The Horsewoman(11)

“If she’s asleep,” I told the nurse, “I’ll just leave the stuff inside the door.”

“Promise?” the nurse said.

“Yes, ma’am!” I said. “Thank you so much.”

My dad had told me once that nobody faked sincerity better than I did when I put my mind to it.

Truly, no matter what Grandmother decided, I wanted to know what Mom thought.

My whole life I’d wanted her to respect me as a rider but at the same time hated being compared to her, mostly because I’d convinced myself early on that I’d never measure up, not just to what she was, but what she and her own mother had decided I was supposed to be. Somewhere along the line, they’d decided that I didn’t care enough.

But I did. Just in my own stubborn way. When I was eight or nine, Mom had caught me in some dumb lie and grounded me. I told them I didn’t want to live here, packed my little pink Hello Kitty suitcase, and walked out the door, good-bye.

Made it all the way to the end of the driveway before I turned around and came back.

I was still here, and I still cared. Except now Daniel wanted me to be Mom, on her horse.

Shit happened.

I poked my head into her room and said, “You awake?”

“So awake,” she said. “Just please don’t ask me how I’m doing, or I’m getting out of this bed and challenging you to a fistfight.”

“I was afraid of this,” I said. “You’re not acting like my mom. You’re acting like yours.”

What sounded like a laugh came out of her before it quickly turned into a coughing fit. Not a pretty sound.

“Sorry, Mom,” I said.

“Lost my ride,” she said. “But apparently not my sense of humor.”

I pulled a chair over to the side of the bed.

“Aren’t visiting hours over?” she said.

“I might have lied my way in,” I said.

“Bad Becky strikes again.”

But she was smiling. She looked tired as hell. No makeup. Probably not eating. Still beautiful.

“You look like something’s on your mind.”

“Oh, baby,” I said.

Then I told my mother about her mother’s conversation with Mr. Gorton, and the one she’d just had with Daniel and me. She listened, no change in her expression, until I finished.

“Crazytown, right?” I said.

“They’re both right,” Mom said. “Mom and Daniel.”

She motioned for the water cup with the straw in it on the bedside table. I handed it to her. She drank deeply and handed it back. Even now, she didn’t miss a chance to hydrate like a triathlete.

“It’s not just another rider,” she said. “If Gorton goes out and gets some hotshot rider, that guy is going to want his own trainer. So then not only would I be gone, so would Daniel. And with another rider and another trainer, what’s left for Mom? Silent partner? Good luck to the lawyers trying to enforce that.”

I stood up now, needing to move, even if it was just to the other side of the bed.

“The important thing is that Daniel thinks you can do this and so do I.”

“Are you sure you’re not on drugs?” I said. “I know I’m a good rider. And since I know you and Daniel don’t lie about horses, I’m not going to, either. As much as I’d love to show Grandmother she’s wrong about me, I would be out of my league here.”

“Bullshit,” Mom said.

“Now you do sound just like her.”

“Just because we both call BS when we see it,” she said.

“So you’re telling me that after the worst year I ever had in riding I can start training with Daniel now and still be ready to ride Coronado in the Grand Prix in a few weeks?”

She tried to sit up straighter in the bed now. The pain flashed across her face like some sudden flash of lightning in the darkened room.

“Let me ask you a question,” she said when she had control of her breathing. “What do you have to lose?”

“Your shot at the Olympics,” I said.

“Our shot.”

“Either way,” I said, “you’re telling me I should do this?”

She closed her eyes and smiled.

“Hell, no,” she said. “I want to be doing this. I want to be in my own bed and asleep already so I can get up early in the morning and ride the living shit out of my horse.”

“Your mind is made up, just like that?” I said.

“I am not going to lie to you,” Mom said. “The day I’m out of here and see somebody else up on that horse, it’s going to hurt even more than I’m hurting right now. But it will hurt a hell of a lot less if it’s you.”

She told me that if I really wanted her advice, it was for me to ride the horse every day for a week, ride him as hard as I could, ride him in the ring and on trail rides, and see if I had a feel for him and he had a feel for me, because it always came back to that.

“Then you can decide whether you’re in or out,” she said. “I’m not sure you’ve been all in since we put you up on Frenchy.”

My first pony.

“You always said that the biggest mystery is how much of it is the horse and how much of it is the rider,” I said.