Chance Meeting (31 page)
Steve shook his head. “Don’t have time for that sort of crap.”
“Now I know why I instinctively liked you. My divorce was the equivalent of a five-course meal for most of New York for several months. The details were delicious. The papers, and their readers, too, apparently, couldn’t get enough. They wanted dessert, too. The icing on their cake was when word leaked out that Michael had put a stop on our joint checking account. Everybody oohed and aahed, my so-called friends shook their heads, but not one of them ever considered lending a hand.”
Again, Lizzie broke off to stare out the window as if the present scenery of dried and withered cornfields were a marvel. From the corner of his eye, Steve saw Lizzie rub her brow wearily, but her voice, when she continued, remained even.
“Within an alarmingly short period of time, all my money, as well as my parents’ savings, had been eaten up by the lawyers.”
“The fees those guys charge are unbelievable.”
“You can say that again. But the point of this story is that Ty bailed me out. Actually, she did more—
somehow, she managed to twist Michael’s arm to drop the custody battle. Then she paid all those terrifyingly huge fees I owed the lawyers. I don’t know what I would have done without her. I was close to losing it—a total basket case, convinced Michael would win, that Emma would be taken from me. I was so wrecked emotionally and psychologically, I kidded myself into thinking that Ty’s father might help me out.”
“Wait a second.” Steve shook his head, trying to keep the story straight in his mind. “You went to Ty’s father for help?”
“Yeah, but sanity returned pretty damned quickly. It only took Stannard’s incomparable manner of saying, ‘Sorry, no dice, bimbo.’ After turning me down flat, he warned me not to breathe a word of my problems to Ty, then had me physically escorted off the premises.”
Steve frowned. “But he must have known you and Ty were close, right?”
“Yeah, but a bigger son of a bitch you will
never
meet. How Ty survived growing up alone in that house with him I’ll never know . . .” Sam Brody’s name was on the tip of her tongue, but then Lizzie remembered she wasn’t supposed to jog Steve’s memory. She bit back the words, saying instead, “I guess that’s why underneath it all, she’s a hell of a lot tougher than he could ever be. I think . . .”
Lizzie would have continued, but Steve interrupted, zeroing in on a detail Lizzie had thrown out so casually. “What do you mean, alone? Are Ty’s parents divorced?”
Lizzie looked over at him strangely, then with dawning comprehension. “Good God, she hasn’t said a word, has she? Well, that’s Ty for you. She’d rather walk over burning coals than reveal any of the sadness in her life. I think she’s afraid someone will accuse her of doing the ‘poor little rich girl’ routine or something like that. No, her parents aren’t divorced. Ty’s mother died giving birth to her. She doesn’t have any family except for her father—I’d say that’s worse than having none at all.”
Steve closed his eyes for a second, then massaged his temple with his left hand, letting his right hand do the steering. Jesus, what a fucking idiot he was. Self-disgust flooded him as he recalled his snide comment about how he doubted little Miss Stannard knew a bloody thing about loss. At that moment he’d have loved nothing more than to jump out of his skin so he could give himself a few hundred swift kicks in the ass.
“Go on, tell me what happened next,” he instructed, not at all certain he wanted to hear any more.
“Well, one of my many failings is that I rarely listen to anyone’s advice, above all never from men who think they can threaten and intimidate me.
That
lesson I learned from Michael, my ex. Soon after the fiasco with Ty’s father, Ty returned from overseas where she’d been working for her father’s company. I told her everything: the endless court battles, the lawyers’ fees, my parents’ and my money drained to the last penny, my pathetic attempt to beg a loan from her father. What happened next still keeps me awake at night, wondering whether I should have had my lips surgically sealed. Then I think of Emma, and selfish though it is, I can’t help but feel better.”
“What’d she do when she heard?” asked Steve, though he was beginning to suspect he knew it all already, because in his heart he knew exactly the kind of person Ty was.
