Second Chances (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 25) Read online

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I was right about the decorations. We couldn’t find the box anywhere, which was just as well as I was pretty sure that they were all sad and half broken anyway and they would have just reminded me of better times when we’d all been happy and stuff. Not that we weren’t happy now, it was just a different kind of happy, that was all.

  So instead we set the tree up in the living room and made garland strings out of popcorn and cranberries and we made paper snowflakes that we hung on the branches and Mom had some old white feather boas leftover from some craft project and we draped them all over the tree.

  “See,” Cat said. “It does look like snow after all.”

  Dad found the twinkle lights that we’d hung up in the barn the year before and we strung them around the tree’s branches so that it shone as bright as the night sky and instead of a star or an angel, we placed a horse shoe on the top of the tree because we were horse people and after all, we did need all the luck we could get.

  Mom stood back and watched for the most part. Cat had told me that my mother wanted to leave but I had been so deliriously tired that I wasn't sure if it had been real or a dream and I was too scared to ask Cat if it was true. If it was, there weren’t any packed suitcases. Not yet anyway. And if my mother did choose to leave then who was I to stop her? We had become our own separate entities. Mother and daughter who were no longer really connected by anything but a really long and fragile string that had broken a bunch of times and then been poorly tied back together. But it would be nice if she stayed for Christmas. Thanksgiving had been good. We’d felt like a real family. And I wanted this Christmas to be the best it could be or at least to make the best of it that we could and we couldn’t exactly do that if she ran off and left us again.

  We were all sitting there admiring the tree when a car pulled down the drive.

  “It’s a bit late for visitors, isn’t it?” Mom said.

  She didn’t like it when the boarders came and we only had two of them. I didn’t know how she was going to cope when we had a whole bunch of people riding around right outside her kitchen window. At least at Fox Run the house was far enough away from the barn and the rings that she didn’t have to see if she didn’t want to.

  “It’s Faith,” I said, jumping up. It had to be, it couldn’t be anyone else.

  I ran outside to see her getting out of the car with her arm in a cast.

  “I broke it,” she said with a smile, waving the red and green cast around. “Don’t you think it looks all Christmassy?”

  “Don’t you think that you probably shouldn’t be waving it around if you want it to heal properly,” I told her as I took one look at her mother’s pale face. I wasn’t even sure how the kid had convinced her mother to bring her out in the first place.

  “Oh I can’t feel a thing,” she said. “Painkillers are awesome.”

  “Great,” I said, shaking my head. “Good for you. Maybe you should have brought some for your pony because he is miserable.”

  “See,” Faith told her mother. “I told you he would need me.”

  She ran off to the barn and I stood there awkwardly for a second.

  “I’m so sorry about all this,” I said. “I can totally understand if you want to take Macaroni back to Fox Run.”

  “We did,” she said, her voice a little cold. “But Faith wouldn’t hear of it. She planned a hunger strike and told us she’d run away.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “Okay then.”

  I wasn’t sure what else to say. Faith obviously wore the pants in that family which wasn’t exactly the best thing but at least Macaroni wasn’t being shipped off to slaughter or something equally awful.

  “I’d better go and check on her,” I said.

  “You do that,” Faith’s mom said and as she did I knew what it felt like to want the ground to open up and swallow you whole.

  “Sorry,” I squeaked again before running after Faith.

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  I found Faith in Macaroni’s stall, balling her eyes out.

  “He is miserable,” she sobbed, her arms wrapped around his neck. “Look at him.”

  The pony had his ears pinned and looked like he was about to bite Faith’s head off.

  “Well I think you are squashing his cuts,” I said. “Remember, his painkillers aren’t as good as yours.”

  Faith dropped her arms and sat down in the stall in a sad heap.

  “No,” she said. “That’s not it. He hates me now.”

  “He doesn’t hate you,” I said. “He just doesn’t feel good and he’s mad that he has to stay inside.”

  “Maybe,” Faith said.

  But I had a feeling that she was partly right. Macaroni did look mad at her and I had to wonder what had really gone on in those woods that night. I sat down on the shavings next to her.

  “At least you get to keep him,” I said.

  “For now,” Faith said. “But if I put one more foot out of line he’ll be gone for good.”

  She started to cry again. I wasn’t good with crying kids. They made me all nervous.

  “Well at least you have a cool cast,” I said. “What did the doctors say?”

  “That riding is dangerous and I shouldn’t do it ever again.” She huffed.

  “They all say that.” I laughed. “I mean what did they say about the break? How long do you have to wear the cast?”

  “Six weeks,” she said. “Six weeks that will feel like the rest of my life.”

  She flopped over onto my lap and lay there sobbing gently. I rubbed her back and told her that it would all be okay. That those six weeks would fly by and she’d be riding again before she knew it and until then she could still come out here and hang out. Help me with the horses and teach Macaroni some tricks.

  “He already knows all the tricks,” she said with a strangled sob.

