The Horsewoman(41)

Saw where he was after the combination.

Shit, it’s like a dead heat.

36. 37.

I couldn’t watch the clock anymore. Closed my eyes. Opened them and saw Galahad in the air over the last jump, saw him take it clean.

Saw Tyler raise his right hand in the air, like in triumph, as he landed.

Then he looked at the big screen at the same time I did.





FORTY-FOUR



MY TIME, THE previous best in the jump-off, was in the top right-hand corner: 38.4

His was 38.7.

Choke on it, Cullen.

Coronado and I had won the Grand Prix.

Only now Tyler Cullen whipped Galahad around, like he was making one more sharp turn, and the horse was galloping back toward the in-gate, Cullen only pulling him up at the last second, not waiting for his trainer, Mackey, to help him off, jumping down himself, nearly stumbling as he landed, as he handed Mackey the reins.

Then he was running for the judge’s booth.

“No way!” he yelled at the judge. “No way. They skipped a second.”

“What’s he doing?” I said to Daniel.

“Challenging the time.”

“Can you do that?”

“He thinks you can,” Daniel said.

“What do we do?”

“We stay right here,” he said.

We weren’t close enough to hear what Cullen was saying once he was inside the booth and managed to lower his voice. We could see him leaning close to the judge, pointing a finger at him. Then he stepped outside, turned around, and yelled that he wanted to see a steward from the FEI. Right now. International Federation of Equestrian Sports. Our sport’s ruling body. On a night like this, an event this big, the steward was as close as you could be to God.

“I’ll tell him what I just told you,” Tyler Cullen said now. “The clock was wrong. I saw exactly where I was when I landed.”

I was off Coronado by now. Emilio had him. Daniel and I walked over and leaned against the first jump, waited for the steward to make his way from his perch at the other end.

“He’s just a sore loser, right?” I said.

“The sorest I have ever seen,” Daniel said.

“Can he get away with this?”

In a quiet voice Daniel said, “No.”

“Why?”

“Because he is wrong,” Daniel said.

The steward was Charles Kaiser, a tall, white-haired man in a royal-blue sport jacket and white pants. He walked slowly through the middle of the course. It only seemed to piss off Tyler Cullen more. He was standing in front of the judge’s booth, hands on hips.

“Now what?” I said.

“I have only seen this happen a couple of other times,” Daniel said. “They will connect to FarmTek, which supplies the timing device. Then they will sync up their system with the replay of his round. And then they will see that the clock did not skip anything.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“I do,” Daniel said.

Then we both watched the three of them, the judge and Mr. Kaiser and Tyler Cullen, all crouched over a laptop in the judge’s booth. They were in there about five minutes, Daniel and I watching them as closely as we’d watched Cullen’s round on Galahad.

Then Mr. Kaiser was outside the booth, walking slowly toward Daniel and me.

Shaking his head.





FORTY-FIVE



I REACHED OVER and squeezed Daniel’s hand. I was afraid I might end up in the dirt again if I didn’t have something to hold on to.

Or somebody.

“I’m so sorry,” Mr. Kaiser said in an amazingly deep voice.

He even sounds a little bit like God.

Now I squeezed Daniel’s hand even harder.

Daniel spoke first, because I couldn’t.

“Sorry for what?” he said.

“For the delay,” Mr. Kaiser said. “Mr. Cullen’s time was correct. He slowed up at the end when he raised his arm in the air. He didn’t ride the last few strides through the timer.”

Now Daniel squeezed my hand. I saw him smile. I smiled, too, and in a quiet voice said to Daniel, “Somebody spiked the ball too soon.”

Mr. Kaiser extended his hand to me then.

“You’re a champion, Miss McCabe,” he said. “Congratulations.”





FORTY-SIX



I’D WATCHED CHAMPIONS honored on plenty of other Saturday nights. I’d watched Mom step up onto the medal stand and be handed the winner’s check and have a special sash placed around her neck, before they handed her and the two runners-up bottles of champagne.

First time for me.

The check for $250,000, oversized for the photographers, was made out to me. When we got the real one, Grandmother and Steve Gorton would divide the money. I wasn’t great at math. But I was good enough to know that our share was just over $100,000. Might have been pocket change to Gorton. Not to Atwood Farm. It didn’t mean that we were in the clear. Just that we could keep on keeping on for the time being.

My place on the medal stand was slightly higher than Matthew Killeen’s and Tyler Cullen’s. Matthew had congratulated me. Tyler Cullen took his place and stared straight ahead, still caught up in his tantrum. After past ceremonies, the riders who’d finished second and third would pop the champagne and spray the champion with it.