Golden Filly Collection One (20 page)

Both girls turned and loped down the dirt path cutting across the nine-hole golf course in the infield. They met the horses being walked to the saddling paddock for the next race.

“Have you seen Dad?” Trish asked when they reached the stables.

“Your mom took him back to the hospital right after the race,” Brad Williams said. Tricia’s mother always referred to Trish, her friends Brad and Rhonda, and her brother, David, as the four musketeers. “He looked pretty bad.”

“Where’s David?”

“He and Spitfire are still at the testing barn.” Brad glanced at his watch. “Should be back any minute.”

Trish pulled off her helmet and fluffed her springy dark bangs with the other hand. “I didn’t even get a chance to talk with him.”

“Yeah, all that crowd from Prairie kind of took over.” Rhonda winked at Trish. “Now you know how the football heroes feel when they get hoisted up on shoulders.”

Trish could feel the red heat creeping up her neck again. Doug Ramstead, their high school’s star quarterback, had lofted her on his shoulders. All the kids at the track had cheered. It
had
been pretty exciting. Until she saw her father was gone.

At that moment nineteen-year-old David trotted up with Spitfire on the lead line. “You told her?” he asked Brad, then turned to Trish. “Mom said we should come to the hospital as soon as we’re done here.”

Trish felt like the earth gave out beneath her. “But…but you know I can’t go in there. I just…I…” Her gaze darted from Rhonda to David and around the stalls, as if searching for a place to hide. “I can’t…not to the hospital…not now. I’ll…I’ll stay here…and…” She could feel the tears biting behind her eyelids.

The look David gave her spelled disgust in capital letters. Brad and Rhonda busied themselves on the other side of the cross-tied horse.

Trish leaned her forehead against Spitfire’s neck.
Why’d they have to mess up this day? Everything has been perfect so far. Well, not really.
She remembered the empty box in the grandstands. Her father hadn’t arrived at the track before the race began. He’d been rushed to the hospital the night before, hardly able to breathe.

It wasn’t his first time at the hospital. But she hadn’t been able to make herself go to the hospital when he’d been there for several weeks after the cancer was first diagnosed. No matter how hard she’d tried. Or how angry her mother got.

The warm, comforting smell of horse intruded on her thoughts. She stepped back so David could finish rinsing and scraping the water off the animal’s blue-black hide. When David unclipped the cross-ties to take Spitfire to the hot walker, Trish took the lead rope. “Let me have him. I’ll walk him out.”

“You want me to come with you?” Rhonda asked.

Trish shook her head. She swallowed hard and led the weary colt out the stall door.

The noises of the stable receded as they ambled past the last stalls. Trish heard the roar of the stands as another field left the starting gates. She and her dad should be hanging over the fence, studying each horse and rider as they surged around the oval track. He should be pointing out strategies for her as he trained her in the art of becoming a jockey. No one knew racing like her father.

She swiped at a tear that meandered down her cheek. Nothing had been the same since the diagnosis. Her father had lung cancer. And he had talked about the possibility of dying.
And I let him down by not visiting him in the hospital,
Trish scolded herself.

“God, why am I such a chicken?” She aimed her question at the heavens. “Why can’t I go see my dad in the hospital?” She kicked a clod of dirt ahead of them.

Spitfire snorted at the interruption. His flicking ears heard all the sounds around them, but he was too tired to react. Trish rubbed his nose in a reflex action, her mind on her troubles rather than the horse.

Her mother’s accusation,
“You love those horses more than anything,”
joined the battle raging in her mind.

People go to the hospital to die.

Hogwash! People go there to get well.

My dad’s not well.

He’s better than he was.

Not really. They had to hold him up for the pictures.

Yes, but he made it to the track.

God is supposed to heal him.

Give Him time, you idiot. You want everything right now.

And her mother’s voice,
“You love the horses best.”

“No! I don’t!” The words burst out of Trish, along with sobs that wrenched her in two.

She leaned into Spitfire’s neck and let the tears pour. It wasn’t as if she could stop them. All the fear, the anger, the worry, the nagging little doubts that plagued her. All merged with the tears and soaked Spitfire’s now dry hide.

The voices died.

Trish hiccupped. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve.