“She disinherited herself. Well, that might not be the exact term for it—I’m not sure that actually can be done legally. But what Ty did was just as effective: she told her father to f - - - off. Ty turned in her resignation letter the next day, quitting her position at Stannard Limited. She also informed the old man that she’d reject any money from the company or from him, and that included this huge—and I mean
huge
—trust fund Stannard had created for her. She walked away from it all—money, power, prestige—for me and Emma.”
It was a good thing Edgemere Farm didn’t have any jumper prospects lounging around in its warm, roomy box stalls. As it was, Steve almost missed the turn-off for Damien Schoenberg’s place. He wouldn’t have been able to concentrate worth a damn if a horse had been trotted out for him to look over.
He simply couldn’t get Ty out of his mind.
He was trying to sort it all out. When he was a kid, Steve’s family had often spent winter evenings working on enormous jigsaw puzzles, puzzles so large they covered the bridge table the Sheppards set up in a corner of the living room, not too far from the fireplace. As the family became increasingly adept, they graduated to more abstract puzzles, ones with fewer details and more subtle shifts of color. Steve remembered how he’d loved taking a piece in his hand, holding it in his palm, and rotating it slowly, his eyes glancing now and again at the piece’s curves and scalloped edges. He’d contemplate the gaps that remained, areas emphasized by the dark wood veneer of the bridge table, knowing that with patience and perseverance, he had all that was necessary to complete the image before him. That’s probably why he was standing in the center of Damien’s outdoor ring, feeling increasingly dazed and disoriented as the pieces of the puzzle that was Ty Stannard began to fit. Certain key elements were still missing from the picture, but the details beginning to emerge left him stunned. For some inexplicable reason, he’d gotten extraordinarily lucky.
Into his life had walked a beautiful, intelligent woman who possessed such an extraordinary degree of spirit, of compassion, that it left him feeling humbled.
He truly admired Ty for what she’d done for Lizzie; in this life, it was all too easy to be a fair-weather friend. And it took incredible guts to stand up to one’s family. Especially if it meant turning one’s back on the only relation one had left in the world. The decision must have torn Ty apart. But what Steve couldn’t fully grasp was why she had bothered to do so much for
him.
Astranger. What had he done to deserve her generosity, her care? That part of the puzzle remained unsolved.
Since they’d arrived at Edgemere, Steve had simply been going through the motions, observing with a distracted eye as a roly-poly pony, practically as wide as it was tall, called Wisp—a grave misnomer if ever there was one—was led into the ring for Lizzie to try. And try Lizzie did. Not even a good five minutes of squeezing and clucking could persuade the pony to move out of a lumbering walk. Damien had hastily signaled one of the grooms hanging around the exercise ring to run back to the barn for a crop.
Steve glanced at his watch. Lizzie was making a valiant effort with Wisp, but he doubted it was worth the trouble. In addition to having a distinct aversion to any gait faster than a walk, the pony also possessed the disconcerting habit of abruptly dodging into the center of the ring and yanking up any blades of grass it happened upon. If she’d wished, Lizzie certainly could have gotten the pony’s attention pretty quickly. But she was purposely trying to mimic the moves of an inexperienced rider. It would be the kids who climbed onto the back of this obstinate fatso who’d have to deal with him, not her. Wisp perked up a bit when a crop was finally placed in Lizzie’s right hand. As the pony moved reluctantly into a trot and then a canter, Steve, in a habit formed years ago on the track, glanced down at his watch again and timed how long it took Wisp to complete a lap of the ring. As he expected: he’d seen turtles move faster than this pony.
He pulled a cigarette from the pack nestled in his front pocket and lit it, wondering how much longer Lizzie would take to decide. If she intended to use Wisp as a school pony or as a beginner’s mount, anyone on this pony’s back would need far stronger leg muscles than most young kids were equipped with to get Wisp’s attention and keep him focused. Unless, of course, Lizzie planned to have them swatting the pony every other minute with a crop which, in Steve’s opinion, was a lousy way to teach beginners. Advanced riders would be ready for something a tad more responsive. Lizzie must have drawn pretty much the same conclusion, because a minute later she brought Wisp into the center of the ring and hopped off. She gave the pony an affectionate pat on the shoulder, then turned to Damien. “He’s a nice pony, Damien, real solid. But I think I’d like to try out the other ones you mentioned on the phone. See whether they’re more what I had in mind.”
