Miracle Beach (32 page)

She could see the lights of Sophie’s house glowing through the trees. Not surprising, the old bat was already awake. Macy was sure that no matter what time she woke up, Mama Sophie would have beaten her to it. Hell, half the time Macy couldn’t be sure the woman slept at all.

On a whim, Macy turned down Mama Sophie’s driveway. She parked in front of the house and jumped out, letting her truck idle. She had stopped knocking on this door long before. Macy turned the knob and walked right in.

Sophie was pouring steaming water from a kettle into a thermos. She already had her yellow rubber bib overalls on. She didn’t look up. “What in tarnation are you doing here before six a.m.?” she asked Macy.

“Going to a horse show,” Macy said.

Sophie looked at Macy’s arm in a sling and then looked out her kitchen window at Macy’s truck. “Without a trailer? You tying’em to the bumper to save money these days, or what?”

Macy chuckled. “No, you crazy coot. I’m going down to Parksville, just to watch for a bit. There’s a little show going on there today.”

“Can’t help but scratch that itch, can you?” Sophie said.

Macy shrugged.

Sophie looked at Macy with narrowed eyes, probably trying to gauge whether Macy was all right.
Good luck
, thought Macy, who could hardly tell herself whether she was coming or going these days. She seemed to float through days at a time on autopilot, or to do things, only to have them register after the fact.

“I’ll get there early enough to see the ponies,” Macy said.

“Glory would like that.” Sophie raised an eyebrow at Macy. She was about to object but Sophie didn’t give her a chance. “I’ll go ask her what she thinks,” Sophie said.

Macy told herself that the girl was probably sleeping, or wouldn’t want to head out into the chilly morning so early. But within minutes, Glory appeared in the kitchen, fully dressed and nearly vibrating with energy. She had gone from fast asleep to a hundred miles per hour faster than Macy could usually brush her teeth, though these days even that thoughtless routine was taking her a good long time.

“Where are we going again? Are you showing your horse? Are you sure you want me to come? Are we going to be gone all day? Just me and you?” The girl spewed questions like a busted water main, not allowing any opportunity for Macy to answer.

Finally, she looked up at Macy, who thought right about then that there wasn’t enough coffee between them and Parksville—or maybe on the entire island—for her to be ready for that particular morning. The girl’s jeans hung from her like off a mannequin, and the sleeves of her shirt nearly covered her tiny hands.

“You have a shirt on under there?” Macy asked her. “It might get hot this afternoon.”

“Nope,” Glory said, “but I’m always cold. Aren’t I, Mama Sophie?”

Macy cast a sideways glance at Sophie, who nodded at her. “That’s because there’s nothin’ to her. Skin and bones. She needs a few pounds on her is all.”

Macy waited, thinking that Sophie would grab the girl a short-sleeved shirt. Instead, Sophie tossed Glory her dirty pink jacket. Macy shrugged. “Whatever,” she said. “It’s your funeral.”

She started out the door, only to find Glory stalled behind her. The girl was looking at Macy as though she had suggested roast puppy for dinner.

“What?” Macy said.

“Should you be saying stuff like that?” Glory asked. “You know? Joking about funerals?”

Macy rolled her eyes. “Come on. We’re going to be late.” Glory didn’t budge. “Aren’t you the one who’s a big fan of the term ‘dirt nap’?” Macy asked.

She must have scored a point, because Glory fell in behind her.

Sophie called for them to have fun, though Macy wasn’t quite certain whether “fun” was really the right word for what Sophie had set in motion.

 

Macy sat on the dusty bleachers of Havenhill Farms watching the short stirrup class. It was a study in miniature—the itty-bitty girls atop their low-to-the-ground ponies, navigating the course of one-and-a-half-foot jumps. A scale model of a normal class.

From her perch, Macy could see the practice ring where girls and a couple of boys of all ages and sizes warmed up their mounts. She had told Nash once that any single guy with two brain cells to rub together should make a practice of scoping out eligible dates at horse shows. For whatever reason, girls tended to outnumber boys by a ratio of roughly ten to one. Nash had agreed that it was, most likely, one of the best-kept secrets from teenage boys everywhere.

A little blur of blond ringlets, toothpick legs, and a pink satin jacket paced outside of the practice area. She had grown bored sitting next to Macy and watching the classes, where only one horse navigated the course at a time, and pointed to the practice ring, saying, “Look! There are six whole horses doing stuff in there. Can’t we go and watch them?”

“But they’re just practicing, Glory,” Macy told her. “This is the real deal, in here.” She nodded toward the arena, where a girl who couldn’t have been older than six steered a little chestnut pony around like she’d been riding her whole life. Glory told her the “real deal” was boring and she was going for a walk.

Macy had watched her ambling away. She was so tiny. So little. Macy marveled that she had made it from California to this island off the coast of Canada completely on her own. That she had managed to find them all. That the girl existed at all.

You could do this, you know
, said a voice in her head. Nash’s voice.

At the moment, Glory had moved to the opposite side of the practice ring and was going up to people standing by their horses, presumably asking if she could pet them.

Since she had found the letters, Macy had tested herself, trying to forget that Glory was some other woman’s child. She tried thinking of her only as Nash’s. And sometimes it wasn’t so hard. The nose, the freckles, the smile. Those things did the reminding for her. Besides, Glory wasn’t hers. She didn’t have her mother’s blood or her grandmother’s. The girl had been spared all that. And so maybe Nash—Nash’s voice in her head—was right. Maybe she
could
.

The little girl on the chestnut pony cleared the final jump and the girl’s parents stood to clap. This indicated to the pony, correctly, that it was finished, and it promptly slammed on its brakes. The little girl tumbled onto its neck, then righted herself and nodded at the judge as though nothing had happened. Macy giggled—the girl had such spunk, and at such a young age.

Macy could hear a ruckus behind her, and turned around just in time to see a fully saddled but riderless horse break out of the practice ring at a full gallop and head straight toward Glory.

“Glory, watch out!” Macy yelled, but she didn’t know whether Glory could hear her. And once she had jumped down from the bleachers, Macy could see only the top of the girl’s head, her tangled ringlets over the ridge separating the practice and show pens. And then she heard a crack as the horse covered the ground where she had last seen Glory.

Oh no oh no oh no oh no.
In only seconds, Macy prepared herself for the worst: Glory balled up on the ground, having been run over by four metal-clad hooves attached to a thousand pounds of frantic muscle. Glory bent over from having caught a stray kick to the ribs or, worse yet, the head. Glory with an arm hanging limp at her side, or not attached at all, having been pulled straight out of the socket from trying to reach out and grab the reins of a horse moving at upward of thirty miles an hour.

What she hadn’t prepared herself for as she crested the ridge was seeing Glory bounding up the hill that bordered the practice arena after the galloping horse.

“Glo-ry!” Macy called to her.

Macy scrambled up the slope. A few people had made it up from the practice ring and were right behind her in pursuit of the runaway horse, but most were still congregated around the too-still body of the horse’s rider, lying prone at the far end of the arena.

“Glory! