In the six years Trey had been gone, I’d never heard her ask that question. Of course I had no answer. Instead, I took her in my arms. She cried for a while, then pulled her face away from my shoulder.
“Stupid crybaby.” She sniffed, wiping her face with her robe’s sleeve. “I should know better.”
“His leaving never made sense to me.” I pushed an errant lock of hair out of her face.
“God. Now he’s gone, truly gone.” Sister stared at the moon-limned clouds in their dreary, dark parade southward. “A part of me always believed he’d come back. Isn’t that the most idiotic thing you ever heard?”
“No, it’s not.” Silence hung between us for a minute.
“Sister?”
“Yeah?”
“Did Trey send you money-support-for Mark?” Trey’d alluded to that twice, once at the library, once at Truda Shivers’s, but both times I’d been convinced it was a lie to salve his ego.
Sister lowered her eyes. “Yes. Every month for the past six years. Sometimes he’d miss a month, but he’d always make it up. And always with a money order. The letters were postmarked from all over.”
I let my breath out. And I’d called Trey a liar. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I don’t know. I put most of it in an account at the bank. I want Mark to go to college. Sometimes I had to tap it, when times were hard, but most of it’s in that account.”
“So Trey wasn’t entirely a deadbeat dad?”
Sister’s tone grew cold. “He wasn’t here. Money doesn’t replace a father’s love. That’s what I don’t understand. Okay, our marriage wasn’t perfect. There were times that we fought. But leave Mark? How could he abandon his own flesh and blood?”
In that last phone conversation with Trey, I could hear the joy, the anticipation of seeing his son. “I don’t know. I only know that he loved Mark, even if he wasn’t here to show it.”
She threw herself on the pillows. “I don’t want to talk about him now! Go to bed, Jordan. We’ve both had horrible days.”
While she was in this state of honesty I wanted to ask about the batik scrap I’d found; but I couldn’t. Not without it sounding like an accusation I wasn’t ready to make. I got up and went back downstairs. Candace had gotten Mama down for the night and was sipping a ginger ale and watching the news from Austin.
“Thanks for staying over.” I went and kissed her on the mouth. She kissed back for a moment.
“You want me to sleep with you? Or in the guest room?” she asked softly. “I never stayed here since we’ve been dating.”
“It can’t make any nevermind to Mama, but, for Mark’s sake, it’d be best if you slept in the guest room.”
She didn’t take it as rejection. “All right, babe. You doing okay?”
I looked down into her cool blue eyes. I wanted to say no, I wasn’t doing okay. I was scared shitless by the two options that seemed to be looming before me; either my sister was a killer or my friends were being murdered for some hidden reason from boyhood days. Death has a long shadow, my grandfather used to say, and I never appreciated what he meant until now. I wanted to explain this to Candace, but instead I kissed her again and said I was going to bed.
It was only after I pulled myself between the cold, lonely sheets and lay back on my pillow that the most disturbing thought of the day came to me: what if Trey had been killed simply because he’d come home?
9
“Not like that,” Trey scolded me. “You always, always get on a horse from the left, not the right!” He yanked the reins out of my hand and patted the horse’s side.
“Well, excuuuse me,” I retorted. “I was on the left.”
“Not your left. The horse’s left.” Trey took me by the shoulder and led me around to the proper side.
“You didn’t say that,” I said indignantly.
Trey pushed back his black cowboy hat and shook his head in smiling resignation. He was fourteen, but he already looked sixteen, filling out and growing more quickly than I had. I still looked like a scrawny little kid next to him.
“I swear, Jordy, you are the most impatient person I’ve ever met. Now, let me tell you what to do, and wait until I’m done”-here he fixed me with a steely gaze-“so’s you don’t rush off and kill your fool self.”
I nodded. He went through the steps again: placing the reins over the horse’s neck and grasping them in his left hand, putting his left shoulder against the horse, facing its tail, and gauging his weight against the horse’s brown shoulder. Finally, he turned the stirrup from back to front before putting his foot in it (he stressed this step to me so I wouldn’t twist my leg wrong once I was up in the saddle). He demonstrated by swinging gracefully into Fafnir’s saddle, his whole body an exercise in control and power. The huge horse obeyed the boy without a tremor.
“See. Ain’t so hard. You’re gonna do fine,” Trey assured me, dismounting and giving Fafnir a pat.
I went for a second try. Fafnir regarded me with disdain; the smell of my fear was probably palpable to him. Trey’d said he’d teach me to ride if I helped him with history, and now I was thinking I’d gotten the raw end of the deal. The horse moved uneasily, as though unwilling to give me a chance at mastering him.
“Remember what I told you, okay? First take the reins over his neck and take hold of them real firm.”
I did.
“Now get your left shoulder against the horse and look down toward his tail.”
I did.
“Okay, now move back toward Fafnir’s shoulder.”
I did. That’s when the script went wrong and Fafnir suddenly moved and a sharp pain jabbed my butt. I hollered like a stuck pig and jumped forward, letting go the reins. I thought for sure the next thing I’d hear was Trey’s hysterical laughter at his horse biting me in the ass.
Instead Trey stood there, shaking his head and not laughing while I rubbed my jeans where Fafnir had nipped me. Fafnir regarded me without an ounce of pity and snorted, stepping away awkwardly.
“What’d I do wrong?” I muttered.
“Nothing. Faf’s being particular.” He took the gelding by the reins and walked him around the barn, murmuring to him and patting his shoulder. I watched, wondering what you said to an ornery horse.
When Trey led Fafnir back up to me, I fidgeted. “I don’t know, Trey. He doesn’t like me much.”
“He just ain’t used to you. He’s a good horse, and you’re gonna ride him today.” A faint smile touched his mouth. “Less you’re too sore to sit in the saddle now.”
“Shut up.” I took the reins again, faced the horse’s end, turned the stirrup, and swung up and into the saddle. Fafnir didn’t budge. I sat in silent amazement for a moment, forgetting what I was supposed to do next.
Trey smiled, and I let myself bask in the glow of his approval. “Now there, young master Jordan. Weren’t so hard, was it?”
“Once we got the ass-biting out of the way, no,” I observed.
“Yeah, I just hope ol’ Faf doesn’t the from that bite. He’s probably been poisoned if he broke your skin.”
“Very funny. If he does it again, I’m calling the glue factory.”
“He’s gonna be just fine. So’re you.” Trey rubbed Fafnir’s shoulder with real affection. I decided not to make any further glue-factory remarks.
Trey walked alongside me, showing me how to urge Fafnir into action. Once I was in the saddle, Fafnir proved willing enough and he didn’t give me much trouble. He was a good horse, like Trey promised.
I surveyed the springtime peacefulness of Hart Quarlander’s horse farm. The live oaks that dotted the banks of Grunewald Creek swayed with their laden branches in the brisk breeze, and the grass gleamed that peculiarly strong green that always follows heavy spring rains. The air smelled fresh and clear and ripe with horse. “The world looks a little different from up here.”
“Don’t it, though? How come you never mentioned wanting to ride before? I’d have taught you long ago.”
I coughed. “My daddy hates horses. He got thrown by one when he was little and broke his arm. He won’t let Sister or me near ’em.”