  Nothing I said made her feel any better, which just proved that I sucked at cheering people up, including myself and eventually her mother came in and dragged her away.

  “Bye Macaroni,” she sobbed. “Please don’t hate me forever.”

  “You’d better forgive that kid soon,” I whispered to the grumpy pony as I slid his stall door shut. “She’s hurting just as much as you are.”

  But Macaroni didn’t really seem to care.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  We managed to not have any more catastrophes before the show. I schooled Socks lightly every day being careful not to wear him out or injure him in any way. In fact Dad thought that I was babying him too much but I needed him. I couldn’t have anything bad happening to him before the team event or I’d get kicked off and the horrible alternate Francesca would take my place.

  Faith came out a couple more times to see Macaroni but each time ended up leaving in floods of tears. I think it was partly due to the fact that she was in pain but also because Macaroni was being a grumpy little pony. I’d been hand walking him daily but I knew he wanted to get outside and run and play but the last thing we needed was him ripping open his stitches so he had to be patient, just like Faith.

  “When can I ride,” she wailed.

  “When both you and your pony are better,” her mother scolded as she shoved her daughter into the car. “And if I hear one more word about it, I won’t bring you out here anymore. You got that?”

  “Yes,” Faith said, her voice all sad and depressed.

  Now I knew what Faith wanted for Christmas but what about everyone else? I tipped out my money and counted what I had left. There was enough to get everyone a small gift with some left over. I had horses and ponies relying on me and I couldn’t just blow all my money on fun stuff when horse emergencies could crop up at any moment. I already planned to get my dad a new pair of work gloves as his had holes in them and with all the manual labor he’d had to do, he was getting really bad blisters and callouses. I knew it wasn’t a very fun gift but it was something he needed so I hoped he’d be happy.

  Cat had her eye on t
his shirt that had a rainbow unicorn Pegasus cat on it. I’d never seen anything quite so crazy but she thought it was the best thing ever and so I had already ordered it for her online.

  That just left my mother, who I had no idea what to get and I also supposed I should get something for Jordan, unless he didn’t get me anything and then I felt like I’d be off the hook. But he did get me a miniature horse for my birthday so I felt like I had some pretty big shoes to fill when it came to giving him a gift. What would top a miniature horse? I wasn’t sure but it was probably something that I couldn’t afford.

  CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

  It was the day before the show and I was standing in my bedroom with my show breeches all laid out on the bed. Back when we had money and I was sponsored by Taylor’s Tack Emporium, I could have had new breeches whenever I wanted. Now we had no money and my sponsorship had died a slow death when I started hanging out with Jordan. I didn’t know why Taylor wanted to keep us apart but she seemed to think that stopping giving me free things was the way to do it. Since I’d always felt guilty about accepting free stuff from her store and never really asked for anything unless I absolutely needed it, I kind of didn’t notice because my father had been buying all my stuff lately. That was until now.

  “How is it that you all have stains on you that won’t come out in the wash?” I asked the breeches.

  They all lay there in varying states of disarray and I couldn’t decide which ones looked the best. The one with the stain on the butt that no one would see when I was in the saddle but that everyone would notice when I was walking around and assume that I just fell off all the time or the ones with the stain on the front where a horse had rubbed grassy froth on me and it just never came out, looking like the Grinch had jinxed me.

  “Are you talking to your clothes?” Cat asked.

  “No,” I said, spinning around to see her standing in the doorway watching me.

  “Good,” she said. “Because you’d better come down to the barn. Something is wrong with Socks. I think it is that colic thing or whatever.”

  I’d been trying to educate Cat on the various health emergencies our horses might encounter on the farm since she was basically the one in charge when we went to shows but as she said the words my blood ran cold.

  “Are you sure?” I said, dashing past her.

  “I don’t know,” she said, following behind me. “But he is all sweaty and throwing himself on the ground. That is a bad thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said breathlessly. “A very bad thing.”

  I jumped off the last few steps and half wrung my ankle over but the adrenaline meant that I barely felt the pain. Socks was my team horse. He couldn’t be sick. I’d done everything right. He’d had supervised turnout with boots and bell boots and I’d checked his hay every day to make sure that a stray moldy piece hadn’t snuck in there. He’d been in his stall and worn a sheet at night when the weather was chilly. This couldn’t be happening, it just couldn't. But it was.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  By the time we got to the barn, I could already hear the noise.

  “Find Dad,” I told Cat. “Now.”

  Being a crazy responsible horse owner I already had the vet on speed dial but of course the call went through to the answering service where I left a panicked message with a girl who seemed like she was new and didn’t realize that this was a very serious emergency. I knew my second call should have been to Missy but that would just have meant that I would have lost Socks forever and I couldn’t handle that right now.

  I pulled his halter off the front of his stall and slipped inside. He was on the ground but got up when he saw me, wild panic in his eyes and his neck drenched with sweat.

  “It’s okay boy,” I told him. “We are going to make you all better. I promise.”

