Two Strides (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 30) Read online

  TWO STRIDES

  BY

  CLAIRE SVENDSEN

  Copyright © 2016 Claire Svendsen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

  COMING SOON

  SUMMER RIDER: CHAPTER ONE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STAY CONNECTED & WIN A FREE BOOK

  COLLECT THEM ALL

  CHAPTER ONE

  “They have gone,” I told Dad.

  I’d gone back down to the kitchen, feeling sick again. It was a feeling I was starting to feel more often than not. I wondered if I was getting an ulcer.

  “They probably got fed up and went to get food,” Dad said, looking at his phone as he ordered a pizza for us.

  “No,” I said, my voice flat. “I mean they’ve actually gone. They’re rooms are empty. They’ve taken their stuff. They’ve gone. Cleared out. Left us.”

  Dad looked up at me. I could see the words sinking in.

  “They can’t be gone,” he said. “They don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Go see for yourself,” I said.

  Dad finished ordering the pizza. I don’t think he believed the fact that my mother and step sister had just vanished. But he went upstairs to look anyway and when he came down his face was pale.

  “They’ve gone,” he said.

  “I know, that’s what I told you,” I replied.

  The pizza came and we ate it in silence though neither of us felt like it. We’d given up everything for my mother. She was the wedge that had come between Dad and Missy. It was because of her that they broke up and we got kicked out of Fox Run. Because Missy wanted revenge. Well now she had the best revenge of all because here we were, sitting in our tumbledown farmhouse and the very reason we had left our life of luxury had just up and gone without even saying a word.

  “They didn’t leave a note,” I finally said. “Maybe they’ll come back.”

  “If they were coming back, they wouldn’t have taken all their stuff,” Dad said.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked him.

  “We’re not going to do anything,” he said. “They left us. That’s their choice.”

  He threw his plate in the sink and it broke. I knew that he was only pretending that he didn’t care.

  “We have to do something,” I said.

  But Dad didn’t reply.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I woke up the next morning and stretched lazily, accidentally pushing Patrick off the bed. The dog growled and then jumped back on top of me and licked my face.

  “Knock it off,” I told him with a laugh.

  I felt warm and fuzzy inside. Yesterday had been a good day. I jumped at an actual show and hadn’t thrown up or lost my marbles and I’d also had something that I had never even expected, fun with my new friends. I missed Mickey and the people I used to ride with at Fox Run but they never would have joined in the mounted games like Rose and Andy did. I still had my smiley face egg on the table next to my bed, his smile a little lopsided now. The ribbon that we had won sat next to it, the blue satin shining in the early morning light.

  I jumped out of bed, throwing off the covers. I needed to tell Cat all about Sunny and how great she’d been. Well maybe not great but at least she hadn’t done anything dangerous. But standing there with my hand on the door handle, I realized that I couldn’t tell Cat because she had gone and my mother had gone too.

  Standing in her empty bedroom, I looked for a clue that I might have missed the night before when it was dark and I was tired. Something to let me know that she was okay. Some inkling of where she might have gone. Cat and I had our differences but we were really starting to get along. When we first met we hated each other. She was rough and cruel and had funny colored hair. She’d made in her mission in life to make mine a living hell. But somewhere along the way we’d become an unlikely pair of friends. She hadn’t even been gone that long and I already missed her. It was like she’d left a hole in my heart and I wanted her back.

  Patrick jumped on the bed and lay his head down with a whine.

  “You miss her too boy?” I asked as I sat down next to him.

  I opened the drawers in her bed side table but all Cat had left behind was a dried up lipstick and an old book. I picked it up and flicked through the pages. It didn’t even belong to her. It said property of the Wisconsin National library. Cat had been a thief even then, if you counted not returning a library book as stealing but maybe that was how it had all started. First an unreturned library book, then a candy bar from the gas station and the next thing she knew she was stealing bags full of clothes from the mall. I wished that I’d said something to her. Told her to stop before she got caught but it was too late for that now. Besides, she probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.

  “Come on,” I told Patrick. “We have to do all the chores now.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Down in the barn, Dad and Jordan were mucking stalls. The radio was on, playing an old pop song and both of them were humming as they picked through the shavings for manure and pee, tossing it into muck tubs outside the stalls.

  “You two seem unusually happy,” I said.

  “The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day and we had a relatively successful show yesterday,” Dad said with a grin. “What is there not to be happy about?”

