Taking the Reins

Not so natural to stand closer than she’d intended. She caught her breath and heard his catch, as well. She looked away from those blue eyes, but not before they’d held hers a moment too long for comfort. Aware of her quickened breathing, she turned away and walked down the aisle. She heard him following her, the slight hitch in his step already familiar.

“Tennessee feral cats are an actual breed,” she babbled. “There’s a stuffed one in the local museum. Probably descendants from the cats the Scots traders brought with them in the eighteen hundreds. I’ve no idea whether it’s feasible for a domestic cat to interbreed with a bobcat, but I do know the few remaining representatives of the feral cat breed are all that big, all that beige yellow tabby color and all fierce fighters.”

“Feral cats always regress to that beige tabby color within five generations in the wild.”

“How would you know that?”

He shrugged. “I grew up on a farm where all the barn cats were feral. We never had a problem with field mice or even the pink-eared rats. Everybody worked on my family’s farm, even the snakes.”

“I beg your pardon?” This time she stopped to stare at him.

He grinned at her. “This place is bound to have a couple of resident king snakes to keep the poisonous snakes down.”

“I’d rather not know, thank you.”

“If you meet one, tip your cap, thank him for his good work, and send him on his way.”

“How will I know the difference? What’s more important, how do you?”

“You weren’t born a country girl, were you?”

“No.” She didn’t offer him any further explanation.

“Hey, want company?” Hank, Sean and Mary Anne came down the aisle to join them.

“Where’s Mickey?” Charlie asked.

“Said he was tired,” Hank said. Charlie picked up the faintest trace of a sneer.

“He was,” Mary Anne snapped. “You have any idea how hard it is trying to be upbeat and funny all the time you’re driving a wheelchair?”

Hank held his hands up in front of him, palms out. “I didn’t mean anything. I’m not used to him is all.”

“Get used to this, too, why don’t you?” She yanked off her scarf and glared at them.

Charlie managed not to gasp. The colonel had warned her that Mary Anne needed more reconstructive surgery, more skin grafts on the side of her face and her arms. Most of her scars would eventually be gone or less evident. She had to go through a period of healing both physically and emotionally before her next round of surgeries.

The doctors hadn’t yet reconstructed her right ear. A patch of skin the size of two dollar bills ran red, puckered and hairless down her scalp and along the side of her jaw, disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt. “Get used to it, people. I did.” She turned on her heel.

“Hey, Mary Anne,” Hank called after her. “The horses don’t care and neither do we.”

“Yeah,” Sean said. “Too hot for those long sleeves anyway. Come on back.” He held out his right hand to her.

When she turned, Charlie could see she was fighting tears but she reached out to Sean with her left hand, hesitated, then held out her right, as well. The scars covered only the pinkie side. Without looking down, Sean took the injured hand gingerly in his latex-covered one.

For a moment, no one breathed, then Hank said, “Come on, girl. Time’s awastin’. I want to get my hands on some horse.”

Charlie’s throat tightened. She caught Jake’s eye, and knew he got it.

We’re all damaged. Maybe together we can heal one another.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY HEARD MICKEY’S whir before his wheelchair whipped out the door to the common room and down the aisle toward them. “Hey! Yous guys taking a trip without me?”

“You snooze, you lose,” Hank said. He stopped at the first stall. “Would you look at the size of him? That’s not a horse, that’s a hippopotamus.”

“Hippos are short,” Sean said. “That’s more moose size. Y’all got mooses in Wyoming, don’t you?”

Mary Anne pulled away from him and backed across the aisle.

“Hey, did I grab you too tight?” Sean called.

Mary Anne shook her head, her dark eyes the size of eight balls. “I...I didn’t think they’d be so big.”

The gray Percheron gelding poked his head over the top of his stall gate, delighted by the attention. He looked straight at Mary Anne and snorted—a big, wet, huffy snort.

She yelped.

“He’s a real sweetie,” Charlie said, and scratched his nose.

“Don’t you have anything smaller?” Mary Anne asked. “Like maybe a pony?”

“Our newborn foals are bigger than the average pony,” Charlie said.

Mary Anne turned paler.

“Are you all right?”

