The Horsewoman(99)

The idea of the first rollback, that first sharp turn, was scaring me to death. Not Sky. She got over the jump, breezing.

By now the water was pouring into my eyes off my helmet. The course was getting muddier with every jump. Puddles were already forming. The rain was coming that hard.

I kept tight reins on Sky through the double. Then we were clearing the pool. No splash there, before we started splashing our way toward the next fence. I knew I couldn’t get reckless or go full throttle. But if I slowed down too much, I had no chance to win. And hadn’t come this far to lose.

I put my head down.

Rode my ride.

We got over the jump on the last rollback. She slid a little, but I got her squared up. She got over. No time to celebrate. I slowed her down, just slightly, coming into the triple.

But she went clean there.

We made our last turn and didn’t slide and got over the second-to-last jump and now it was just a sprint to the end of the course.

Or so I thought.

Sky’s hind legs slipped and came out from under her then.

She didn’t stop. But it was the same as her rearing up, even while still going forward between jumps. Just like that, the back of her was lower than her front and she started to go down.





ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX



I HAD SEEN IT HAPPEN to riders before, their horse going backward and going down when their legs came out from under them that way, sometimes with the rider still in the saddle, sometimes with disastrous results.

It was happening to Sky now.

At least she was still going forward. If she could keep doing that, if she could stay up, we still had a chance. But whatever I was going to do to help her, I had to do right now.

And there wasn’t much I could do to stabilize her. I lifted my hands up, squeezed her harder with my legs. But it was all up to Sky now, and the instinct she shared with all horses: not to go down.

She didn’t.

One of those Olympic miracles.

Somehow she got her hind legs underneath her, and kept moving. Somehow I managed to keep her in line. Got her a good distance into the last jump. The skinny. They were known as verticals, too. Made them look higher than they actually were. Right now this one looked as tall as the Eiffel Tower.

Sky didn’t care. She’d come this far, too. One more time she flew, and we’d gone clear. She skidded when she landed. It didn’t matter now.

Then I heard the loudest cheers I’d ever heard, at least cheers for me. I turned and with my left glove did my best to rub water out of my eyes and squinted through the rain one last time.

I still couldn’t see much in the ring, but I could see our number: 38.4.

I’d won the gold medal.

Mom had gotten silver. I yelled my head off then, knowing only Sky could hear me, the sound of the crowd combined with the sound of the storm. I walked Sky over to where Mom and Gus were.

“You were great!” Mom shouted up at me.

“So were you!”

“You’re better!” she said.

“How did you keep that horse from going down?” Mom said.

I leaned down and shouted back at her.

“Way I was brought up.”

I wasn’t sure where to go then, what to do. Neither Gus nor Mom nor I had allowed ourselves to discuss what would happen if one of us won. So I didn’t know when the medal ceremony would start, or even where. All I knew was that I needed a moment alone with my horse.

So I walked her back to the schooling ring, the footing in there nearly underwater by now. Emilio helped me down, then hugged me. I felt like a stupidly wet swamp thing and didn’t care. I was stupidly happy. I walked over and leaned against the fence, put my head back as far as it would go and let the rain hit me in the face, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.

Then I walked back over to Sky and got close to her ear and told her, Bad Becky style, that holy shit, we just beat them all.





ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN



Four days later



I WALKED ACROSS the schooling ring toward Tyler Cullen, about to do something I could never have imagined. But knowing I had to do it.

Tyler was roughly fifteen minutes away from being part of the jump-off that would decide who won the team gold medal. Five riders had qualified for the jump-off, and Tyler was one of them.

I wasn’t.

Sky had finally gotten her first Olympic rail, on the last day of the team competition. But that was all it took to keep us from continuing. After everything my horse had done, she finally got tired. It was a cheap rail, at the third fence. It had shocked the hell out of me, just because of the way she’d performed every time we’d been in that ring, even in the rain. Didn’t matter. She still had enough in her, and enough heart, to finish strong. We had come that close to going clean for the Olympics, giving ourselves a chance to throw what Gus called a perfect game. And had put more pressure on Mom and Tyler.

They were our team now. We’d all still win gold if their combined score took first in the jump-off. But all I could do now was watch, which wasn’t how this part of the story was supposed to end: Mom needed Tyler to get a gold medal.

And Tyler needed her to get one of his own.

I needed both of them.

The team competition had started out with twenty countries, cut to ten after the first round on Sunday afternoon. And after the final qualifying round tonight, only the five riders who’d gone clear remained. All of them would start even in the jump-off.