Spitfire bobbed his head, a spear of grass dangling from his teeth. He reached around and nuzzled her shoulder.

When she ignored him, he pushed a bit harder, then blew on her neck.

Trish sniffed again, followed by a deep, shuddery breath.

Spitfire rubbed his muzzle in her hair and licked the remaining salty tear away.

Trish reached up to rub the colt’s favorite spot, right behind his ears.

He draped his head over her shoulder in contentment.

A new voice seemed to speak in her ear.
If your father could make it to the track for you, weak as he is, we can handle a visit to the hospital for him. No matter what.

It was as if someone reached over and lifted the killing weights from her shoulders.

Trish nodded. “Come on, Spitfire. I know you’re hungry. And Dad is waiting.”

She clucked to the colt and the two of them jogged back to the stables.

“If anybody’s got any money, we could pick up pizza on the way. I’ve heard hospital food is terrible.” Trish unsnapped the lead line and ducked under Spitfire’s neck. Fetlock-deep straw, full water bucket, grain measured, and hay in the manger; all mute evidence that the others had been busy. “Well?” She bit back the slight wobble in her chin as she faced her brother and two best friends. “Let’s go.”

David threw home the bolt on the stall door. “I have ten dollars, that’ll buy one.”

“I’m broke but hungry.” Trish wrapped her arm around Rhonda’s waist.

“Five from me.” Rhonda hugged her back.

“I’ve got eleven dollars.” Brad checked his pockets. “And seventy-six cents. Let’s get outta here.”

The four piled into the pickup when they reached the parking lot. Brad draped his arm along the back of the seat and whispered in Trish’s ear. “I’m proud of you, Tee.”

Trish felt a warm spot uncurl and blossom into little stars right down in her middle. She swallowed a couple of leftover tears and rolled her lips together.

Rhonda’s hand on her knee telegraphed the same message. They knew she’d fought a private war—and won.

“Hal Evanston’s room, please,” David said when they stopped at the information desk at the hospital. The aroma of pepperoni and Canadian bacon wafted from the flat cardboard containers Trish and Rhonda carried. Brad had charge of the soft drinks.

The woman at the desk tried to hide a grin as she gave them instructions to room 731.

Shadows hugged the corners of the room where Hal slept in a white- blanketed hospital bed. Marge napped in a chair-bed by his side. Monitors bleeped their rhythm of life, assisted by the slow drip of the IV tube attached to the back of Hal’s hand.

Trish wanted to turn and run. Escape down the halls, out the door, and back to the barns where life smelled of horse and hay and grain. Where janglings and whinnies and slamming buckets chattered of evening chores and life in the horse lane. That’s where her dad should be.

Not here. All was silent and gray. The shadows seemed to have slithered over the rails and painted themselves on his hair and face. His chest barely raised the covers as he breathed in through the oxygen prongs at his nose and out through a dry throat that rasped with the effort.

Trish now knew what an animal felt like in a trap. Why they gnawed off a paw to escape. Only her iron will kept her in the room.
He’s going to die. He’s going to die.
The words marched through her mind.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Marge rose from her chair to stand by her daughter. “He’s just exhausted from going to the track.” She put her arm around Trish and hugged her. “You’ll never know how glad I am you’re here. We have good news. An infection caused this setback and he’s responding to the antibiotics.”

Trish nodded. She leaned closer to her mother, as if afraid to touch the hand of the stranger sleeping in the bed.

“Maybe we should just go on home and let him sleep,” David whispered.

“No.” Marge shook her head. “He made me promise to wake him when you got here.” She took the drinks from Brad. “You two find some more chairs. We’ll have our own celebration right here. Go ahead and wake him, Tee.”

“Dad,” Trish whispered. When there was no response, she darted a look at her mother.

Marge nodded.

“Dad.” This time Trish sounded more like herself. The word wasn’t lodged behind the boulder in her throat.

The man in the bed blinked as if his eyelids weighed two pounds each. He frowned in an obvious effort to corral a mind that wandered in exhausted sleep. When he recognized his daughter, a smile crinkled clear to his eyes and sent the shadows skulking back to their corners.

“Congratulations, Tee. You won the race.” While faint and scratchy, her father’s voice unleashed Trish from a prison of fear. She threw herself into his arms.

