The Horsewoman(78)

One round, a speed class, nothing more. The only other top riders anywhere near Ring 9 were on their way to their barns across the way, or to the parking lot. Most of the riders had entered her class to try out young horses.

She hadn’t even told Daniel what she planned to do until the previous afternoon. Now they were talking it over again as they finished the course walk.

“I really should have thought of this myself,” he said.

“Can’t think of everything.”

“It’s still the right thing to do.”

“Better be,” she said, pacing off the distance to the final jump.

There were other familiar trainers in the ring. Occasionally she had to raise her voice to be heard over the sound of the tractor dragging a nearby practice ring, and all the golf carts racing past them, like they were the ones in a speed class.

They had finished dragging the practice ring. Seamus was there with Coronado, having walked him over from Gus’s barn. Seamus helped Maggie up and then she was doing some practice jumping before they got to her place in the order. Doing what Daniel had told her to do today. Riding her horse.

When she was at the in-gate, Maggie looked to the other side of Ring 9, the small viewing area over there behind the taco stand. Gus was there, and Becky. Maggie and Becky had been talking the past few days, the way they used to. Maggie had asked her what had melted the ice. Becky had grinned and said, “I just can’t watch you suck.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

“Because I’m your mom?” she’d said.

“Because you’re too damn good to suck this badly,” Becky had said.

Maggie was two out. Looked at a scoreboard about half the size of the one in the International Ring and saw that the time allowed was 72 seconds.

Not for me, Maggie thought. All the times in her life when she’d wanted to go fast. Just not today. Today she didn’t care if it looked like she was pulling a carriage up in Central Park if she got around clean.

She did. Two full seconds over the time allowed. Nearly five seconds behind the winner. Not even close to winning the class. And could not have cared less.

Because she’d gone clean.

“I found what I was looking for,” she said to Daniel when she hopped off Coronado herself, not waiting for Seamus, and was on her way over to Becky and Caroline and Gus Bennett.

“You just needed to slow things down,” he said.

“Well, I sure did that,” she said.

“You know you sound like Becky, right?”

“Don’t tell her I said this,” Maggie told him, “but maybe I need to be a little more like my daughter.”

“In what way?”

“Attitude,” she said.

Daniel smiled.

“Ask her,” he said. “I’m sure she’d be happy to loan you some.”

Maggie smiled then. It was not something she had done lately, especially when leaving the ring.

“I got my groove back,” she said.





NINETY-EIGHT

Daniel



DANIEL MADE THE SHORT WALK with Coronado to their barn, the shortest walk he had ever made there after a class. Thinking as he did what a crazy sport this was, how complicated the act of riding a horse and jumping it could be, losing making Maggie feel as good about herself as she had in weeks.

It wasn’t how much she had wanted to go clean today. She had needed to go clean, even over what looked like baby jumps. Needed to get around without putting a rail on the ground. She didn’t care how low the bar had been set. In all ways. She didn’t care about the level of competition. Daniel, being from Mexico, was a huge soccer fan. Football, they called it in his country. There were three tiers of football in the Mexican league. Maggie had to feel today as if she had competed in Liga Premier. The lowest tier.

But she had done what she needed to do. What she had set out to do. Just as Daniel’s sports psychology books explained, process over result. And this: sometimes doing more is accomplished by caring less. Really today she had only been competing against herself, not the clock.

When he had Coronado back in his stall, Seamus having fed him a carrot before washing and cooling the horse down, Daniel took the long walk back to the front entrance of the show grounds to avoid the traffic crawling out to Pierson Road after the last event of the day. But he had driven Maggie over here and used her VIP pass to park so that she would have a much shorter walk to the tent for lunch with Caroline.

Even on a weekday, cars were backed up to make the left out to Pierson.

Daniel sighed as he saw that Steve Gorton was in one of the cars, an obviously expensive convertible.

Gorton pulled over to the side, into a handicapped space, allowing the cars behind him to pass.

He waved Daniel over.

“Hey,” Gorton said. “Come here.”

As if Daniel were a parking attendant.

Daniel stopped. Technically, though he and Gorton had exchanged barely more than a few sentences, Daniel knew he worked for him. As mean and obnoxious as he was, Gorton was still the majority owner of Maggie’s horse.

In that way, she worked for him, too. Daniel had to show respect even if he did not feel respect.

Gorton got out of the car, leaned against the driver’s-side door, and crossed his arms in front of him.

“So now she loses to losers?” he said.