What happened there at the rollback? You looked like you seized up for a second or something?”

She forced a smile.

“Or something,” she said.

“You want to get off and walk around a little before you go back out there?”

“Not so much,” she said.

BECAUSE OF OUR TIMES,
Mom and I were in the middle of the pack for the jump-off. She was going fourth, I was going fifth. Tyler, with the best time in the round, would go last. Matthew Killeen got an early rail. So did Eric Glynn.

Tess McGill had just rocked everybody on the grounds by announcing that her horse, Volage, had come up lame and couldn’t go in the jump-off. No one knew the extent of the injury, at least not yet, and what that would do to her Olympic chances. But I couldn’t worry about that right now, as much as I liked Tess. There was work to be done, first with Mom, who seemed to be grimacing slightly when we left the schooling ring. I asked if she was okay.

“Fine,” she said. “Just tweaked my knee a little.”

She moved ahead of me to the in-gate. One more time I felt almost as nervous for her as I did for myself.

But just almost.

Felt as if I were holding my breath the whole time she was out there, until she’d gone clean, with a time of 36.1. Flawless round. Maggie Atwood at her very best.

My turn.

Following Mom again, trying to get ahead of her at the same time.

We got this, I told myself as Sky flew around the first half of the course.

We got this.

But just like that, after she’d cleared the water jump with ease, no small feat for a small horse, I could feel her tiring. It happened sometimes, happened to all horses. One more thing they knew and couldn’t tell us. When she started to make a wide turn going into the rollback, I had no choice but to take her outside, knowing that the time it cost us would probably make all the difference. It did.

We came in at 36.7.

One rider left. Our dear friend Tyler. With as much on the line today as anybody. If he could beat Mom’s time and win, he would jump past both of us in the Olympic rankings. I liked to joke with Gus that I’d leave the numbers to him. The fact was, I knew all the numbers, down to decimal points, even knowing that sometimes the numbers weren’t the only determining factor with the ones on the Selection Committee, that they’d also apply an eye test in the run-up to the Summer Games, and decide who they thought the hottest riders were near the top of the list.

It turned out to be his day, simple as that. Not Mom’s. Not mine. By the time he finished he had blown both of us away, with a time of 35 flat. First place today. First place in the rankings. Just like that.

Tyler, waving to the crowd as if he’d already won an Olympic gold medal, was first to walk out to the center of the ring for the awards ceremony, right after telling Mom and me that Steve Gorton could come down here and kiss his skinny ass in front of everybody.

Mom watched him and said, “A charm school dropout until the end.”

She followed Tyler out after the PA announcer called her name. Then I followed her one last time. She sometimes limped slightly after her rounds, because of her knee surgery. It seemed more noticeable today.

“Hey, you sure you’re okay?” I said.

“Never better,” she said over her shoulder.