“I knew I shouldn’t have said I’d do this.” Mary Anne dropped her face into her hands. “But I wanted to get out of that place so bad....” She stared around at all of them. “I lied on the forms. I’m so sorry...I’m terrified of horses.”

* * *

“AND THAT PRETTY much put an end to the Great Horse tour,” Charlie said.

She slipped off her paddock boots and propped her stocking feet on the coffee table in her father’s study. He handed her a cold can of diet soda from the small refrigerator under the wet bar in the corner. She rolled it against her forehead, popped the top and drank half of it in one pull before continuing.

“I turned the tour over to Hank, since he knows the most about horses and stables. Meanwhile, Mary Anne flew back to the dorm with me at her heels, and locked herself in her room. I knocked and tried to reassure her, but she sounded as though she was throwing stuff around, probably packing. She told me to go away.”

“You carry a master key.”

“I didn’t sign on to be a prison warden.” She scowled at her father. “I only met them a few hours ago. You’re the big psychologist. What should I have done?”

“What did you do?”

She set her soda onto the end table beside her. “Daddy, sometimes this answering a question with a question is pretty annoying. I spoke to her the way I’d speak to a spooked horse. Gentle, quiet. I kept reassuring her that we’d deal with it, that we’d all help her, that of course we wanted her to stay....”

“Successful?”

“If I’d kept trying to talk to her through the door, she’d have sneaked out the window and hitchhiked to town by now.” She sighed. “No, Jake did it. I already knew he had a thing with animals. Seems people like him, too.”

“People are animals.”

Charlie struck her forehead. “Wow! What a concept! Why didn’t I think of that?” She tossed her soda can into the big wastebasket beside her father’s desk. “Three points.”

Jamming her hands into the pockets of her jeans, she started to pace. “The others were pretty upset about Mary Anne. Were we going to toss her out on her rear? If we did that, they’d all leave.... I had to do some fine tap dancing. Then, she and Jake came walking down the aisle like nothing had happened. She’d obviously been crying, but she hadn’t tied that scarf back around her head or rolled her sleeves down.” She braced herself against the edge of her father’s desk. “She was trembling, she was so scared, but she faced us all down. She’s got guts. I like her.”

“What did Jake say to her in there?”

“No idea. Maybe he just witched her through the closed door.” She chuckled. “You should have seen him feeding Mama Cat chicken. It’s like he gave up part of what he was when he gave up making decisions, but maybe he got something else in return.”

“No matter how hard he tries not to, my dear Charlie, he’s forced to make decisions. If he starts with small ones and nothing bad happens, maybe he’ll learn to make larger ones.”

“You’ve worked with all of them....”

He shrugged. “Some more than others.”

“But all you’ll give me is name, age and rank. What’s Jake’s story?”

He shook his finger at her. “I can only give you the bare outline without contravening the Privacy Act. I can’t, for instance, show you Jake’s file—or any of their files.”

“So Jake made a decision that caused havoc. Are we talking a full-blown case of PTSD here? I am not competent to deal with that.”

“He has a bad case of survivor guilt, Charlie. He feels that his decisions resulted in suffering for other people and left him unscathed.”

“Did they?”

“Not in the sense he means. It’s a form of magical thinking. Not much different from ‘step on a crack, break your mother’s back.’ Except in degree, of course.”

Can you at least tell me what he did in the army before he was wounded?”

“He was G-2.”

“Intelligence. A spook.”

The colonel nodded.

“What about his family?”

“Never been married.”

“Can you at least tell me whether or not he’s gay?”

“From what I can gather, he had an extremely healthy heterosexual sex life.”

She blew out her breath. “Not that it matters.”

“Of course not.” The colonel smiled the infuriating “I see all” smile that drove her crazy. “I’ll be down at the hospital at least four days a week, but I suggest we talk every night after dinner. Completely up to you.”

“Uh-huh.” As if. She was surprised he hadn’t asked her to write him case notes.

“If you have time, you might prepare case notes to jog your memory.”

She threw back her head and roared with laughter.

“What?”

“No case notes. I am not one of your worshipful acolytes.”

“This class is a huge responsibility for someone with your limited experience.”

