The Horsewoman(88)

The last chance to move up, or down, or influence the selectors, would be on Sunday in Bridgehampton. As obsessed as Tyler had been about Coronado, he would end up top-ranked with Galahad if he won on Sunday and likely make the team for sure with a decent finish. Mom and I were right there behind him. Three of us would make the team. One would be an alternate.

Gus and Mom had arrived that afternoon at the house we’d rented a few miles north of the show grounds. The drive from Florida had taken them two days, having overnighted in Raleigh. I asked Mom if they’d booked the honeymoon suite at the Raleigh Hyatt. She told me to zip it. Grandmother and I had flown up and arrived on Saturday, when the horses did. So we were all in the Hamptons now. Dad was still in Florida, working Daniel’s case.

I had finished flatting Sky in a practice ring about twenty minutes before. Now while Mom and Gus checked out the stalls, I was taking a walk around the place, amazed at how much bigger it had gotten and how much it had changed since Mom used to bring me up as a teenager when she’d ride in the late-summer Hampton Classic. My first time competing here would be on Sunday at one. The main event. Money on the table. Gus training both Mom and me.

Our lives were overlapping. Gus was her former trainer, current boyfriend. He was my current trainer. Daniel was Mom’s trainer, or had been until he ended up in jail. My dad, Mom’s ex-husband, was now Daniel’s lawyer. And there were more layers than that. Mom had a horse that had come up lame when she was on her way to the London Olympics. Gus had been injured, permanently, when he was on his way to Beijing.

Here we all were, anyway, a long way from home.

All of us except Daniel.

In the late afternoon I walked all the way to the Grand Prix ring at the east end of the property. It was empty, except for me.

I climbed up to the last row of the bleachers and surveyed the whole scene, from the distant railroad tracks to the grade school across the street to the fences and rails stacked against side walls covered with sponsor names. Imagined how it would look and feel on Sunday when the bleachers were full.

What if it somehow did come down to Mom or me for the last spot on the team?

How would I feel if I got it and not her?

Or she did?

And not me.

I made my way back down the stairs then, hopped the fence, walked to the middle of the ring, imagining myself down here, in here, on Sunday afternoon. What the view would be like then. What I would be feeling like then.

Walked back over to the fence, hopped it again, sat down in the first row of bleachers this time. Leaned back, closed my eyes, tried to see Sky and me here, late in the jump-off, imagining what Sunday afternoon would look like and feel like—and sound like—if we made it that far.

I felt myself smiling.

“Long time no see.”

I looked up to find Steve Gorton standing over me.





ONE HUNDRED ELEVEN



GORTON WAS RIGHT. I hadn’t seen or talked to him since the night Daniel had punched him in the face. Until now.

Mom hadn’t had any contact with him, either, nor had Grandmother, even though they both had plenty they wanted to say to him. Coronado hadn’t competed since the Mercedes, so there had been no real reason for him to show his face—and what I could see was a still swollen nose—around WEF. But now he was standing right in front of me. I had read somewhere that he had an oceanfront home in East Hampton. And he had his horse going Sunday.

Lucky me.

“Mr. Gorton,” I said.

“I came up here about a week ago,” he told me without being asked. “So I’m a little behind the news. How’s your boyfriend doing in prison?”

I felt the sudden urge to hit him in the same spot Daniel had. I took a nice, slow, deep breath instead. Somehow managing to smile at him as I did.

“Listen,” I said. “I am respectful of the fact that you’re the majority owner of Mom’s horse. And I know how close we all might be to making it to the Olympics. So I’m not looking to mess with you or have you mess with me. But I hope you’ll respect that I’m not talking about Daniel with you.”

Gorton had a plastic cup in his hand. He took a healthy sip of whatever was in it, then acted as if he hadn’t heard a single word I’d said.

“Guy’s a hothead,” he said. “Must be that Latin blood. Probably gets your engine running, am I right?”

I told myself to get the hell away from him and do it right now. Nothing good could come of me staying here, not for Mom, not for me. Certainly not for Daniel. I’d already seen how little it took to set Gorton off. The real hothead, I knew by now, was him. But I didn’t walk away. Stayed where I was instead. Bad Becky. Don’t give an inch.

“He’s not a hothead,” I said. “You’re the one who provoked him.”

“Is that what he told you?” he said. He put his index finger to the side of his head, as if suddenly curious. “But if I did, how come he’s in the slammer and I’m on my way to Bloomberg’s house in Southampton for a party he’s throwing for his kid?”

“You know you provoked him,” I said.

“Says him,” Gorton said. “It’s like Jack Nicholson said in that movie with my friend Tom Cruise. Your boy messed with the wrong Marine.”

“I saw that movie, too,” I said. “Wasn’t the colonel the one who got locked up in the end?”