Читать книгу Time For Love - Melinda Curtis - Страница 12

CHAPTER THREE

“DO YOU KNOW how hard it is to see the screen and type with you in my lap?” Kathy’s arms bent as she tried to navigate the online university’s website around Abby’s sleek body.

They sat at a desk in her bedroom. Growing up, it had been Flynn’s room—geek command central and off-limits to Kathy. The posters of Batman, “World of Warcraft” and Bill Gates may have come down, but it still felt like her brother’s room. Navy plaid wallpaper and tired green shag contrasted against her teal leopard-print comforter and pink slippers.

When she’d gone into rehab, Grandpa Ed was still alive. Flynn had been staying in this room, and so Truman had been put across the hall in Kathy’s childhood space. After Grandpa’s death, Flynn and Becca had married and then moved into the master bedroom. And so Kathy took this room—not wanting to upset Truman by asking him to switch spaces.

The dog turned and licked Kathy’s cheek, as if to say get on with it. While outside her window, birds sang a happy good-morning. She was convinced there was one bird that had designated itself as her alarm clock. Regular as a rooster, that little guy. Tweet-tweet-tweet as the sun approached the horizon.

“I’m just not excited about a business degree,” she whispered to Abby. Accounting, economics, business law. Ugh. But Flynn insisted that she needed a college diploma to rebuild her life, and he said she could do anything with a business degree. Lacking a clear idea of what she wanted to do with her life, Kathy had bent to her brother’s will. She’d get a business degree to prove to him she was serious about creating a solid future for Truman. If only she could make herself complete the college application form.

The dog faced the screen again, her black fur soft against Kathy’s arms. She smelled of freshly dug dirt and green grass...and freedom.

More than happy to postpone signing up for college courses, Kathy gave the dog a kibble from a teacup on her desk, then scratched Abby behind her pointy ears. “You’re just here for the food.” She didn’t much care why Abby kept her company. She enjoyed the affection, even if the conversation was one-sided.

Her bedroom door swung open. Truman’s gaze swept the carpet and corners of the room. “Abby?”

Truman never came in here. He barely acknowledged Kathy’s existence. She couldn’t have moved if someone had shouted, “Fire!”

He finally noticed where his dog was. “Abby.” Disappointment. Betrayal. Truman’s cheeks flushed. He patted his jeans-clad thigh urgently. “Abby, come.”

Neither Kathy nor Abby moved. In fact, the dog gazed back at Kathy, as if encouraging her to speak. And what would she say? Abby sighed and stared at the computer screen again. Or, more accurately, at the teacup below the computer screen.

“Tru.” His name came out as deep and hoarse as the bullfrogs’ songs down by the Harmony River. Kathy stared in the vicinity of her son, cleared her throat and tried again. “I like your T-shirt.”

It was a green-and-purple tie-dyed shirt with a black running-horse weather vane screen-printed on his chest.

He gazed up and down the hall, either looking for support or making sure no one caught him talking to her. “The mayor gave this to me. It’s Uncle Flynn’s winery logo.”

Of course it was. Everyone in Harmony Valley was embracing the winery and its attempts to revitalize the town. But hello, people, should her son be wearing a shirt advertising alcohol?

It doesn’t say Harmony Valley Vineyards, said the voice of reason.

It promotes underage drinking, said the fearful side of her, the one that had been riding shotgun on her shoulder since rehab.

“It’s just a shirt,” Kathy said defensively, bringing her internal argument into the open.

Truman gave her the my-mom-has-lost-it look. He lost his patience and raised his voice. “Abby. Come here. Now.”

Abby jumped from Kathy’s lap and trotted to Truman, circling him and nudging him inside the bedroom. Her herding instincts were to unite, not divide.

“I don’t have time for games,” Truman grumbled, making his escape. “It’s time for lessons.”

Kathy listened to their footsteps move into the kitchen, made immobile by the fact that that was the most successful interaction she’d had with Truman since she’d come home a few weeks ago.

Grandpa Ed used to say, “First the battle, then the war.”

She stood and did a battle victory dance.

“Smooth moves.” Flynn stood in the doorway with that older-brother grin that little sisters hated. “A bit ‘Put a Ring on It’ and a bit ‘Harlem Shake.’ What are we celebrating?”

“Shh.” Kathy yanked him inside and closed the door. “Truman talked to me.”

They high-fived.

“How’re you feeling today, Kathy?” His grin faded. His gaze took inventory.

“Stop. You aren’t my sponsor.” She widened her eyes and breathed on him. “I’m sober.” No bloodshot eyes. No fire-starting breath.

