Off Course (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 12) Read online

  “But I’m a girl,” she said. “And besides, Hampton won’t even be able to see it when it’s on his face.”

  “Your poor horse.” I shook my head.

  “He’ll get over it.” She laughed. “Besides, if I’m happy then he’s happy.”

  “Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” I said.

  “I don’t know, is it?” She shrugged.

  We stopped when we got to the top of the ridge. I hadn’t told Mickey that I rode on the field when I wasn’t supposed to or that I’d seen stall fronts sitting by the old barn.

  “I bet no one is around on the weekend,” she said. “We could probably ride down the hill without getting in trouble.”

  “Yes, we could.” I grinned, happy that my best friend was just as sneaky as I was.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  We rode down the hill, happily chatting amongst ourselves and it wasn’t until we got to the bottom that I realized that we weren’t alone. There was a guy there, wandering around the property and surveying the work. We both froze.

  “What should we do?” Mickey whispered. “What if he calls the cops on us?”

  “Then we gallop away really fast,” I whispered back.

  We started to turn our horses around. The guy hadn’t seen us. We were safe. We could just walk away back up the hill and out of sight before he even noticed. After all, he was so intent on what he was doing that we may as well have been on a different planet. That was until Bluebird let out a screeching whinny for no apparent reason at all. The guy looked up and there he was, my father with his baseball cap and dimpled face. Only he wasn’t grinning. Instead he looked shocked. He opened his mouth to say something but no words came out.

  “Come on,” I yelled to Mickey. “Let’s go.”

  I kicked Bluebird into a canter and could hear Mickey and Hampton thundering behind us. If my father eventually said anything, I couldn’t hear what it was. My heart was still pounding wildly in my chest when we got back onto Sand Hill property and put the fence boards back up.

  “I guess that’s the new owner,” Mickey said. “Maybe we should have stayed to talk to him. You never know, maybe he’d be nice and let us ride on the fields anyway.”

  “No,” I said. “He wouldn’t be nice and we don’t need to talk to him, ever.”

  “But he could be a horse person,” she said as we rode back to the barn. “Hey, maybe he’s a trainer and you could go and ride with him?”

  “Mickey,” I said, my voice steely and flat. “Just drop it, okay?”

  “But why?”

  She looked so confused but I couldn’t tell her the real reason why. After all, who would believe it? I didn’t even believe it and it was happening to me. What on earth would make my father buy the old farm and fix it up? Unless he was doing it for me. But that would be too easy and too stupid. How did he even know I was going to talk to him ever again? Nothing made any sense.

  Mickey took Hampton into the barn and I could tell that she was mad at me but I didn’t care. I walked Bluebird into the ring and worked on our flying changes, the concentration it took to make sure he wasn’t late behind pushing all thoughts of my father out of my head. By the time we were done, we were both sweating, despite the cool breeze.

  I was in the tack room, digging through my stuff to try and find Bluebird’s cooler, when Mickey came in.

  “What is going on with you?” she said. “Why won’t you talk to me? Best friends are supposed to tell each other everything.”

  “I know,” I said, staring at the soft fabric of the cooler so that I wouldn’t have to look at Mickey.

  “So then what? Are we not best friends anymore?”

  “It’s not like that.” I stood up. “I’ll tell you when I can, I just have to try and figure some things out first.”

  “But if you tell me then we could figure it out together,” she said hopefully.

  “I don’t even know where to begin,” I said.

  “Just try.” She grabbed my arm and squeezed it. “It can’t be that bad.”

  “It is,” I said. “That man, the one we just ran away from? He’s my father and he was the anonymous donor at the horse show.”

  “What?” Mickey shrieked. “No way.”

  “Keep it down,” I told her. “Esther doesn’t know.”

  “But what is the big deal?” Mickey said, looking confused. “It’s perfect. He’s your dad and he’s building a farm and now you’ll have a place to keep Bluebird and everything that you ever wanted.”

  “I didn’t want it to be like this,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “I told you that you wouldn’t understand.”

  I brushed past Mickey and threw the cooler over Bluebird who was still standing in the cross ties. I patted his neck, wishing things could be simpler than they were and maybe Mickey was right. Maybe I was making a mountain out of a mole hill. Perhaps I should just accept my father for who he was and the fact that he was back and use it to my advantage. Only I couldn’t get over the fact that I was still so mad at him and that I didn’t really know who he was now. The only memories I had were the ones from when I was five years old, all rosy and distorted by time. What if he was just as bad as Derek or worse?

  “Does your mom know?” Mickey whispered as I took Bluebird back to his stall.

  “No one knows,” I said. “No one except for you and you have to promise not to tell anyone, okay? Please?”

  “Okay.” She shrugged. “But I don’t get what the big deal is. Your father is some famous horse trainer and you want to just pretend that you don’t know him? This is like your biggest dream come true. Now you’ll be able to ride and train all the time and you won’t have to move like your mother wants you to.”

