Nacho Figueras Presents (2 page)

T
he moon had stayed bright all night, disturbing Georgia's every settled thought, until she finally fell into a shallow sleep. Too soon, she woke to the harsh scrape of the snow shovel and turned off the alarm before it rang.

Rolling out of bed in the dim gray light, she found she couldn't even put on her clothes without worrying what in hell she was going to wear in Wellington. Georgia believed she'd been born missing the fashionista gene and normally didn't care, but she knew, if she was to be seen with Billy, she'd have to raise her game. Her friend was always immaculately dressed and styled, and it wouldn't do for Georgia to look like an escapee from the Old Navy bargain bin.

She went downstairs, throwing a couple of logs on the glowing embers in the woodstove as she passed by. At the door, she shrugged on her coat, unballed a pair of gloves, and wedged her feet into her boots. Melvin, a sweet-eyed, elderly Australian shepherd, sighed in protest before he stiffly tottered out of his bed by the woodstove and followed her outside.

The clouds had swallowed the hills and turned the farm's normally stunning view of the Catskills into a white blob. The snow shovel stood by the porch door, abandoned, and there was no sign of her dad. Georgia slipped and skidded across the drive, scattering salt as she went, and stepped into the warmer air of the barn, where she was welcomed with a low nicker from an old Mustang named Ben. She ran her hand along the length of his nose and cupped his velvet mouth while he chomped on an apple from the bin. She tightened his blankets and, having smashed the disk of ice that had formed in the barrel overnight, topped up his water.
Poor horses
, Georgia thought. Too bad she couldn't take them to Florida, too. They could all use some winter sun.

As she worked, Georgia considered the question of how to break Billy's plan to Dad. Looking around the barn, she saw a thousand places where she could be putting the cost of a trip to Florida. In the fifteen years since her mother had left, it was like the whole place had slowly run out of gas. There was a big blue tarp on the roof like a badge of shame, a pile of rotting lumber under Tyvek that was supposed to be the new shed, and icicles the length of ladders from the corner of every cracked gutter.

In some ways, Georgia thought, winter did the place a favor, landscaping the ragged yard in blinding white and making the little stone cottage look like a gingerbread house framed in icing. But if you took a second look, the cheerful front porch was starting to sag, the flaking paint on the carved trim looked gray against the snow, and Georgia knew, if they didn't get that woodwork touched up soon, it was going to start letting in the weather.

She started to clean out the stalls, shoveling muck into a wheelbarrow. Jenny, the one-eyed donkey, licked at her hair while a small parade of barn cats wound their way around her ankles, anxious to be fed.

She gently pressed back the cats with her leg while filling their bowls. She had never met a stray—dog, cat, horse, or otherwise—she could turn away, and after her mother left, her dad completely lost his ability to say no. Before they knew it, they had a ridiculously big menagerie of mouths to feed. Georgia was always amazed how love expanded to let every new animal in.

When her mother had been with them, the farm had supported itself; Susan Fellowes had family money, and savvy, and knew enough about breeding and training horses to keep things solvent. But as soon as she and her Thoroughbreds left, the cash slowed to a trickle and the family was never much more than poor. But Georgia's dad, Joe, had done a great job of keeping that to himself. She'd managed to spend her teens blissfully oblivious to their money issues. She'd felt so comfortable in their scruffy little house growing up, but once she went away to college, she could see her home more clearly when she came back, and she realized just how tight things had become.

As she finished shoveling out the stall, she thought about how great a little vacation would be, although the whole point of living at home was to give her father the relief he'd been needing for years. Georgia couldn't help feeling selfish for leaving him—even if it was only for four days.

She finished with Ben and the goats and chickens, grabbed an armful of logs for the stove and trudged back inside, Melvin at her heels. Her dad was on the phone about a job so she fed the stove and gestured with the kettle to ask if he wanted tea. He nodded yes.

Her phone chimed. There was a text from Billy about a prepaid plane ticket.
Bring a bikini!
Just for a second, his unexpected generosity made tears smart in Georgia's eyes.

She handed her dad a cup of hot tea, tossed Melvin a biscuit, and then realizing her father wasn't going to be off the phone anytime soon, headed upstairs to unearth some clothes for the trip.