“You’d tell me if you were tempted, right?” He asked her that every morning, but there was an urgency to his question that hadn’t been there in the weeks since she’d come home.

Had she sleepwalked to a liquor store? She thought not. “Of course I’d tell you if I was tempted.” Nope. If she was tempted, she wouldn’t tell him. Not in a thousand years. He’d try to lock her up in rehab quicker than you could say, “Reboot my computer,” and she’d lose what little ground she’d gained with Truman.

“I was thinking of hiring someone to find Mom,” Flynn said out of the blue.

There must have been a bomb blast, because Kathy couldn’t feel her limbs and it was quiet. Deathly quiet. Not even the bird alarm clock made a sound.

“I made peace with my dad.” Flynn’s voice cut through the aftershock. “Maybe it’s time we made peace with Mom. I could get her into rehab. Truman needs you to have a strong support system and...”

“Don’t you dare bring her around me or Truman.” Kathy’s lips felt numb. The words she had to say formed too slowly until she felt robbed of what little power she had left. “I mean it.”

Flynn spoke in his brother-knows-best voice. “It’s been nearly two years since I’ve heard from her. I just thought...”

“She doesn’t deserve your compassion.” She deserves to rot in hell.

* * *

THE TROUBLE WITH selling your soul to the devil was that there was a debt to be repaid. Or, in Dylan’s case, several.

He had thirty days. Thirty days to deliver the semen orders he’d sold for Phantom. Thirty days until his next mortgage and child-support payments were due. Thirty days to make progress with Kathy and the injured colt.

Dylan leaned on the porch railing at Redemption Ranch. Wisps of mist clung to the brown grass in his pastures as the first rays of daylight crested the Sonoma Mountains. Steam rose from the cup of coffee cradled in his hands. In the distance, tall, sturdy eucalyptus trees created a natural border to his property. Whoever had planted those trees had wanted a visual marker, a boundary, that said, This is mine. If Dylan couldn’t keep up with the payments, he’d have to sell off a parcel of the land to a developer. The trees would go. Cookie-cutter houses would fill the pasture. Noise would invade his borders.

As a kid, he’d longed for peace. He’d longed for silence. He’d longed for a place where his father’s belligerence and words and fists couldn’t touch him. Couldn’t hurt him. At his mother’s church, they’d talked about forgiveness and redemption. Those concepts were as unreachable back then as the stars. But today?

Does Phantom deserve redemption? He’d thought so once. But one shot was all he’d have.

Put him down. His father’s command, chilling and frozen in his memory.

“What’s wrong, Dylan? Knee bothering you?” Barry came down the outdoor steps from his garage apartment. With his shoulder-length, snowy hair and diminutive height, the former jockey could pass himself off as one of Santa’s elves.

Dylan let his gaze drift back to the tree-lined horizon. “My knee’s fine.” Aching in the brisk morning, but that was his new normal.

“Then let’s work Phantom.”

Dylan’s grip on the coffee mug tightened. He gazed out over the pasture, but he saw a different scene now, one from long ago. A boy wearing pajamas shut in a stall with a crippled horse and a gun.

“We need to make a withdrawal.” Barry gestured toward Phantom’s stall, the only one that had an outdoor paddock attached. “We can’t keep taking orders if there’s no product to sell. Lots of breeders are anxious for Phantom’s genes.”

Because they expected Dylan to destroy the champion. “Maybe tomorrow. Or next week.” Dylan forced himself to set the coffee cup down. “Maggie Mae should be in heat soon. We can’t collect the goods from Phantom without a mare in her cycle.”

“Excuses.” Barry’s hands swung Dylan’s reasoning aside. He probably waved off flies with less vigor. “It’s been six months, son. It’s time to get back in the saddle.”

“Maybe I’m the wrong person for the job. Maybe I’ve lost my touch.”

“The only thing you’ve lost is your nerve.” Barry propped a foot on the front porch step. “If I had quit riding races after one fall, I would have never won the Kentucky Derby. I had a gift for the ride. I’m too old now to compete, but if my body was able, I’d still be out there every week.”

“You’d have to give up beer and chili-cheese fries.”

“After twenty years of racing, I earned every extra pound.” Barry patted his still-svelte gut. He was only fifteen pounds over his racing weight. “But don’t go changing the subject. You’ve let that horse get into your head.”

Dylan didn’t argue that point. Everyone thought he’d lost his nerve after the accident, that he was afraid of Phantom and others like him.

Damn right he was afraid. But not of the stallion. He was afraid of what would happen if he couldn’t complete the collection procedure this time.

Barry took his silence for cowardly fear. “If you think he’s so dangerous, why did you buy him?”