  “Um, Mom and Cat have gone, disappeared, remember?” I said.

  “They’ll be back,” Dad said cheerily. “Or they won’t. Either w
ay it doesn’t matter.”

  I looked at Jordan who just shrugged. Dad was obviously riding the delusional train this morning. I wasn’t sure if he was in denial or if he really was glad they were gone but he had to at least resent my mother a little bit after all the drama she had caused. She was the one who had driven a wedge between Dad and Missy. She was the reason that we got kicked out of Fox Run as Missy exacted her revenge on us and now she’d just left and we could have stayed at Fox Run all along. We wouldn’t be standing in a half finished barn on a tumbledown farm if she’d never shown up in the first place.

  “You’re really not mad at all?” I said.

  “Mad?” Dad replied. “Why would I be mad. Go and play with your ponies. Have some fun. You’ve earned it.”

  I left psychotic Dad and Jordan to finish up the chores and went to check on the horses that had been to the show. Bluebird met me with a nicker and I gave him a treat from my pocket, which incited a stampede because if there is one thing a horse can hear a mile away it’s another horse eating a treat. Arion, Socks and Hashtag jostled for treats as well and in the end I had to leave them before they trampled me to death. They were obviously no worse for wear after their show day.

  The only one who wasn’t quite right was Phoenix. He was standing in his paddock with his head down while Bandit ate a big pile of hay like a little pig.

  “Are you alright?” I asked the colt, ruffling his mane.

  He’d had a rough week. His nurse mare had been taken away and now the person who usually took care of him had vanished. I knew that Cat didn’t want anyone to know but I’d seen her down there fussing over him before she went to catch the bus for school. She gave him attention when we were all too busy to do so and now she had gone. She’d abandoned him too.

  I looked at the colt’s gums and listened to his gut, pressing my head against his little belly just in case he was feeling sick but he had good gut sounds and his gums were pink.

  “I think Phoenix is depressed,” I told Dad. “He’s acting weird. I’m going to make him a bran mash just in case.”

  “He’s going to be even more depressed in a few days when the vet comes out to geld him,” Dad said.

  “Already?” I cried. “Can’t you at least let him get used to Chantilly and Cat abandoning him before you traumatize him like that?”

  “The longer we leave it, the worse it will be,” Dad said. “And we can’t have a stud colt running around the place. You know that.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh. “I just feel bad for him.”

  “Well it’s going to make him a better horse to have his nuts chopped off,” Dad said.

  I looked at Jordan, who winced. He wasn’t so keen on the idea. I wasn’t sure any guy was. Dad was just on the fake happy kick and I knew that it wouldn’t last forever and when he crashed, he was going to crash hard.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I thought that it might be nice to take Bluebird for a hack around the farm to stretch out his muscles but I couldn’t be bothered to tack him up. Instead I tied his lead rope to both sides of his halter and sprang up onto his bare back and since he was a pony he didn’t have any pointy withers or a high back bone to dig into my butt.

  We walked lazily up the hill. It was a cloudy day and rain had been forecast for later. That meant muddy ponies and a sloshy ring since our drainage wasn’t the best. I should have been taking advantage of the fact that everything was still dry and working Hashtag on the flat. Miss. Fontain’s student was going to come and try him out in a couple of days. If she liked him then Hashtag would go out on lease. He was a lovely Warmblood and dressage was something he was bred for. He deserved to do something that made him happy.

  At the top of the hill I looked down on our farm, watching as Jordan dumped the manure. He hadn’t said much to me this morning but then again what were you supposed to say to someone whose mother had just run off? There were no words really.

  Down on Jess’s farm she had a gray horse out in the ring. Harlow. It stung to watch her ride him. They were cantering over a low course and there was a woman calling out instructions. I couldn’t see who it was, probably some new trainer that her father had brought in. Harlow looked tired. He wasn’t lame but there was no spring in his step, He was just going through the motions. My heart ached. I longed to have him on our farm so that he could live out his retirement in peace, going for hacks every now and then to keep him engaged and maybe teaching a few beginners. He’d be the perfect lesson horse. He always had been. He’d earned a lazy life, not one where he was forced to jump and compete.