  I thought about the fact that Mom had been obsessing over this town in Wisconsin that she had visited in her college days. She was really pushing Derek to think about moving there and up until now, I’d had no leverage to make her change her mind but maybe now I did. Maybe if it was a choice between me moving in with my dad instead of moving up north then she’d think about staying. Or maybe the whole thing would just blow up in my face but it was worth a shot.

  “Thanks,” I told Mickey. “You’ve given me an idea.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I practiced what I was going to say to my mother all the way home like a well-rehearsed speech so that I wouldn’t mess it up. She hated my father. I knew she did. Back when I first talked her into letting me ride, it was only because of the fact that I threatened to track down my father and go and live with him that she had finally agreed. There was a reason she didn’t want me to have anything to do with him and I had no idea what that reason was but Mickey was right. My dad was a trainer. He could teach me everything I needed to know. Help me reach my goal of riding in the Olympics. With him by my side, I wouldn’t have to be the outcast anymore. Now I wouldn’t be the one with no money and no prospects with her auction pony and shoe string budget. I’d be the one that Jess would be jealous of. The one with a horse trainer for a father and all the connections and opportunities that would come with it. Just the thought of Jess’s face made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside but then I saw my dad’s face too. The one he had made when he saw me and Mickey. He’d been shocked, like he hadn’t expected to see me again. Didn’t he know that I was just around the corner? Hadn’t he figured out that we would run into each other again? It was no good. I was going to have to talk to Mom.

  But finding time to talk to her alone wasn’t going to be easy. Cat was still moping around the house with her stitched up arm, making my mother wait on her hand and foot and Derek was there, pestering for dinner like he couldn’t even lift a finger and cook something for himself for a change. And usually my mother was willing to do all these things for them but today of all days, she seemed distracted and flustered.

  “Can’t you just order pizza?” she snapped at Derek as whatever she had been cooking in the oven came out of the pan in a black, smolderi
ng lump.

  “Well what’s wrong with that?” He pointed at the black lump.

  “You want to eat it? You go right ahead.”

  “No need to take that attitude with me,” he said. “It’s not my fault you burned the dinner.”

  Mom looked like she was about to cry. I didn’t know what was wrong with her. She hadn’t burned any food since she took those cooking classes but today she seemed really rattled. I wondered if my father had tried to contact her after all.

  “Well we’ll have to go out for pizza then,” Derek said, still hovering around the kitchen like Mom would magically make the dinner not burned anymore so that he could eat it. “Last time they took forever and the darn thing was ice cold.”

  “You can go,” Mom said. “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’m not hungry either,” I said, even though I knew he didn’t care whether I was or not.

  “Well I’m starving,” Cat said from her throne on the couch. “Can we get ice cream after?”

  “Of course we can, baby girl.”

  Derek grinned at her in what I thought was a sickening way but Cat didn’t seem to mind. She jumped up to get her coat and then made a big deal out of needing help to put her bandaged arm through the sleeve.

  “Bring us back some,” Mom called after them.

  “You know they won’t,” I told her as they slammed the front door.

  “I know,” she said. “How do you feel about Chinese food?”

  “Really?” I said.

  Chinese was one of my favorite meals and it didn’t hurt that we lived across the street from the best one in town. The only problem was that Derek hated Chinese food and refused to eat there.

  “Come on,” she said. “We’ll be back here before they even finish their pizza.”

  So we walked across the street and got a booth in the Chinese restaurant where everything was red and gold and fire breathing dragons were painted on the walls. We sat there awkwardly. I had that whole speech rehearsed in my head but now that the time had come to use it, I knew it sounded stupid and petty. I didn’t want to threaten my mother since she was being so nice. I just wanted to hear what she had to say. The food had come and we were already eating by the time either one of us attempted to talk and even then we both tried at the same time.

  “Sorry, you go first,” I said, grateful that she wanted to talk so that I didn’t have to.

  “No you,” she said.

  “No really,” I tried again.

  “All right.” She sighed and there was another awkward silence.

  I poked at the noodles on my plate, my appetite suddenly gone. I wondered what Cat and Derek were talking about while they ate their pizza. Were they talking about us? Or making small talk about the weather?

  “Does this have anything to do with Dad?” I finally asked.

  Mom looked pale. She dropped her chopsticks and they fell onto the floor.

  “Why would you ask that?” she said.

  “Because I know it does,” I said. “You don’t have to lie.”

  “I just don’t even know where to start,” she said.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” I said.

  “Or we could just forget about it?” she said, her face looking momentarily bright and hopeful. “Forget that we ever had this conversation and just go back to the way that things were.”

  “Only we can’t,” I said. “Because I’ve already seen him.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mom’s face went all pale. I thought for a moment that she was actually going to faint. I wondered what would happen if she did. I imagined all the Chinese people running up to her and fanning her with the red and gold fans that were pinned to the wall.

  “You saw him?” she finally whispered.