L
ooking in her closet, Georgia ruefully concluded she had everything she could ever want to wear if she were painting a house. Most of her T-shirts were torn or stretched. All her favorite jeans were frayed at the heels. The sweaters had holes at the elbows. Practically everything was covered in horsehair.

She pulled out a pale gold bias-cut thing she'd worn to graduation, where it had gotten a drink splashed on it. Holding the dress to the light, Georgia confirmed that the stains were still there but barely. She shrugged. It was the one dress she had. She laid it on the bed.

She dug out a worn pair of flip-flops and ragged cutoffs and paused to consider a vintage string bikini. The thought of exposing skin in January was seriously scary—she didn't even want to think how white she was under her long johns.

But screw it, along with the swimsuit, she retrieved tweezers, a razor, and an ancient bottle of nail polish from under the sink and flung them all onto the bed. Since she had to work the late shift at the rabies clinic tonight, Georgia figured she'd wait until she actually arrived in Florida before removing the layers and doing some damage control.

What to wear to watch polo? Georgia thought about
Pretty Woman
and all that fluttering silk while the crowd did whatever it was they did with divots at halftime. She shook her head. Was she remembering wrong or did Richard Gere actually deck Julia out in a hat and white gloves? What kind of weird throwback was that? Georgia felt herself getting annoyed. It was typical Billy, who always looked perfect in every way, to give her packing anxiety.

She looked skyward for inspiration and almost laughed when she actually found some. She remembered that the attic contained vacuum-packed plastic bags of her mom's old clothes.

Susan Fellowes had been beautiful. Probably still was. When Georgia was little, her mother had seemed impossibly glamorous, switching from one elegant and appropriate outfit to the next with the thoughtless ease most people spent brushing their teeth. It wasn't so much that everything was expensive (though it probably was, Georgia realized now), it was more that she somehow wore clothes better than other people. Georgia, on the other hand, was secretly grateful to have veterinarian scrubs as an alibi against what she thought of as her total lack of style.

As she headed up to the attic, it was hard not to be aware of the ways the house had deteriorated since her mother left. Old rain leaks stained the ceiling, damp had blistered the wallpaper, and the banisters had been patiently waiting to be fixed for years. Georgia pushed down a rising tide of anxiety, one that had fueled her through grad school. She had the education now, she reassured herself. She had the job. She had everything she needed now to give back to her dad and start getting the house and farm on track.

She picked through a dusty garment rack in the corner of the attic, choosing a particularly plump and promising bag. She opened the seal and watched the plastic gradually uncrinkle and expand as if it were alive. There were dresses and slips and wide-legged pants. Georgia even found the garter her mother must have worn to her wedding. Shaking out a creased red sundress, she was suddenly hit with the memory of her mom in this—her smooth, tan shoulders, long neck, and chic cap of hair. Susan had paired the dress with strappy high heels and an armful of gold bangles that chimed like bells whenever she moved.

The dress still smelled faintly of her mother's scent, clove and roses, and the smell summoned an indelible memory of her mother's cool lips kissing her cheek. That would have been the day after Georgia's ninth birthday. Her mother was leaving again. That was when Georgia had realized birthday wishes don't always come true.

Her mom had lived for show jumping, and if she wasn't training, then she was leaving for a competitive circuit that seemed to expand to fill the year. She was always either about to leave or just back, looking exhilarated but talking about how exhausted she was. To her daughter, she had seemed like a glorious Thoroughbred on a lunge line, going in wider and wider circles until, one day shortly before Georgia turned fourteen, she disappeared from view for good.

Georgia tried to shake off the sadness and, summoning a defiant sense of entitlement, slipped the red dress on. She zipped it up and smoothed out her hair in front of the big mirror leaning against the attic wall. When people said that Georgia looked like her mother, it made her feel hot and claustrophobic. There was no denying some of the ingredients were the same—beach brown hair (though Georgia's was usually tied back or clipped up on her head in a tangled pile while Susan's was always blown out to perfection) and the same almond-shaped hazel eyes under dark winged brows. But Georgia had inherited her dad's pale skin and dusting of freckles, and absolutely none of her mother's effortless elegance, she thought ruefully. With her full breasts and curves—good child-bearing hips, an ex had once told her—Georgia felt like a sturdy little Shetland compared to the high-crested Arabian that her mother had been.

