Carolyn McSparren - If Wishes Were Horses

It wasn’t that she didn’t like kids. She rode against kids every day in the hunter ring. But ValleyCrest had always catered to adult riders.

As Uncle Frank’s exercise girl from the time she was old enough to sit a horse, Liz had been too busy after school to make friends her own age. She’d moved into the adult world when she was barely into her teens. She’d had crushes on the few teenaged boys who rode, but she’d been tall and so bony, and they’d always gravitated towards the cute little debutantes.

So here she was at thirty-seven with nobody in her life except her aunt and the animals, and that was the way it was likely to remain. At least it was peaceful. The dogs and cats never yelled at her.

She watched her aunt bending over the feed sacks, Vic’s youthful body lithe and strong. Liz often caught the longing in her aunt’s eyes when her niece swung into the saddle. Please God, Liz prayed. Let me never lose my nerve the way she did, never cringe at the thought of cantering down on a big fence. She knew it could happen to anyone, even someone as talented and fearless as Aunt Vic had been.

Vic was a great manager, a great teacher, but Liz knew how deeply it must hurt never to sit in a saddle.

All those years that Uncle Frank had tried to bully and cajole her out of her fear, Vic never fought back. Liz finally told him if he said one more word on that subject, she’d leave. Since by that time Frank Jamerson weighed over three hundred pounds, and had no one but Liz to ride his horses, he’d tried hard to watch his mouth from that moment on.

He never knew that after their fight Liz had walked out of the room and thrown up. Only Aunt Vic and Albert knew that angry words wounded Liz much more deeply than broken bones and concussions.

Now Liz was faced with Mike Whitten and his whiny kid, and probably a bunch of other equally bratty kids with bullying mothers and fathers.

She walked up the front steps to her cottage, opened the door to the screen porch, made her way across into the cluttered living room and felt her sweat freeze in the air-conditioning as suddenly as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her.

“What a jerk!” A raucous voice spoke from the shadowy corner.

“Am not.” Liz said.

Jacko, her small gray parrot, hung upside down from the perch in his large wicker cage and regarded her over his shoulder with beady eyes.

“What a jerk?” he wheedled.

Liz laughed. “I wish you’d learn to say something else, anything else. How about ‘I want my dinner.’” She reached for the parrot seed on the window ledge behind the African violets.

“What a jerk!” The parrot bounced up and down in ecstasy.

“Keep that up and I’ll bake you into parrot potpie.”

“What a jerk.” The parrot sighed and stuck his beak into the seeds.

“You’re probably right.” Liz sank into the shabby sofa. It definitely needed new springs and new upholstery. She closed her eyes. Unbidden, Mike Whitten’s face loomed up behind her eyelids. She blinked. “Oh, hell,” she said. “That’s just what I need.” She pointed to the parrot. “And you, not one word. You got that?”

“What a jerk,” the parrot replied. This time he sounded as though he meant it.

CHAPTER THREE

THE VAN FROM Edenvale School arrived fifteen minutes late on a cloudless Monday morning. By nine-fifteen the temperature already hovered around eighty-five, but a steady breeze kept the humidity down.

Liz had been up doing her chores since six. When she heard the van, she turned off the water hose and set it down, walked to the front door of the stable and watched as three girls and two boys tumbled out of the van.

No Pat Whitten. Liz gave a sigh that was half relief, half disappointment. She wouldn’t be burdened with the kid, but she also wouldn’t see Mike Whitten. Why on earth she should want to was beyond her. The man was one step short of an ogre. That little Friday trip to his office to present him the syllabus for the camp had more than proved that.

After making such a big deal about the blasted syllabus, Whitten kept them waiting fifteen minutes, then barely glanced at the sheaf of papers Vic handed him. He hadn’t been rude exactly. Just cool. No, dammit. Downright cold. She’d been certain he’d turn them down.

But he hadn’t. He’d called late Friday afternoon to accept their terms without a quibble. Vic had set down the phone carefully, then turned a relieved face to Liz. “At least we can pay the feed bill,” she said.

“Yeah, but can we stand what we have to do to get the money?” Liz answered.

Today would definitely answer that question. Liz lounged against the open door to the stable. The kids formed a ragged line in front of her and eyed her warily. Only then did she introduce herself.

A moment later Aunt Vic and Albert came out of the stable. Liz introduced them to the children and made her first stab at learning the campers’ names.

They stared at Albert’s bulk with awe. The broad grin on his dark face made him look like a ravening wolf. Liz knew he was the gentlest, kindest man alive, but he’d try not to let the kids see that. Not right off, at any rate. He always said he liked to get the good out of folks while they were still scared of him. Unfortunately for Albert, most people caught on very quickly that he was about as scary as an oversize stuffed bear.

“Okay, let’s get started,” Liz said. “Lunch boxes in the fridge. I’ll show you around and give you the ground rules first. Then we can start to sort out who gets which horse.”

As she turned away, Mike Whitten’s Volvo pulled into the driveway. Oh, damn and blast, Liz thought. That’s all I need.

Pat opened the car door and stepped out. The other kids wore ratty jeans and T-shirts. She wore new jodhpurs and shiny brown paddock boots. She carried an equally new black velvet hard hat under her arm.

Two steps from the car Pat clearly realized what the other kids had on, and stopped dead. Liz felt sorry for her. She remembered how important it had been at that age not to be different, not to stand out from her peers.

One of the boys snickered. Pat kept her eyes straight front, but her face flamed.

“Morning, Pat,” Liz said casually. “You’re late.”

Mike Whitten climbed out of the car and answered for his daughter. “I had to take a transatlantic call.” No apology, merely a statement of priorities.

“It might be easier for Pat to be on time if she rode in the van with the others,” Liz said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.

“Unnecessary,” he snapped. “In future we won’t be late.”

“Whatever. Come on, kiddo, join the group. We’re about to take the nickel tour.” She turned to the rest of the group. “Are you with me?”

“When do we get to ride?” the same boy who had snickered at Pat asked. He was a compact towhead who looked younger than the girls.

“You start out on the lunge line.”

“What’s that?” a redheaded girl asked.

“That’s when somebody holds one end of a long rope in the middle of a circle and the horse goes around the outside of the circle attached to the other end of the rope with you on top of it,” a cheerful brunette girl answered. “On top of the horse, that is, not the rope.” She giggled.

“That’s right, uh...?”

“Janey.” The girl smiled smugly. “I know how to ride already. I have a pony at my gram’s in Missouri.”

“Fine. Then you can go first and show the others how it’s done.”

“Oh, no,” Janey groaned. “Not first.”

“First. Okay. Aunt Vic will show you around.”

“What do we call her?” Janey asked. “We can’t call her Aunt Vic.”

“Why not?” Vic said. “Everybody else does. You’ll get used to it.” As she started in the door, she turned to Pat, opened her arm in a gesture of inclusion and smiled at her, “Well, come on, child. Don’t just stand there.”