“It’s okay, babe,” Hal whispered into her ear as one hand stroked her wavy midnight hair. “I’m going to be all right.” His murmur flowed like Trish’s when she calmed a frightened horse, soothing and somehow magical. She had learned the music from years of watching and listening to the father she adored.

As her tears subsided, Hal patted her back again. “Hey now, let’s get me raised up so we can all talk.” He sniffed. “And besides, I smell something good.”

Trish wiped her face with a corner of the sheet. She gulped back the remaining tears and sat up on the edge of the bed. “We brought pizza.” She heaved a deep breath. “Will they let you…I mean…”

“No problem.” Hal settled himself against the angle of the raised bed. “I’m not in prison, you know.”

Trish’s grin wobbled but spread. “Coulda fooled me. What’ll we use for a table?”

“Improvise.” Hal shifted his legs to one side. “We even have a white tablecloth. Hi, Rhonda. Glad you could come.” The boys returned with two chairs each and set them around the foot of the bed where Marge had opened the pizza boxes.

Trish scooped out a piece of Canadian bacon with pineapple and handed it on a napkin to her father. Hal bowed his head. “Thank you, Father, for food, for family, for your continued and most needed presence. Amen.”

At the unanimous “Amen,” they attacked the pizzas. After fingering a stretch of cheese back onto her piece, Trish bit into the gooey concoction as if she hadn’t eaten for a week. She licked her lips and took a long drink from her icy Coke.

“How does it feel to win your first race?” Hal asked.

Trish thought a long moment. “Good, great, awesome…there just aren’t enough words.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Spitfire was fantastic. But I almost blew it. I held him back too long.”

“Well, you were only doing what I told you. You’ll develop a sixth sense about what’s best and what your horse can do.”

“I hope so.” Trish licked her fingers as she finished off her pizza.

“Two men I heard talking were really impressed with Spitfire.” David reached for another slice of pizza. “They thought he had a lot more to give.”

“And did he?” Hal directed his question to Trish.

She nodded around another mouthful of food. Trish continued to eat as the conversation swirled around her. She could feel the tiredness start at her toes and work its way up her body. She snagged her wandering attention back to the group when she heard her name called.

“I entered Firefly in the seventh race for maiden fillies,” Hal said.

Trish nodded.

“Tomorrow.”

She jerked upright. “Great. She’s ready.”
And what about your race tomorrow?
her inner voice prodded. Trish took a deep swallow from her Coke. “That means I’ll have two mounts tomorrow. Mr. Rodgers asked if I’d ride for him in the ninth.” She grinned, pleased with the honor.

“Good, huh?”

Beeping monitors punctuated the silence.

“But you’ve never ridden that horse before.” Marge rose from her chair. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“But, Mom, that’s what all jockeys do.”

“No, not my daughter. I only agreed to your riding our horses.”

“You should have talked with us before you accepted the mount.” Hal leaned against his pillows, lines deepening around his mouth.

“I know, but there wasn’t any time.” Trish shoved her fingers through her hair. “And besides, you weren’t there to ask.” She paused and chewed her lip. “I thought you’d be proud of me.”

“Oh, Tee, I am.” Hal reached for her hand. “It’s just that…well, things aren’t normal and…”

“You call Mr. Rodgers and tell him no, thank you.” Marge interrupted.

“Dad!” Trish leaped from her chair.

“We’ll talk about it.” Hal coughed on a deep breath.

“We better get home and get the chores done.” David folded the cover on the empty pizza box. “Come on, Brad, let’s put these chairs back.”

Trish glanced at her mother. Marge stood looking out the window, her back to the room. Her hand rubbed her elbow as if to warm it.
Or to keep from slamming something or someone,
Trish thought. She knew how much her mother hated the thought of Trish racing. This was just the latest in a long line of discussions.

Then her inner nagger leaped into the battle.
You just went ahead and accepted, before thinking it through.

Trish had to admit this was true. She’d been so excited at being asked that she hadn’t really considered what her mother would say. Until now.

Trish leaned over the bed to kiss her father good-night. Before he hugged her he slipped a three-by-five card into her hand. “Hang on to this,” he whispered.