“Because they were going to put him down.” Because Dylan felt partly to blame for Phantom’s attack, seeing as how he’d held the lead rope. “Because they were practically giving him away and his stud fees can save us.” On its own, his idea to run a ranch where unwanted horses could be rehabilitated and recovering alcoholics could build confidence wasn’t a profit-making proposition. “We barely make ends meet.”

“There you go again. Money,” Barry grumbled, pausing to face Dylan. “Money doesn’t make you a good man. Or a good father.”

“The bank and the family-court judge don’t agree.” Nor did Eileen. Dylan had to be a good provider, a better one than his own drunken, volatile father had been.

Barry made a noise that Dylan took for disapproval. He glanced back at Phantom’s stall. “When I fought in the Vietnam War, they sent me down into the tunnels because of my size. I acted like a man and said I was brave, but the truth was, I was scared. And probably just as scared as the Vietcong I was sent down there to kill.”

“All right. All right.” Message received. Dylan and the horse were both probably scared. “I’ll pay Phantom a visit.” And yet Dylan didn’t move.

Barry headed for the stables. “I’m going to open up his paddock door and muck out his stall. The Dylan O’Brien who used to live here would take advantage of that time. And if that Dylan O’Brien still lives here, he needs to make an appearance.”

A white cat wended its way between Dylan’s legs, then moved slowly down the porch steps, pausing at the bottom to look back at him and flick her crooked tail.

Even Ghost knows it’s time to do this.

One by one, horses extended their heads to Dylan as he passed their stalls. He paused to greet Peaches, leaning in to look at the little palomino. She extended her nose to reach his hand, as if to say she had complete faith in Dylan. She’d been Phantom’s stable mate through his racing career and his retirement to stud. Dylan grabbed her halter and brought her along just as Barry tripped the lever that opened Phantom’s stall to the paddock.

Phantom charged into the gray light of morning as if he was the last vestige of darkness racing toward the horizon. Or perhaps he just missed the starting gates of his youth. He skidded to a stop at the far end of the paddock, nearly sitting on his haunches, then began his patrol of the perimeter. He made a circuit, rearing in front of Dylan, ready to strike him as he’d done months ago. His eyes rolled, until the whites showed, and Dylan’s gut twisted, but he stood his ground.

Phantom’s front hooves landed in the dirt. He let out a shrill whinny, prancing in front of them. The stallion bared his teeth and made as if he was going to lunge, but he never extended his nose between the paddock rails. And his tail was raised proudly, not swishing with anger.

Peaches, bless her, snorted. She was accustomed to the stallion’s theatrics. The pony knew he used to have more bark than bite. Maybe he still was a big faker. Mostly. Maybe he was just a more dramatic faker. Mostly. Dylan began to hum “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” noticing that the stallion’s hooves needed trimming.

Barry slid the gate to his stall closed. “That horse needs a different tune. That one’s getting old.”

“I like it.” Dylan led Peaches around the paddock. Phantom followed, rearing, kicking and announcing to the world that he was one upset dude.

A lifetime of living with horses, years of horsemanship training, and after one tremendous failure, Dylan had grown too cautious. “You almost had me, Dad,” he whispered to the mist. His father excelled at breaking things—bottles, bones, boys. “You almost had me.”

Phantom’s hoof struck the metal rail.

He still might.

* * *

“FAR TURN FARMS is only giving us a few more weeks with Chance.” Gage’s words echoed ominously in the near-empty clinic.

Behind the partition separating the animal cages from the hallway to the office and exam rooms, Kathy stopped refilling a cat’s water dish to eavesdrop. Gage wasn’t an ominous-announcement type of guy.

“You got that horse-whispering fella,” Doc replied in his rumbly voice. Officially, the Harmony Valley Veterinary Clinic was owned and run by Gage. Unofficially, it was run by his wife’s grandfather, Dr. Warren Wentworth. Doc had founded the place in the fifties, closed it after his wife died, then reopened it when Gage came back this year and married his granddaughter. “What’s his name? Dylan? He used to be good. That should be enough.”

Kathy stepped into the hallway. “Are they taking Chance back?” He’d been bred to win the Triple Crown. With no permanent physical damage, in a little more than a year the colt could be a contender.

Gage and Doc exchanged glances that seemed to say, How much should we tell her?

It was Gage who spoke. “Chance...well, he only has a few more weeks to show he’s salvageable.”

“Salvageable?” Kathy’s voice escalated. “Don’t talk about him as if he’s disposable.” As if no one would care if he went away forever. “We’ve been nursing him back to health. He’s so much better. He has...he has...a right to live!” A right to a home and security. And people who loved him.