  And just as I was about to turn Bluebird for home, Harlow refused a fence, pitching Jess forward and over his neck. She fell off and he trotted away a few steps, this time looking lame. The trainer grabbed his reins and looked at his front leg. I knew that his legs couldn’t take the pounding that Jess was giving them. Harlow had been retired for a reason. Jess may not have believed that and I knew that she’d only bought him to get back at me but riding him into the ground wasn’t going to help her any. She couldn’t flaunt him in front of me if he was stuck on stall rest.

  Jess and the trainer got into a fight. There were raised voices but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Arms flapping about as Jess tried to grab the reins and get back on. The trainer won, leading a limping Harlow back to the barn. At least that was something. Only that trainer would probably get fired and a new one would be brought in to replace her. One who would turn a blind eye if a lame horse was drugged until it was sound. One like Walter Grey. In fact, I was surprised that Jess wasn’t riding with him already. Or maybe he just didn’t think she was good enough. That thought at least gave me a little satisfaction as I rode back down the hill.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I managed to ride Hashtag before the rain came. I worked him in circles and serpentines across the arena. He was supple and straight on the lines but bent his body around my leg when I asked him to. He’d make someone a really great dressage horse, I just knew that he would. Jess seemed to think that if she had him back then she’d be able to make him jump but I knew that wasn’t true. Jess was hard and insensitive to the needs of her horses. There was no way I was going to let her have him back and the fact that Harlow now seemed lame meant that at least she wouldn’t be riding him any time soon.

  Hashtag was back in his field just as the first rumble of thunder echoed across the farm. The horses lifted their heads and took off at a gallop, circling the field before coming to a stop with heads high and nostrils flared. The first scent of rain blowing in on the wind. I hated the fact that we didn’t have enough stalls to bring them all in during the rain and now that summer was fast approaching, we’d soon be getting daily thunder storms. If we couldn’t bring them into stalls, then at least maybe Jordan could build them a shelter.

  I was still thinking about how much wood we would need to make the shelter as I ran up to the house, the first drops of rain staining my shirt in big round circles.

  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table with his head in his hands. Clearly his good mood had taken a turn for the worse, just like the weather. I almost didn’t want to know what was wrong. Hadn’t we suffered enough?

  He looked up when he saw me, his face pale.

  “What is it now?” I asked, sitting down with a sigh.

  He had his laptop open in front of him on the table. There were spreadsheets, documents and bank statements in a sloppy pile. I knew things were tight but they couldn’t be that bad. After all, Dad won his class at the schooling show and that had some half decent prize money, enough to pay our feed bill for a couple of months. We had Molly with her two horses and Faith with Falcon. They paid board and lesson fees. Chantilly had gone so that was one less mouth to feed. I tried to work out in my head if that meant we were operating in the black or the red but I couldn’t figure out complex math when I didn’t have all the facts.

  “Dad?” I tried again.

  “Your mother has wiped us out,” he said.

&
nbsp; “What do you mean?” I asked as lightning flashed across the dark sky outside.

  “She’s cleared out the checking account and the savings account.” He put his head in his hands again. “There is nothing left.”

  “What do you mean there is nothing left?” I said, panic rising up in my throat.

  “It’s all gone,” he yelled. “She pulled a good one on us. Now we have nothing. See?”

  He flipped the computer around so that I could see the screen. His bank account was up there, the numbers showing that he had zero dollars and zero cents to his name.

  “She couldn’t,” I said. “She wouldn’t.”

  “Well she has,” Dad said.

  “Maybe it wasn’t her,” I told him, my brain desperately trying to come up with any explanation that wasn’t my mother stealing all our money. “Call the bank. Perhaps it’s some kind of error?”

  “Some kind of error where all our money just vanished into thin air?” Dad said.

  “The website could be having problems,” I said. “Or maybe there is a glitch. You never know.”

  Dad called the bank. He was on hold for ages. He paced around the kitchen as he was transferred from one department to the next but no one could help him, not even when he explained that his obviously psychotic ex-wife had cleaned him out.

  “They can’t do anything about it,” Dad finally said as he hung up the phone after an hour.

  “How can they not do anything about it?” I said. “It’s your money. How can she just steal it like that? How can they let her get away with it?”

  “Because I put her name on the account,” Dad said wearily, sitting back down.

  “You did what?” I said weakly.

  “I put her name on the account,” he said again, this time louder. “She didn’t have a job. She was doing the grocery shopping. She needed money.”

  “But the savings account too?” I said.

  “There wasn’t much in there,” Dad said. “It’s not like she stole hundreds of thousands of dollars.”