“Whoa!” Zara stopped short in the doorway, staring into the loft.
The place was a wreck. Empty bottles and cans lying around everywhere. Overturned furniture. The TV playing static.
“Hello?” she called, stepping over a stray sofa cushion as she walked in. “Stacie?”
No answer. Zara dropped her suitcase and boots near the door. The apartment smelled as bad as it looked. Stacie must’ve partied all weekend and then some.
Just then she heard the clatter of footsteps at the top of the stairwell behind her. “Hi!” Stacie exclaimed breathlessly. “Didn’t you hear me calling you? I was just coming around the corner when I saw you getting out of your friend’s car. Nice wheels, by the way.”
“That’s Tommi,” Zara said. “Her dad’s like the richest guy on the planet or something.” She glanced at the brown paper bag in her cousin’s hand. “Where were you? Out buying a mop?”
“Huh? No, I just ran over to that organic market around the corner.” Stacie held up the bag and shook it, grinning. “Scored these awesome local peaches. What does that say to you?”
Zara just stared at her. “What?”
“It’s daiquiri time!” Stacie sang out. “How about that? Does your babysitter take care of you, or what?”
Zara hesitated, taking another look around at the mess. Then she shrugged. She’d had a great show—why not celebrate?
“Bring it on,” she said. “I love daiquiris.”
Tommi was in her room, staring into her closet, when there was a knock at her door. “Come in,” she called, distracted.
She was supposed to meet Alex in half an hour, and she was running late. Traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike had been even worse than usual coming back from the show. Plus she’d had to come in through the Holland Tunnel to drop Zara in SoHo, which had added even more time to the trip.
The door opened, and her father stuck his head in. He was wearing his rimless reading glasses and holding the Times business section.
“Thought I heard you come in,” he said. “Have a good show? How’d our boy do?”
Tommi hesitated. So far she’d kept things pretty vague whenever her father asked how Legs was coming along. That seemed to be enough for him. He didn’t really want to know every detail of the horse’s training. All he cared about was results.
But this time she couldn’t just say “Fine” and leave it at that. Not without actually lying to him. That didn’t mean she was going to mention that her trip to the Hamptons had meant Legs had stood in a show stall for several days without much work, or that she still wondered if that was why he hadn’t seemed quite right when she’d finally gotten on him. No, there was no way she was going to tell her father that.
“I had to scratch him this time,” she said. “He felt a little funny in the warm-up on Friday.”
Looking concerned, her father stepped into the room. “What’s wrong with him? Is it serious?”
“Probably not.”
“Probably?” Tommi’s father frowned. “What, didn’t you have a vet look at him?”
“Not yet.” Tommi grabbed a Rag & Bone sheer blouse out of her closet and tossed it on her bed. She looked great in it, and Alex hadn’t seen it yet. “I’ll have Jamie’s vet take a look this week if necessary,” she told her father. “But he was already feeling better when I took him for a hack around the grounds this morning.”
Her father was still frowning. “I don’t understand. Is there something wrong with this horse or not?”
Tommi shrugged. “Nothing I could quite put my finger on,” she said. “Jamie couldn’t see anything. Legs just didn’t feel right. Call it a gut feeling, I guess.”
“A gut feeling?” Now Tommi’s father was starting to look annoyed. “Listen, Thomasina, this isn’t a game of My Little Pony. You’re playing with real money here.”
“I know that,” Tommi said quickly, trying to head off one of his patented financial-responsibility lectures.
Too late. “It’s one thing to protect the health of this horse if there’s really something wrong. That’s just common sense and good business. But a gut feeling? Really? You have a responsibility to your investors—that’s you and me, in case you’ve forgotten—to maximize returns. You need to push forward and sell this animal, not get all namby-pamby overcautious about every little step he takes.”
Tommi was starting to feel annoyed herself. What did her father know about horses, anyway? That would be pretty much a big fat zippo. Last she’d noticed, he couldn’t even tell her junior hunter from her eq horse, even though they were totally different heights, body types, and shades of bay.
“Whatever,” she said. “I hear you, Oh Great Financial Wizard, okay? I’m dealing with it.”
Grabbing the blouse off her bed and her favorite pair of jeans from the pile of clean laundry Mrs. Grigoryan had left on a chair, she stomped into her bathroom and slammed the door behind her. She really didn’t want to think about investments or maximizing profits or anything like that right now. All she wanted to do was get dressed for her date with Alex so she could go out and have a good time and not worry about any of this for a while.
Kate could hear shouting even before she opened the front door. All her father, of course. Her mother never raised her voice.
She hesitated, tempted to back away and take off again. But where would she go? It was well after 10:00 p.m. Jamie had shooed her home from the barn after she’d spent the past couple of hours helping the grooms clean out the trailers and settle the horses in. The usual Sunday-night postshow routine. Now all she wanted was food, shower, and sleep. In that order.
Taking a deep breath, she went in. Her parents were both in the front room. The TV was tuned to some cooking show, volume muted. Her mother was sitting on the worn plaid couch with four candlesticks, a rag, and a tub of brass cleaner set out on the coffee table in front of her. Kate’s father, still in his cop’s uniform, was pacing back and forth between his wife and the TV.
