The Horsewoman(49)

All in all, a good, drama-free night.

Then Mom stood up suddenly, as if she was headed up to bed. But instead she walked to the front window, turning so she could face us all at once.

“There’s no good time to say this,” she said. “Or good way to say it. But I wanted to say it to all of you at once, so here goes.”

She took a deep breath that I worried might have rocked her rib cage.

“I want to start riding again,” she said.

“Mom,” I said, “that’s great! Why would there ever be a bad time for you to tell us that?”

She looked at me now and said, “You didn’t let me finish.”

She took another deep breath and said, “I want to start riding Coronado.”

There was a long pause until Grandmother spoke.

“What are you saying, Maggie?”

Grandmother had asked the question, but Mom was still looking directly at me.

“I want my horse back,” she said.





FIFTY-SIX

Maggie



ONCE MAGGIE HAD made her decision, there was no rationalizing the fallout: what this was going to do to Becky.

I want my horse back.

The words of a spoiled brat just hanging there, everybody staring at her, almost as if they hadn’t heard her correctly.

It was Becky who spoke first.

“Wait,” she said. “You’re saying you want Coronado back now? You haven’t even started riding yet.”

“Yes,” Daniel said, “she has.”

“Where has she been riding?”

“At Gus Bennett’s barn,” Daniel said.

Becky’s head whipped in his direction.

“You knew about this?” she said. “What the hell, Daniel?”

“I knew she had begun to ride again, with Gus,” he said. “She made me promise not to tell, and I honored her wish. But I did not know about this.”

“You told Daniel,” Caroline Atwood said to Maggie. “And you didn’t tell me, either?”

“Daniel found out on his own,” Maggie said. “A week ago, before I started jumping.”

Maggie took a deep breath.

No going back now.

“I looked like an idiot on the horse he had me riding,” she said. “I didn’t want to start here because I didn’t want any of you to see me that way. I was tired of everybody looking at me like I was some kind of invalid. But then one day…I started to feel better. The day of my MRI, I finally told Dr. Garry what I was doing. When he looked at the pictures from all the tests, he basically told me it was my life.”

Maggie turned to Becky.

“Honey,” she said. “I am so sorry. I know it’s not just my life. It’s yours, too.”

“No shit,” I said.

“I want you to understand my decision.”

“You chose your horse over me,” Becky said. She gave a sarcastic thumbs-up. “Got it.”

“That’s not fair. You know how long this has been my dream,” Maggie said.

She looked at Becky and saw both the hurt and anger on her face.

“What about my dreams?” Becky said, standing. “They don’t matter?”

“So what you’re telling me,” she continued, “is that you plan to go from Gus Bennett’s ring all the way to a five-star Grand Prix, and then straight to Paris? I get off, you get on, is that it?”

She looked at her mother, face red, eyes red.

“Should we pass an effing baton?” she said.

“Honey,” Maggie said, “it’s a lot more complicated than that. I never dreamt I’d feel this good—this ready—this soon. But I finally decided that if I was going to try, it had to be now. And I mean, like, right now.”

“I’m glad you were able to work this out in your head, Mom, no kidding,” Becky said. “Not only did you set the debate, nobody else got to join it.” She nodded. “Very cool.”

Maggie was breathing so hard, more deep breaths in and out, that her ribs were starting to feel sore all over again.

You’ve come this far.

No turning back now.

“I was going to wait another week,” Maggie said. “Just to be sure that I was sure. But then at dinner you all got so excited talking about the calendar, and what’s coming up, and what’s at stake, and I decided my waiting any longer wasn’t fair to anybody.”

“Now we’re talking fair?” Becky said. “To who?”

“You think me getting thrown from the horse was fair?” Maggie said.

Then she paused and said, “The Olympics was my dream first.”

Maggie was waiting for her mom to weigh in. Or Daniel. Or both. But this was between Maggie and her daughter. The room crackled with silent tension. And the intensity of an electric storm.

“This is a lot to process,” Maggie said. “Maybe we all need to sleep on it and talk in the morning.”

“Coronado is your horse, Mom,” Becky said. “You can do what you want with him. Next time, maybe think about giving me a heads-up.”

Becky walked over to the front door, opened it, started out, stopped, stepped back inside.

“Have at it,” she said to Maggie, and left.