The Horsewoman(71)

But when they got to the top, Larry turned around, shouted down at Daniel.

“Hey, Ortega?” he said.

Daniel looked up at him.

“Good luck with that horse of yours,” the agent said, before he was following Eddie through the door.

I wasn’t sure why that sounded like a threat.

But it did.





EIGHTY-EIGHT



WHEN GRANDMOTHER HEARD about the events in Miami she decided we needed to celebrate, and booked us a big table across from the bar at Duke’s. The restaurant at the Wanderers Club overlooked the polo fields where they were setting up for a match the next night.

“Breaking news,” she said when we’d all ordered food, “good guys win for a change. I should alert the media.”

Mom was there, and Gus and Daniel and Hector and his wife, Maria. And me. Hector and Maria weren’t saying much, just sitting next to each other and holding hands and mostly doing a lot of smiling.

Daniel clinked a fork against his bottle of beer to get everybody’s attention, raised it and said, “Mejores dias.”

Better days.

I looked at Maria Suarez and saw she couldn’t stop herself from crying.

“No blubbering,” Grandmother said from her side of the table, and everybody laughed.

Then Gus said he wanted to raise a glass to Daniel.

“Please, don’t,” Daniel said.

“Want to try and stop me?” Gus said.

“Obviously even the federales cannot do that,” Daniel said.

“To Daniel,” Gus said. “Who’s what I call a foxhole friend.”

“Takes one to know one,” I said.

“Zip it,” Gus said.

It was as if everybody at the table was allowed to exhale tonight, for the first time in a long time and for a lot of different reasons. There was mostly show talk, once Gus finished his play-by-play of what had happened inside the Immigration Building and then outside later. Gus told Hector that he had a job at his barn starting in the morning. We all talked excitedly about the events coming up. It was a celebration tonight that had hardly anything to do with horses.

When we were all studying the dessert menu, Grandmother told a story I’d never heard about the time she’d ridden in Paris, at the Saint Hermes, and how she was chased from Notre Dame to the Louvre and back by a show jumper from Argentina.

“Too much information,” I said.

“I was young once, too, missy,” she said. “I had some horse that year, I don’t mind telling you. But Juan Carlos, that was his name, he had a much better one. And had been winning all over Europe that year. But he was hot for me, which is why I think he might have slowed down just enough at the end to let me beat him out of a third-place ribbon. Knowing it meant a lot more to me than him.”

I had my wineglass nearly to my lips, but slowly put it down now.

“Did he tell you he had?” I said. “Slowed up?”

Grandmother grinned. “I intuited it, especially after he invited me to an extremely romantic dinner at L’Ami Louis.” She winked at me.

She was smiling. I wasn’t.

“So riders do let other riders win from time to time?”

Maybe it was the wine.

“Becky,” Mom said.

The tone meant drop it.

“You’d never do anything like that, right, Mom?” I said.

Gus was next to me.

“Everybody’s having a good time,” he said, almost under his breath.

“We’ve gone over this,” Mom said to me. “I didn’t let you win.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

The whole table had gotten quiet.

“Every single rider in the jump-off made the inside turn,” I said. “Except you.”

“Good grief,” Grandmother said, “you still haven’t dropped this, Rebecca McCabe? You know the old expression about beating a dead horse? For the last time, this goddamn horse died.”

“And for the last time,” Mom said to me, “why would I have let you win?”

“I know how much you want us both to make the Olympic team,” I said. “Maybe you decided I needed the win more.”

“Nobody wants to win more than I do,” Mom said.

“Maybe I do now,” I said. “It’s why I don’t want anybody giving me anything. Including you.” Now I drank more wine. “Especially you.”

“Enough,” Grandmother said, trying to glare me into silence before waving theatrically for the check.

I should have dropped this by now. Or never opened the door in the first place. But I was still being carried along by adrenaline. The kind Gus said you could hear. Suddenly Mom was, too.

“I am going to tell you what I told that little shit Tyler Cullen that day,” she said. “If you think I’d ever let anybody win, especially you, then maybe you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

“Maybe I don’t,” I said.

I stood up, and pushed back my chair, nearly knocking it over in the process.

“Where are you going?” Mom said.

“I can get my own ride home,” I said.

She caught up with me in the lobby, as I was calling my Uber.

“You’re as stubborn as your father,” she said. “You got stuck on things when you were a little girl, and you’re still getting stuck.”