“… and if we don’t beat some sense into that boy now, it’ll be too late!” he was yelling when Kate came in. “He has to know there are consequences to the dumb-ass things he’s doing!”
“Please don’t shout, William,” her mother said in her soft, feeble voice. “Andy already explained that he had no idea the police would have any reason to break up that party. He just went along with his friends, that’s all.”
Kate winced. Great. So her younger brother was up to more trouble. Ever since he’d turned fourteen and started hanging out with a new bunch of friends, it had been all downhill with him. He’d skipped so much school last year that he had to go to summer school. That wasn’t going too well, either, since he’d ditched his very first day and probably 50 percent of those since. Now it sounded like he was in even more trouble.
Her father heard the door shut behind her. “Katie!” he said, his voice softening. “You’re home.”
“I’m home,” Kate said lightly. Pretending she hadn’t just heard them fighting. That she didn’t know what was going on.
“Good.” Her mother stood up. “Now that you’re home safely, I’m going to bed. Good night.”
Not meeting either her husband or daughter’s eye, she rushed out of the room. Kate’s father watched her go with a heavy sigh, then turned to Kate again.
“You hungry? Come on, I’ll make you a sandwich.”
He headed toward the kitchen without waiting for a response. Kate dropped her stuff at the foot of the stairs, then followed. She slid onto one of the stools at the butcher-block island, watching her father dig into the refrigerator.
“Ham and Swiss okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, fine,” Kate said.
He tossed a loaf of bread on the island, along with a couple of deli packages and a tub of mayo. “So how was the show?” he asked, turning away to grab a plate out of a cabinet.
“Good,” Kate said. “I did the eq again on that fancy horse Jamie’s been letting me ride. Didn’t pin, though.”
“Hmm.” Her father’s big, callused hands were already busy putting together her sandwich. He didn’t know much about horses or showing—thanks to his work schedule, he rarely got to come watch her ride anymore. But usually he at least pretended to be interested in the details. Tonight, she could tell he was too distracted to care.
“You probably heard your mother and me arguing when you came in, Katie,” he said, turning away to grab the mustard out of the fridge. “I don’t want you to worry. It’s just your brother—growing pains, I guess you could call it. It’s upsetting your mother quite a bit, and well …”
He let his voice trail off. Kate just sat there, wishing she could be anywhere else. Cleaning a stall. Stacking itchy hay bales. Anything.
Her father finally turned back and met her eye. “Nobody ever said life was always a field full of daffodils,” he said with a sigh. “Seems like maybe this is one of those no-daffodils times for this family.” He reached over and touched her on the arm. “I’m just glad you’re still your same good, normal self, Katie. Makes things a little easier knowing that, anyway.”
Kate forced a smile, not knowing what to say. Her father squirted some mustard on the sandwich, slapped on the top piece of bread, and set it in front of her.
“There you go,” he said. “Eat up, then get some sleep.” He shot a look toward the master bedroom across the narrow back hallway. “I’m going to try to talk to your mother.”
As soon as he left, Kate felt herself start to shake. Her father seemed to think she had it all figured out. That she was just as happy and single-minded as she’d been as a little girl, back when the only thing she had to worry about was earning enough money pulling weeds or walking dogs to pay for her next ride at Happy Acres.
Little did he know how hard she was working right now just to hold it together. Or how quickly everything seemed to be spinning out of control. That disaster with Ford, and the way the secret kept gnawing at her. The way she’d let Jamie and Fable down in her eq class. Even her relationship with Fitz felt too shaky for comfort—sure, things were good again now, but for how long? How could it possibly last when they were so different?
She felt sick to her stomach at the thought of it all. Although she suddenly realized that feeling might also have something to do with being hungry—she hadn’t eaten since splitting a bad horse-show burger with Dani at lunch, many hours earlier. The scents of ham, mustard, and mayo wafted up, making her forget everything else for a moment.
Grabbing the sandwich, she opened her mouth to shove it in, ready to wolf down the whole thing in one bite. But she stopped herself before she actually did it. Things were bad enough right now without pigging out and making herself really sick. She couldn’t afford to wake up with a stomachache because she’d eaten too much too late at night. At least she should be able to manage to avoid that, even if she couldn’t seem to handle a fresh horse anymore, or a fresh guy.
Kate set the sandwich back on the plate, then grabbed the knife her father had dropped on the counter. Carefully pressing the dull blade into the soft bread, she cut the sandwich into four equal sections. Then she picked up one of the sections and ate it, taking small bites and chewing carefully to make it last. She’d read in some magazine somewhere that it was healthier to eat that way, anyhow.
When she finished, she stared at the other three sections for a second. She thought about eating one more. But no—she’d already decided that one was safer. If she didn’t have the strength to stick to a stupid decision like that, how could she ever expect to get the rest of her life in order?
Grabbing the plate, she quickly dumped the rest of the sandwich in the trash before she could weaken. Good. That was done. She felt better immediately, stronger, even though her stomach was still grumbling a little.
But that was okay. She could handle that. No problem.