She tugged at the neckline, uncomfortable. She was like a little girl playing dress-up, she thought. And she'd never been that kind of little girl.

Georgia remembered one of her last moments with her mother, watching through the bars of the banister as Susan packed. Georgia hadn't known yet that her mother was leaving for good, but she never much liked watching her prepare to go, and she'd been looking resentful and accusatory probably—judging her mother the way only a daughter can. Her mom had gazed back at her, meeting her eyes.

“You're not so different from me, my girl. You'll see.”

Her words felt like a curse to Georgia.

Still did.

She shook her head at her reflection—ready to put the haunted red dress away—when the scuff of a sole made her jump and she saw that her dad had appeared beside her in the mirror, staring at her wearing the red dress with a world of hurt in his eyes. Before Georgia could explain, he turned and trudged heavily downstairs.

G
eorgia talked to her boss, Dr. Jackson, and arranged to work a double shift at the clinic to make up for the time she'd be taking in Florida. She scrubbed her hands for the last patient of the day, snapped on some latex gloves, and got to work checking an old pug's cataracts.

Georgia liked her job. And her colleagues and clients. Beyond being good at what she did, she was always willing to linger and hear the story that pet owners needed to tell. Which meant she was invariably running late, but promptness counted for much less than compassion in this world.

Georgia smiled at the little pop-eyed canine and scratched him behind his ear. “Looks like you're not blind yet, Franklin.” The cataracts were not as advanced as she had first feared. A good case to end the day on—nothing like telling a pet owner that their beloved animal was in the clear.

That night, Georgia found her dad with his feet up reading the paper. She put the groceries away and began to put together some supper. It was funny—he'd held everything together for the two of them for so long, but since she'd come home, he'd been making it abundantly clear he was happy now for her to take over. As she set the table, he actually said how nice it was to have a woman's touch around the place. Then he sighed and said he knew it couldn't last forever.

“It's just four days,” she said. “You're not going to lose me to Florida.”

Her dad gave a skeptical grunt.

“You know I'm not interested in Palm Beach and that whole scene.”

“How are you going to get there?” her father asked.

“Billy's paying,” she said quickly.

“That's not what I meant,” he said, raising a brow at her defensiveness.

“Oh. Sorry. I'm flying out of Newburgh tomorrow.”

“So you'll need a ride?”

Her dad said he needed the car—the only one they had in action, a twenty-year-old Mercedes—to get to an interview about a renovation in the morning. He'd been out of work too long for him to miss a job possibility, but a cab would cost way more than Georgia wanted to spend.

“So let's ask Sam,” he said. Georgia hesitated but her dad was already dialing.

Sam was Georgia's high school ex. They'd dated for three years, until she'd discovered a pair of another girl's underwear beneath his bed. It was sickening to realize he'd been fooling around, but she'd had to admit that there was some secret relief, too. She'd been preparing to leave for college, and the question of whether they'd try to keep things up long distance had been needling at her. Sam seemed to take it for granted that they would wait it out, but Georgia wasn't so sure. The infidelity had made it easy—no question about what to do at that point. But when she'd confronted him, Sam had been genuinely devastated, swearing it was a one-time thing, begging to let him make it up to her.

He had eventually accepted her decision—because he had no choice, really—but that had not kept him from faithfully calling and texting and sending care packages for all the years she had been away. And while she dated off and on, nobody had ever felt as serious, and Georgia had continued to feel tethered to her ex through the years.

Now Sam was doing almost embarrassingly well as a tax attorney in town and seemed determined to finally get her back for good since she'd returned from college. Local consensus was that the two of them getting back together was inevitable. Georgia's dad never tried to hide his opinion that she should forgive a few teenage indiscretions when the man was a catch by any sensible standard.

But every time Sam turned up, with his gentle smile and soft, questioning eyes, Georgia couldn't quite bring herself to open that particular door. She made excuses. She found reasons to be busy. She had so far been pretty successful in staying out of his way but it wasn't easy in the face of such romantic tenacity. Sometimes, it seemed that her surrender was only a matter of time.