“Then why the heck did you stick me with it?” She didn’t wait for his answer, but grabbed her paddock boots and started out of the library in her stocking feet.

“Charlie girl, I’m selfish enough to want to keep you and Sarah around. The way to do that is to keep you interested, involved and employed. Is it wrong to want to get to know my adult daughter and my grandchild? Besides, you must see that I can’t simply turn this place over to you without any supervision. You have no prior experience running an operation this size.”

“Granddad taught me more in my vacations here than he ever taught you, and I’ve been working my tail off to learn everything I can since we came back. I’m thinking of all those classes and clinics I should be taking instead of teaching these people to drive.”

“Dad was aware I would never be a farmer or a horseman,” the colonel said. “As a matter of fact, until I came home to look after him when he got so sick, he didn’t believe I’d ever live here after I left for college. He expected me to hire a manager to handle the place after he died until Steve retired and you two came back here to take over.” He shrugged. “I thought then he was living a fantasy. You would never have been able to convince Steve to retire from the army and move to a horse farm. He was an adrenaline junkie, Charlie. They don’t change.”

“We don’t have to worry about that any longer, do we?” She padded out of the library, shut the door and fought back tears. He was doing the same thing he’d always done when she was growing up. The absentee father shows up, issues orders for her own good and then leaves again. The gospel according to Colonel Vining. Most of the time she disobeyed just to prove she could. She must have driven her mother nuts.

If he hadn’t made her leave her horse when she was thirteen, her whole life might have been different. If her mother hadn’t died and left her without a buffer, if her father hadn’t forbidden her to see Steve, she’d never have run away and married him. The colonel always tried to control her and she always fought him, even when he was right.

Especially when he was right.

Carrying her boots, she took the stairs to the bedrooms two at a time. As she reached the top she heard Sarah clicking away on their shared computer.

Time to close down so they could go help Vittorio with dinner. She stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Wasn’t she trying to control Sarah the way the colonel tried to control her? She wanted Sarah to be happy, but her idea of what constituted happiness might not mesh with Sarah’s any more than the colonel’s had meshed with hers.

Should she let Sarah have her head a little bit? She was a good kid who was lonely and grieving. She’d never betrayed Charlie’s trust. She ought to be able to make her own mistakes.

And wind up pregnant and married? No way. If that meant controlling her, then so be it. Wasn’t that what the colonel said? Kids at this age hate their parents when they act like parents. Tough.

For all practical purposes Charlie had been a single parent most of Sarah’s fourteen years, but while he was home between deployments, Steve was always better with their daughter than she was. He was the good guy, Charlie was the ogre. No wonder Sarah missed him so much. No wonder when she had to blame someone for his death, Charlie was elected.

Why am I so uptight? Why don’t I just go in there and hug her? Because if she went stiff and backed away, I’d cry.

One of the four bedrooms on the second floor of the main house had been fitted out with Sarah’s shabby furniture brought from their base housing, and another had been given over to a home office that she was supposed to share with Charlie. In reality, however, Sarah spread out like kudzu vine, overrunning every flat surface in her own room and threatening to engulf the office.

The computer keys kept popping like soggy popcorn. Sarah couldn’t touch-type yet. She planned to take typing in the fall at her new private school. She could, however, race the wind with her two-finger technique. And texting? Did anyone over twenty have thumbs that small or nimble?

Charlie walked by the computer room and went into her own bedroom instead. She longed to lie down for a few minutes before she plunged back into her job, but she didn’t dare. She’d fall asleep and not get up until tomorrow.

Every piece of furniture in the room was new. Most of the things in their army quarters, except for Sarah’s bed and dresser, belonged to the quartermaster and had to be returned to stores every time they moved. Each new post meant another requisition of boring quartermaster offerings. The cheap furniture she and Steve had accumulated during their fifteen years of marriage had grown shabbier with every move. After he died, she’d sold everything except the photo albums, keepsakes, personal papers and Sarah’s furniture in a garage sale. Sarah had wanted her own bedroom furniture and other familiar objects around her, so she could have the illusion of home wherever the family landed. Charlie, on the other hand, wanted to slam the door on her life with Steve. Two years ago, she wouldn’t have felt that way, but that was before Steve came home from his second tour in Afghanistan and asked for a divorce.