  “He was at my horse show,” I said, feeling mad about it again. “He didn’t even say hello. All he said was that I should have come in first instead of second.”

  I hadn’t intended to tell my mother everything but the words all came tumbling out. How he’d been standing there with Missy Ellison, wearing that stupid baseball cap so that I couldn’t see his face until the last minute.

  “Why?” I asked her. “Why would he do that? Why wouldn’t he come by the house and talk to me like a normal person first? It wasn’t fair of him to do that.”

  Mom looked at her plate, pushing her rice around with her fork now that her chopsticks were on the floor.

  “Because I told him not to.”

  “You what?” I cried.

  “He called the house and he wanted to see you but I told him that it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “Why?” I said. “Why would you do that?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she said.

  “I’m already hurt. I couldn’t get any more hurt if he ran over my foot with his car.”

  Mom cracked a smile. “He doesn’t know you and he’s going to be surprised.”

  “Surprised at my fabulousness?” I said, framing my face with my hands and throwing a pose.

  We both laughed.

  “Surprised because you are going to be more of a handful than he’s bargained for.”

  The smile fell off my face. “But what does he want?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “To make amends maybe?”

  “But you never wanted me to see him again, right? I mean we never talk about him and you practically forbid me from ever trying to find him. Why? Is he a bad person?”

  Mom reached out across the table to take my hand. She squeezed it tight amongst the stray noodles and fortune cookies.

  “I think I wanted to keep you all to myself,” she said softly. “And I wanted to punish him the way he punished us when he left.”

  “So you really hate him?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “But I think maybe he is exactly the thing you need in your life right now.”

  I pulled my hand away. “But we don’t even know him. He could be a serial killer or something.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “Don’t you remember anything about him?”

  I scanned through my foggy memories, all vague and partially erased by time.

  “I remember we were happy,” I said. “Until everything changed.”

  We sat there in silence. The conversation hadn’t gone down like I’d expected it to. I thought my mother would have been completely against me having anything to do with my father and yet here she was, suggesting that maybe he was the best thing for me. I suddenly wondered if she was just trying to hand me off to him so that they could up and move to Wisconsin without me after all.

  “So what should I do?” I finally asked her.

  “You’re fourteen,” she said. “You’re not a little kid anymore. I can’t make these sorts of decisions for you and even if I forbid you from seeing him, he’d find a way into your life like he already has. He’s your parent too and he has rights, even though I don’t want him to. You should talk to him, if you want to.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  We left the Chinese restaurant and were back home well before Derek and Cat came back. I was up in my room when I heard them come in with leftover pizza. They were happy and laughing and I even heard Mom eat a slice so that they wouldn’t get suspicious that we’d gone out to eat without them. Because although it was okay for them to do so it would never ever be okay for us to do the same.

  I didn’t go downstairs. Instead I lay on my bed in the dark and stared at the ceiling. I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. Mom had always been against my father and I’d expected her to forbid me from seeing him. It would have made it easier to make a decision because I was a rebellious teenager and as soon as she told me not to do something, of course I was going to want to do it. But she hadn’t done that. She’d left it up to me. In fact she’d almost encouraged me to seek him out and talk to him but once again I just felt like I was being played. Like I was a pawn in their game
, something to shuffle around and use to hurt one another. If she wanted me to talk to him, she had to know that it wasn’t going to go well.

  I tried to imagine what my life would be like if I went to live with my father on the old farm. How I’d be able to look out my window and see my pony grazing outside. Run downstairs and be able to ride him whenever I wanted. How no one would care if I traipsed horse hair and mud all over the house or fell asleep in my breeches. He wouldn’t bother me about stupid things like school or homework because we’d be too busy going to shows to care about stuff like that. It sounded too good to be true but it also sounded fantastic.

  Before I fell asleep I made my mind up to talk to my father because if I didn’t, it was like I was shooting myself in the foot, killing my own dreams when the path to fame and fortune was being laid right in front of me.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I’d made up my mind to talk to my father and now I couldn’t find him anywhere. I rode down the hill every day after school, braving the construction workers who yelled at me to go away. Fighting with Bluebird as he spooked at the mess and the noisy machines. But my father wasn’t there.

  “Did you see him?” Mickey asked as I came back to the barn on Friday evening.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Maybe he’s only there on the weekends?”

  “Maybe,” she said, putting her saddle on Hampton’s broad back.

  “But if he’s not there, then where is he?”

  “At Fox Run?” Mickey whispered. “That was where you saw him, wasn’t it? Maybe he’s teaching over there. In fact, he could be giving Jess a lesson right now.”

  “No,” I said. “No way.”

  “It could be happening,” she said.

  “Ugh, that’s so gross. I don’t even want to think about it.”

  But now that Mickey had said it, it was all I could think about. What if my own father was over there helping other girls realize their dreams instead of me? That wasn’t fair at all. So I texted Faith that night and asked her if I could go over and visit with her and Macaroni the next day. Which of course she replied yes to, followed by about a million smiley faces and exclamation points.