That was what Grandpa Ed had provided Kathy. He’d washed his hands of her mother and stepfather, paying them to stay away from Harmony Valley. He’d given Kathy the stability and safety a child should have. No more sneaking bills from her mother’s wallet after she passed out and then slipping away to the convenience store to buy milk and snack cakes for dinner. No more being locked in an apartment for days at a time while her mother disappeared on drunken binges, all the while wondering if she’d ever return. No more nights spent huddled beneath a thin blanket when there was no heat.

“Nothing’s been decided yet, girl.” Doc’s shaggy white hair brushed the upper rim of his thick eyeglasses. He was a man fully grounded in the why-worry-about-tomorrow philosophy.

“That’s right, Kathy. And you can help Dylan with Chance.” Gage spoke as if Kathy was their ace in the hole. He nodded at Doc. There was something they weren’t telling her.

Well, there was something Kathy wasn’t telling them, too. And it sickened her. Dylan thought Chance’s fate was inevitable. He’d said as much the first day he came.

Kathy hoped that Dylan was wrong. Because if it was, her odds at being salvageable were no better.

* * *

“I CAN’T WALK.” Wilson Hammacker gripped the arms of his tan recliner as if that would keep him anchored in his living room in Harmony Valley. “I have no toes.” His toes. His toes! He still dreamed that they were attached to his feet.

“You have special inserts for your shoes.” Becca Harris held up what were essentially plastic socks with marble-size plastic toes attached. Becca was young and pretty, and for some reason she wasn’t squeamish about needles, surgery scars or false toes. “You were released from rehab. So now it’s time to get back out in the world.”

“I am not going to walk anywhere outside this house.” Wilson knew he sounded like a child. But in the past year, he’d lost his wife, been diagnosed with diabetes and had his toes amputated. “I’m a recluse and happy with that status.”

“Dolly needs her shots.” Becca pointed to his wife’s rotund dachshund, who, upon hearing her name, rolled onto her back on the brown carpet for a tummy rub.

Wilson couldn’t reach that low to rub her tummy without losing his balance. “I paid you to take care of me for a month. Take her to the vet.”

“You said it. I’m paid to take care of you.” Becca’s smile was as resilient as the woman herself. “I’m also paid to help the Mionettis. I’m due there in fifteen minutes.” Becca was the only caregiver in a town where the majority of residents needed caregivers. “If you don’t feel up to driving, I can drop you two off.” She knelt at the base of the recliner and took his hand. “Don’t be afraid. You walk around here just fine.”

“Without shoes.” And only because he’d insisted Becca move his living room furniture so that he could stagger on his heels, feet pointed out like a duck, from one chair-back to another. “What if I fall?” His old bones were as fragile as his wife’s teacup collection.

“You’ll get up.” She slipped a prosthetic set of toes on his right foot. It was cold against his skin, but soft, and smelled of new plastic. “Comfortable?”

Wilson arched his foot as he’d been taught. Five fake toes moved as one. “As comfortable as I could be without my own toes.”

Becca slid on the other prosthetic.

His petulance lingered. “If Helen were alive, she wouldn’t make me go.”

“I’m sorry your wife’s not here.” Becca put his shoes on next. Her touch was firm, yet gentle. It reminded him of his mother, gone thirty years. “But you have to take better care of yourself. You’ve seen what can happen when you let the diabetes get out of control. And who knows what’s wrong with Dolly.”

He let the conversation about control drop. “Nothing’s wrong with that dog but old age.”

“Besides needing her shots, she’s a bit round.” Becca stood, tossing her brown braid over her shoulder. She held out her hand. “Come on.”

The thing about Becca was she didn’t put up with nonsense. You paid her in advance and then you were stuck with her. She showed up, listened to your complaints and did what the doctor ordered, even if that wasn’t what you wanted. He’d hired her to help him transition to this new reality. Shots? She didn’t sweat a bit. Finger pokes? Performed efficiently. Whining? She ignored it. Helen would have loved her.

He gripped the armrests again. “Once you get to a certain age, the rules shouldn’t apply to you anymore.”

Becca captured his hand and helped him to his feet. He took a step and then another, relearning the gently rolling feeling of something extending beyond the balls of his feet.

She hurried about, gathering her purse and Dolly. “Just because you’re old doesn’t mean you can cut corners on diabetes. We’ve got to get your blood sugar down, especially in the afternoon.”

“Poke-poke-poke. That’s what diabetes is. I hate it.” He much preferred drinking.

“Was all that skipped poking worth losing toes over?”

He’d like to say no, but that would be admitting that his current predicament was all his fault.