1 Chapter 1

“It’s not too much to ask, you know.” Sandra sighed, the sound wispy through the phone. Bob imagined her lighting a cigarette, her bitten nails looking raw. “You’ll be down here in Daytona anyway. The stable is like thirty minutes from there, straight down I-95.”

Bob Andolini stood at his workbench, phone scrunched against his shoulder as he hung up tools on his new pegboard. His two-car garage held a 1998 Ford F-150, dinged up, with a mismatched topper and an add-on hitch for towing his Harley, when it was just too frigging cold to ride. It was the first of March—Bike Week was coming up. Bob was fastening on his new saddlebags, turquoise leather to pop against the custom pumpkin paint job he’d gotten last winter. The closed-in garage smelled of new leather and oil and Bob’s Marlboros. Cindy didn’t like him smoking in the house.

“Bob?”

“Yeah, I’m still here.”

“Will you come? It’s her last show as a novice. Next season she’ll move up to the junior division. Plus, we’re selling Rory. This is her last weekend with him and she’s a little sad.”

“You’re selling the pony?”

“Yes. We need to buy her a horse, Bob. She can’t keep riding a thirteen-hand pony in junior hunter classes.”

“Wasn’t she riding what’s-her-name’s horse, the brown one? Can’t she do that?”

“They moved to Texas last summer. And Megan’s trainer doesn’t have any other school horses at the barn who are good enough to compete at this level.”

He gazed at his tidy pegboard and sighed. “Okay. I’ll try,” Bob said.

“What does that mean? That you’ll ‘try’ to find the right road? That you’ll ‘try’ to drive past your damn biker bars and find the stable?”

“Oh, Sandra, take a cool pill, wouldja? Don’t get worked up.”

“Don’t you tell me to cool it because you won’t see your daughter. You didn’t even come down for Thanksgiving and you never bothered to call on Christmas!”

“I called her. I called her that week.”

“God, you are such a shit.”

“Thanks so much. That means a lot coming from you.”

That shut her up. He heard her exhaling into the phone. Christ, he just wanted a quiet Sunday afternoon tooling around on the bike and enjoying a rare warm day. Why couldn’t she give him a break?

After their divorce three years before, Bob had retreated to his hometown in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sandra and Megan stayed in Ocala, which was fine with Bob. Megan was easier to deal with as she got older, but then she got into the whole horse thing and the money! Geezus, those little pants and helmets and pads and bridles and boots. And the special reins because of Megan’s handicap; she’d been born with just the stub of a right arm, and they paid a custom saddler to create a strap system that let Megan keep some control of her right rein. Rory, the pony they’d bought when Megan was eight, had cost two thousand bucks because he was “bombproof.” That was back when the days were good and the nights tolerable.

Sandra returned to her job at Home Depot. Bob grabbed the offered overtime every other weekend at the Ford dealership; certified mechanics made good money. He actually preferred going to the shop. The horses made him nervous: those big eyes and long teeth and they were just so freaking huge some of them. A friend of Megan’s rode over one afternoon—on a Beluga or Belgium or something—and Bob couldn’t believe the horse’s back was six feet off the ground, taller than his head. And its feet! Like frigging manhole covers. The pony, Rory, was small enough that Bob could push him around; more than once he’d whacked the animal on the nose or the butt to control him.

Living in North Carolina, Bob hadn’t needed to smack a pony and he sure as hell didn’t miss the animal.

“Look, the horse we want to buy will be at this show. Come see him with us and let’s work something out.”

“How much?”

“He’s ten thousand dollars.”

“Ten thousand! Are you nuts? She could buy a car for that price. Geezus!”

“She doesn’t need a car; she needs a horse, a special horse. Her schoolwork is better now because she knows she can’t go to the barn unless her grades are up like we talked about. And it’s so good for her. She loves Brenda, her trainer. You should see her when she rides, she’s beautiful, she’s focused. I want to keep her at the barn.”

“I’ll think about it. Ten grand is a lot of money.”

“Do what you want, Bob. You always do.” The click of the phone.