Darlene Scalera - Born Of The Bluegrass

He set the glass on the waitress’s tray, turned back to Dani. “I wasn’t going to see this child treated like the dung they tiptoe past on their way to the box seats.”

She wanted to protest Reid wouldn’t be like that, but she had no right. If she’d been sure, she would have gone to him when she first found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t. An elegant illusion named Danielle DeVries had bewitched Reid that night. The reality was a stable groom named Dani Tate. Once he had learned of her deception, why would he have had anything to do with her?

“The tests from the grandmother’s blood proved the boy was family, and that’s all they wanted to know. Now he’ll grow up a Hamilton. As he should.” Dani knew if her father had a drink, he would’ve raised it in a toast.

“Plus the price on the offspring of a dead son would be much higher, wouldn’t it?”

She’d surprised him, catching him before he could school his expression. She loved her father but she knew his flaws. She felt a whirling in her empty stomach and was afraid she was going to be sick.

He masked his surprise, lit a fresh cigarette, looked to see if the waitress was coming. “I was in trouble. You know that.”

Yes, she’d known that. They’d gone south the next day. Kentucky had always been home, but her father and she worked the East Coast circuit, their location usually dependent on how many miles her father needed between himself and the bookies he owed. Eventually things would cool off or her father would hit enough daily doubles to go home to Kentucky. They had been on their way to Florida when Dani had heard about the accident at Hamilton Hills. She had been working at Hialeah Park when she’d learned she was pregnant. After the baby was born, she’d run, working the circuit west to Santa Anita Park, then up north to Portland Meadows, never staying too long in any one spot. Eventually she’d circled back to the East, settling on Fox Run Farm in upstate New York. She’d never gone back to the Bluegrass.

“I had the lawyer who handled the arrangements only ask for what I needed. Not a penny extra.” Her father’s drink arrived. The drone of blood in Dani’s head became louder. She watched him take a long sip. He leaned back, laced his fingers together like a reasonable man. “What’s fair is fair.”

“You sold your own grandson.” She spoke from the pain and sorrow that always ran through her sparse veins.

His hand slapped the table. “It wasn’t like that.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “You couldn’t give the boy the life he deserved. I did.”

There was the rush of blood in her head, the sour taste in her mouth, and the terrible truth. She stood up too fast, her chair scraping the faded floor.

“Where are you going?”

She looked blindly at her father, shook her head. She didn’t know. She was working on instinct now.

“Dani, sit down. Listen to me.” His calm tone only made the confusion inside her worse. She gripped the chair. Her father’s eyes were bright from whiskey but his speech was still clear, his stare steady. “You wanted your child to have the best, and he does. He’s safe and he’s loved.”

“He’s healthy, too. And handsome.” She heard her own anguish. She looked away, her gaze darting about the dim room, unable to look directly at anything. The deep, frantic mix of emotions inside her threatened. She closed her eyes, afraid to make any movement at all. When she opened them, she saw the brightness in her father’s eyes had become moist, brilliant.

“You need a drink, Dani.”

“I don’t need a drink.”

“Something to eat.” She heard the caring.

She shook her head.

“You’re tired. Go get a good night’s rest.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink.” She hung on to the edge of the chair, her knees buckling, her strength gone. Pain and longing were the only life left inside her.

“I want my baby.”

SHE WENT HOME. Not to the small anonymous room in town she’d rented with her percent of recent winnings, but to the only home she’d ever known. The night guard waved her through without a glance at the employee tag she wore around her neck. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her here after hours.

She parked in the almost empty lot and cut across the gravel and grass to the barns. The cinder block dormitories were dark. The 4:00 a.m. feeding always came too fast.

The shedrow was sleeping. Lights were minimal—the silent flare of a solitary cigarette; subtle security lights turned the night from black to gray; the wink of fireflies.

She walked on, the turf yielding, the gravel, graveyard gray. All paths led to the track. All ended at the winner’s circle. She breathed in the incense of unspoken dreams, the sweat of loss, the rare sweet sachet of success.

Home.

Where the stakes were high. And second chances few.

One stumble and it could be over. She’d seen it happen as recently as last Thursday in the fourth. Maybe it was the sloppy track? Maybe it was a small hole, a bad step? Who knows? One minute a thousand-pound machine is barreling toward glory; the next, a winch is pulling its carcass across the finish line.

She followed the bend of the training track, seeing horses and riders where there were none.

A son. Her son. She grabbed the track’s outside rail and held fast. In a world where second chances were rare, she knew she’d been given a gift.

She walked the track’s perimeter, circling with the phantoms of those who’d tried and won and those who’d tried and lost. It had been a night much blacker than this when her knees had pulled up and her body had clenched and pain at first not much more than a woman’s weeping had become a storm. Her legs had split, and she had stopped breathing, stopped thinking, stopped feeling until there was a rush of warmth and a wail of life to match her own. The night had ended then. The darkness had lifted and, in a haze, she’d seen a blood-streaked bundle, white and pink and so pretty, she’d held out her hands. They’d laid him naked on her breast. It wasn’t enough. She’d asked for a little more time. They’d brought him to her washed and wrapped in blankets. She’d inspected every inch of that tiny body, memorizing, promising not to forget, trying to explain. She fell asleep, cradling him in her arms. He’d been gone when she awoke. She’d never touched her baby again.

Until today.

Her hands held each other now as she walked with the night’s ghosts. She had no rights, she knew that. She had relinquished all claims. She would never demand anything—not family or love or forgiveness. She would ask for nothing from the child or his father. But would it be so wrong to be near, to watch the child grow from a toddler to a boy to a man? Invisible, silent, watching, protecting, she would be no more than the specters surrounding her now. Surely it wasn’t asking too much?

Her father was right. The child had a home, a family, a name. She would do nothing to jeopardize that. She would ask for nothing, expect nothing. She had no rights.

But she’d given her son up once. She wouldn’t give him up again.

NOW WAS the one moment Reid knew peace—when the morning was dawn, soft and moist and warm as the steam rising from the barrels of water heating in the backstretch. When all the world was vague and muffled—the hooves on the turf, the talk between the trainers huddled at the rail, watching their charges. It wouldn’t last long. The mist would break, and the horses, the people would no longer be illusions in the lavender August light. Everything would become real once more, and Reid would remember that what was one minute could be gone the next. A turn of the head, a chance look and whole lives could change. But, for now, moving though the morning haze, he might have been dreaming.