Steve coughed into his fist, hiding a smile. Lizzie Osborne knew the horse trade business. If presented with a clunker, be polite, never tell the owner your real opinion, but make certain he gets the message you’re nobody’s fool. Then maybe he won’t waste your time on the next go-round. The next two ponies Lizzie rode were in an entirely different category from Wisp. Lizzie tried a cute-asabutton Dartmoor pony named Fly, whose coat, a glossy bay, was set off by four white stockings and a white star between its eyes. Fly moved nicely, too, approaching the couple of cross bars Lizzie took him over with ears pricked forward, alert and confident. Because of her size, Lizzie didn’t attempt taking him over any larger fences, but Steve could tell she was pleased with Fly’s attitude. The second pony was larger, a Welsh mix and considerably bigger than the Dartmoor. Sassafras was snow white and had a bit of mischief in his eye, the kind of impish spunk that made ponies a whole different story from horses. But Sassafras moved over the flat like a pro and had his flying changes at the canter down cold. Lizzie was able to try him over a few larger fences, too. He cleared them with a good six inches of air. Of the two ponies, Steve himself preferred Sassafras. He was a pony a kid could grow on, physically as well as developmentally, one that would keep a young rider thinking. The smaller pony, Fly, was a little too “made” for Steve’s taste, a pushbutton pony. Where was the fun in riding a pony that could go and win a blue ribbon all by itself? On the other hand, he didn’t know what Lizzie’s clients were like, and he wouldn’t dream of telling her how to do her job—she seemed more than competent. That was what Steve had told Damien Schoenberg when the trainer expressed surprise—pleasant surprise—at Steve’s unexpected presence at Edgemere. No, he was just along for the ride, keeping a friend of a friend company.
Lizzie brought Sassafras to where Damien and Steve stood and dismounted. “I like Fly and Sassafras a lot, Damien,” she said, slipping the reins over Sassafras’s neck and stroking the pony’s velvety gray muzzle. The pony’s lips curled and flapped beneath Lizzie’s fingers.
“Both of them are great ponies. Nice manners. Sound, too. And they’ve both shown in A-rated shows. Fly’s often champion or reserve champion by the end of the day,” Damien stated proudly, confirming Steve’s opinion of the little bay.
Lizzie handed Damien the reins, and the three of them began walking toward the parking area near one of the other exercise rings, this one filled with students trotting in single file. Damien motioned to a teenage girl standing by the railing who immediately came over and relieved Damien of Sassafras, leading the white pony back to the barn.
“What I’d like to do, Damien, is call my clients and find out when we can bring their daughter out to try Sassafras and Fly. Would it be convenient if I called you later today or perhaps this evening?”
“Of course.” Damien nodded agreeably as the three of them came to a standstill in front of Lizzie’s car.
“I’m usually up until eleven. I’ll look forward to hearing from you.” He turned to Steve and extended his hand. “Steve, it was good to see you. You going to the National this year?” he inquired a shade too heartily. Like many in Steve’s circle of professional riders and trainers, Damien had fumbled awkwardly during the first few minutes of their conversation, unable to express how saddened he was by the recent tragedy at Southwind.
Steve shook Damien’s extended hand. “Yeah, I’m bringing Gordo and Macintosh. It won’t be the same without Fancy,” he admitted, “but Gordo and Mac have been going great lately.”
“Well, best of luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll see you around, Damien, and if you hear of any jumper prospects, give me a buzz.”
D
ishes washed, dried, put away, Emma chattering continuously throughout, Bubba come and gone, with a chuck to Emma’s dimpled chin and a list for Ty of items she might consider purchasing: new jumps and jump wings (although she’d have to consult Steve to find out which kind he wanted), an indoor horse shower and dryer Bubba wanted to install at the far end of the barn, sofa, armchairs, and coffee table for the lounge, and videotaping equipment. At the bottom of the list, Bubba had written in block letters: MORE STAFF, CUSTOMIZED BASEBALL HATS, AND ALL-WEATHER GEAR.