Even combat widows were not welcome in post housing for very long. She’d had to beg to keep her quarters until school let out in mid-May. So here she was with the colonel. His house, his rules.

She stood under the shower for five minutes to wash the dust and sweat off, washed her hair for the second time that day, then redid her makeup and put on a clean polo shirt and jeans. Her mother had always taken an afternoon shower and changed into fresh clothes. She said it was a carryover from the days before air-conditioning. Charlie had picked up the habit from her. “Sarah?” Charlie opened the office door and stood in the doorway with her hand on the knob. Sarah jumped and hit the escape key in one motion. Whoever she was on line with disappeared.

“Mother! You scared me spitless.” She wheeled in her chair and glared at Charlie. “You ooze around like a fungus.”

“Green and soggy, that’s me. Thought you were cutting down on the social networking.”

Sarah avoided her eyes and did that flouncy, hair-swinging thing. “I am trying to help you. I looked up all those people on Google and Facebook. Don’t you want to know what all I found out?”

“I would love to know what you found out,” Charlie said. “Thank you. But you ought to be outside, not sitting in here over a hot keyboard.”

“What else is there to do out here? Go to the mall or the movies with my BFFs? Last time I checked they were in Kansas.”

“Once school starts you’ll make plenty of friends.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. Most of them have been together since kindergarten. They’re going to fall over to welcome the outsider. We should have stayed in Kansas.”

“Ah, Kansas, the center for sophistication in the known universe.”

Sarah opened her mouth to make another snappy comeback, then giggled. “Good one, Mom.”

Charlie pulled her up from her chair and Sarah hugged her. Charlie felt a surge of joy. She lived for these moments. She hugged Sarah back hard. Then she whispered, “I love you.”

The moment passed in a flash as Sarah slipped past her and down the stairs. Charlie followed more slowly. At least she’d said the words.

An hour later, Charlie helped the students set the food dishes on the table in the common room, and watched everyone find seats. All except Jake.

“Sean, where’s Jake?” she asked.

“I’ll take him a plate.”

“No, you won’t. He needs to join us at the table. That’s the rule. I thought he obeyed rules. No decisions necessary.”

“Charlie, he’ll starve before he comes down here. Don’t ask me why. I just know it.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She took a deep breath. “I’m not going to get into a battle tonight I will probably lose, but Sean, would you talk to him? Convince him that sitting at the table with you all is not going to cause the end of Western civilization as we know it?”

Sean shrugged. “I’ll sure try, but I’m not guaranteeing it’ll do any good.”

They’d already worked out an informal seating arrangement. Jake at the far end, then Sean, Mary Anne. Mickey’s wheelchair at the other end, then Hank.

“I’m not joining you for dinner tonight anyway,” Charlie said. “Give you a chance to talk things over, get to know one another without either the colonel or me eavesdropping.”

“No bugs in the light fixtures?” Mickey said.

“Nope. Not yet, at any rate. If you’d load the serving dishes onto the trolley, Vittorio or I will come get it and put everything into the dishwasher in the house. Anybody need something or just want to talk to me or the colonel, push the button on the intercom and leave a message. I suggest you get to bed early. Tomorrow morning I’ll be rousting you all out at six o’clock.”

“No way!” Mickey groaned.

“You need help getting to bed?” Charlie asked.

“I’m not helpless.”

“If you do, push the button beside your bed.”

“Or holler,” Sean said.

Mickey rolled his eyes. “I can stand. I just can’t walk far yet.”

“Yeah, and when you fall, you flop around like a turtle on its back,” Hank said.

“Flopping around on your back in the dirt ought to be a real familiar sensation for you,” Mickey said. “At least I can stay on my feet for more than eight seconds.”

Hank flushed and opened his mouth to retort. Charlie was about to lambaste him when Mary Anne snapped, “Stop it! What is the matter with you, Hank?” She turned to Mickey. “You’re no better. Knock it off.”

“It’s a miracle, Hank,” Charlie said. “You’re missing half a foot and still manage to stuff a whole one into your mouth. Mary Anne’s right. Both of you, knock it off.”

