“Everdale? Gosh, it’s gorgeous.” And it was. Before Donna offered her the job, Mia had been convinced she would only ever lay eyes on such a place throughDressage Todayphoto spreads. The barn was done up like a Colorado mountain house, with heavy timbers under the eaves and fat stone columns. Like most top-dollar equestrian centers, it boasted big box stalls, hot-and-cold washracks with heaters and fans, an indoor arena, offices, a lounge, a bathroom, and the tack room to end all tack rooms. But unlike so many farms, it had pastures, too: eighty acres of them, all the fences stained black. Mia had never ridden so many horses a day, from freshly-started four-year-olds to schoolmaster lesson horses in need of a tune-up between students. It was exhausting and amazing, and she gushed on about it until she was breathless and she was slowing the truck to turn in at the gates.
“Sorry.” She felt a blush staining her cheeks. “I got kind of carried away.” When she snuck a glance at Val, he was smiling almost wistfully, gaze fond.
“You’re passionate about what you do. I like that.”
She blushed harder and steered them up the lazy curves of the driveway, fence flashing past, toward the barn.
Val leaned forward in his seat. “Oh, it’s lovely.”
“Isn’t it?” She parked beside Javier’s Jeep, killed the engine, and then turned in her seat to really look at her spectral passenger.
Val’s gaze was directed out the window, to the front pasture where three mares and their two-month-old foals grazed. Well, the mamas grazed, tails swishing lazily at flies. The foals were engaged in a rollicking game of something like tag, darting and dodging between their mothers, nipping at one another, gamboling on their too-long legs. Val watched the scene with a smile, face bathed in morning light, his skin smooth and fine. From behind, she could see the start of his braid, at the nape of his neck, the heavy golden strands plaited together to reveal a vulnerable patch of skin just behind his ear; it looked like it would be silky-soft to the touch. If she could touch him. If he was here.
She bit back a sigh. “I would love to give you a tour. Introduce you to all the horses. But it’ll look like I’m talking to myself…”
He turned to face her, smile small and rueful. “Yes, I know. Don’t worry about me. I won’t be a bother.”
“I didn’t think you would be. I wanted to apologize in advance, though, for not being able to talk to you like I want.”
One of his hands opened in his lap, lifted a fraction – he’d wanted to reach for her, she thought – and then eased back down. He smiled again, and it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Seeing will be enough.”
She swallowed with sudden difficulty.Where are you? How can I help you?
She gathered her keys and said, “Follow me, then.”
~*~
Val had assured her that he could keep himself cloaked from everyone but her, and that appeared to be true. At one point, she’d glanced up and seen Javi lead a horse right through Val. She’d gaped…but Javi hadn’t seemed to notice.
Val shot her a wink.
The usual daily chaos swept her up in its tide, and she didn’t get the chance to worry about how Val was faring. She taught two lessons, schooled two of the five-year-olds, and ate the sandwich Donna brought her. She snuck glances of Val: him peering into stalls; him standing in the shade of the pop-up tent beside a client who didn’t notice him; him staring out across the fields, untouched by the breeze, his gaze open and heartbroken.
She lost track of him for a while. But he reappeared in the early evening, when Mia finally climbed aboard Brando for her own lesson. He stood at the rail, projecting the image of having his arms folded over the top board, gaze trained on her as Donna sat down on the mounting block. Mia sent him a quick, small smile.
He returned it, but there were shadows under his eyes. A tiredness she hadn’t seen before. And his face didn’t seem as solid, his skin translucent. With a start, she realized that she could see the barnthroughhim. He was fading.
“Mia,” Donna said. “Did you hear me?”
“What? Yes, sorry.” She gave herself a firm mental shake. She needed to focus; her horse and her instructor and her sport deserved better attention than she’d paid it today.
Putting Val out of her mind – a difficult task, more troubling than she was ready to admit – she gathered her reins and squeezed Brando into a swinging warm-up trot, encouraging him to stretch through the neck and back with gentle pressure on the bit.
Unlike her coach and mentor, Mia hadn’t been born to the equestrian life. Her father, already a prominent scientist when she was born, had bounced the family from university to university…that was before the divorce…trying to earn grant money to start up his own facility. Mia and her mom had been left to their own devices for the most part, and Mom, Kate, had tried to make up for Mia’s absent father through a variety of mother-daughter activities. They’d tried ballet together, and jazz, and tap. Painting, and ceramics, and even soccer. But they went for riding lessons when Mia was six, and that was it. End of story. Mia didn’t want to do anything but ride after that.
Edwin and Kate divorced when Mia was ten. Edwin got his grant, and Kate got Mia.
And Mia got a mother who scraped, and saved, and sacrificed so that her daughter could chase her Olympic dreams. Mia had been a barn rat, mucking stalls, polishing tack, wrapping legs. She’d exercised horses, broken colts, driven tractors. She’d fetched coffee, and lunch, and whips, and used her own t-shirt to wipe the snot from the nose of her trainer’s horse right before they went into the show ring. Her chiropractor said she had the neck of someone who’d been in a terrible car crash, after years of riding, and lifting, and working her fingers to the bone.
And now here she was.DThad actually interviewed her a few months ago. Interviewedher. “I’m so proud of you, baby,” Kate said over the phone every time they talked. Because Mia had beaten a brain tumor, and all the odds, and that Olympic dream wasn’t really out of reach anymore.
So she wasn’t born in the saddle, but after an early childhood of moving from city to city, the saddle had been the first place that felt like home. From the calluses in her palms, to the busted capillaries in her knees, she was a horsewoman to her bones. On the back of the horse, nothing else mattered.
Today, like every day, she shifted her weight back, shortened her reins, and when Brando responded – lifting his back, surging to meet her halfway – she forgot all her earthly worries. There was no possible new tumor, no Val, no distractions. She asked, and Brando answered; they danced.
“Good,” Donna said. “Less inside rein, more outside leg,yes.”
Mia could sense the pirouette, an electricity that lived beneath her skin, and Brando’s. A power ready to be unleashed if she could just tap into it the right way. She half-halted, slowed, slowed, slowed, adjusted the flexion.