  I put his halter on and walked him out. He was kicking at his belly and trying to bite it. He pretty much looked like he was having the worst colic in the world and all I could see in my mind's eye was twisted intestines and surgery and months of recovery for a horse that would never be the same again.

  “What happened?” Dad said as he came running from the back of the property, pulling off his holey gloves.

  “Look at him,” I said. “What are we going to do?” And despite my best intentions, I started to cry.

  Dad immediately took over. He was calm and focused. He’d been around horses his whole life and dealt with this more times than I had. When you had horses it was something that eventually came up. I just really didn’t need it coming up right now.

  Dad lifted Socks’ lips to look at his gums.

  “Not too pale,” he said, which was a good thing.

  Then he placed his head against Socks’ side to listen for guts sounds. I held my breath, begging silently that he would hear something, anything. He went around to the other side without saying anything and listened again.

  “His gut is moving,” Dad finally said as Socks kicked at his belly again.

  “Thank goodness,” I said.

  Movement was good. It was when their gut was silent that you had more reason to panic.

  Socks kicked again, this time with both hind feet, a sort of weird kicking buck.

  “I’ve never seen colic make a horse do that before,” Dad said, leaning under his belly. “Wait a minute, Em, look at this.”

  I peered around and under only to see that the poor horse’s sheath was about five times its normal size.

  “What on earth?” I said.

  Dad touched it and Socks freaked out, immediately throwing himself on the ground and trying to scratch at his private parts.

  “I don’t think it's colic,” Dad said. “Well, not entirely. He may have stressed himself into a mild one but I think we’ve found the root of the problem.”

  But I wasn’t sure that a hugely swollen and itchy sheath was that much better when it came to the team show because it wasn’t like it was going to heal overnight and we still wouldn't be able to compete.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  By the time the vet arrived we were cold hosing Socks’ sheath and he had his head stuck out and lip curled like it was the best feeling in the whole world. He also kept lifting his leg like a dog.

  “So I guess not a colic then?” Mary the vet said.

  “Well he’s pretty stressed,” Dad said. “Because of this.” He pointed at the giant sheath. “Better do a whole workup just in case.”

  For which I was glad as Socks belonged to Missy and we couldn't take the chance that he would get an impaction along with everything else.

  The vet got to work giving Socks a mild sedative and then sticking her gloved hand up his backside. She pulled out some dried up poop and said that he was a little dehydrated, probably from stressing about his sheath, which had obviously been bitten or stung by some kind of ferocious Florida insect. So Socks got Banamine, a tube oiling and some cream for his sheath, which we applied liberally and he seemed to like a little too much. Later that day I also slipped some Benadryl into his sloppy grain because the cream just didn’t seem to be cutting it.

  I camped out in front of his stall like a stalker until he’d drunk and pooped but he wasn’t allowed hay until the next day and he was obviously not going to be able to compete in the show and neither was I.

  “It’s just not turning out to be our year, is it?” I asked Socks as I hung on the bars.

  He had his head down and was now feeling just as sorry for himself as Macaroni was. Our barn was turning into a hospital wing before our very eyes.

  “Don’t be so sure about that,” Dad said as he walked in with a smile on his face.

  “Why are you so happy?” I asked.

  “Because I called the committee and explained everything and they are going to let you ride an alternate horse.”

  “Who? Arion?” I said.

  “No.” He shook his head. “Bluebird. They’ve seen you compete on him before and they know he can win.”

  “But wha
t about the rules?” I said.

  “Apparently the rules can be broken because Jess isn’t riding Valor either. After her fall at the clinic she submitted a request to ride a different horse and they agreed so if they can bend the rules for her then they have to do the same for you.”

  “But Bluebird isn’t ready,” I said.

  “You know Bluebird is always ready.” Dad shook his head.

  “But I haven’t been riding him or training him or anything,” I said, feeling really worried.

  Would my pony be up to the job? Could he compete with the big horses? I guess now we were going to find out.

  “I always said that pony would come in handy,” Dad said.

  “No you didn’t.” I smiled. “You said that I’d outgrown him and would have to start riding real horses.”

  “Well I guess you are about to prove me wrong then,” he said.

  “I guess so.” I grinned back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  I rode Bluebird in the ring that night. He was fresh and full of himself since I hadn’t really been doing anything much with him. He powered over the jumps that we had set up and then cantered away with pricked ears and a kick of his heels.

  “There is no denying it,” I said, patting his neck. “You really are better.”

  I felt guilty that I’d promised him the whole winter off just to be a pony and now I was taking that away from him. But he hadn’t done any hard work since the summer and that meant he was actually fresh and eager to work. He usually was anyway it was just that after his horrible summer I’d wanted to make sure he was back to his old self again and our ride that evening under the darkening skies proved it.

  Dad came out and gave me a lesson until it was too dark to ride anymore because we didn’t have lights and since it was winter it got dark really early.

  “I wish I’d had more time with him,” I said, patting my pony’s neck.