Jake might have a point in not wanting to join the group for dinner.

“Sean, so you will take Jake a plate?” Charlie asked.

“Yes, ma’am. Sure better than at the halfway house.”

“Or the hospital,” Mary Anne said. “I love gazpacho.”

“The tomatoes and corn on the cob are from the farmer’s market in Collierville,” Charlie said. “The corn’s Silver Queen.” Her stomach rumbled. That sandwich at lunch had been years ago.

“Have one,” Sean said. “There’s plenty.”

“Thanks, but the colonel expects me for dinner.” She could see the lights of the big kitchen in the main house across the patio. Vittorio would be furious if she came in late. Charlie had come close to snatching an ear from the students’ platter, but managed to quiet the rumblings of her stomach. That sandwich at lunch seemed a long ago memory. The heat of the day was finally beginning to diminish as much as it ever did between Memorial Day and the end of September. It wouldn’t get cool enough to manage without air-conditioning even in the middle of the night, of course, but it was still cooler than daytime.

The heat flat wore everybody out and increased appetites at dinnertime. The colonel demanded the family sit down together and was adamant that the students do the same thing. Even after her mother died, he kept up the custom, although he and Charlie sometimes didn’t speak to each other from entrée through dessert. Of course, when he wasn’t around, which was often, Charlie could con whoever was looking after her into letting her grab a sandwich and leave.

For Sarah, used to running in and out between sport practices or hanging out with BFFs, the formality of evening dinner was a new experience. She endured it because she was eating Vittorio’s cooking and not Charlie’s. And at the moment she had nothing better to do than fool with the computer in the evenings.

Charlie’s mind hovered at the other dining table tonight and she only half listened to Sarah and her father bicker. As soon as she could, she escaped to check on her students.

She worried about Mickey. He might give Hank as good as he got, but Hank didn’t tease—he went for the jugular. Seeing Mickey must be a constant reminder of how close he had come to losing his ability to walk as well as ride.

In any case, it wasn’t acceptable.

Her father had explained to her her that Mickey wasn’t actually paralyzed, although the nerve damage to his back and hips was extensive. He had rods and pins in his legs where the bones had been fragmented, as well. Still, if Mickey kept at his strength training, he might eventually be able to dispense with the wheelchair and use braces and a cane full-time. Maybe giving Hank the task of getting Mickey on his feet would provide him with a vested interest in Mickey’s success.

According to the colonel, once he took his leg braces off, Mickey could pull himself up, stand and swing around to get into bed. He could handle bathroom chores and dress himself. But could he actually walk unaided for any distance with his braces? Charlie knew what his enrolment forms said, but then, Mary Anne had sworn she’d ridden horses, so who knew?

Charlie found the students’ dishes neatly stacked on the rolling cart in the common room, the kitchen clean and the table scoured. She rolled the cart back to the kitchen, where Vittorio and Sarah were loading the dishes from the colonel’s table into the dishwasher.

Vittorio, who seldom spoke even when he was happy, merely rolled his eyes at her, sighed deeply and began to unload the trolley.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “We’ll work something out so you don’t have to stay late to clean up this mess.”

“Good,” he said. “Go.” Sarah started to strip off her apron. Vittorio pointed a stubby index finger at her. “Not you. You eat, you clean.”

“Mom...”

“Hey, it’s his kitchen. Thanks, Vittorio. Leave the sweet rolls out. I’ll heat them up tomorrow morning for the students.”

“Huh.” He turned away with an empty platter in his hands. “These people—they eat. Even that skinny girl with the scars.” Eating his food was the biggest compliment anyone could give Vittorio.

“Wait until I start teaching them. Then they’ll eat us out of house and home.”

She walked back to the stable, knocked on Mickey’s door and found him tucked up in bed with a graphic novel. “You manage okay?” she asked, then immediately regretted her words. “I mean...”

“I managed,” he said with a grin. “Don’t worry about me. I won’t break my neck.”

“What’s with you and Hank?”

He didn’t answer for a long moment. She had started to turn away, when he said, “The colonel says he’s jealous. I may be messed up, but at least I’m physically whole.”

“So he undercuts you and tries to make you fail?” Charlie said.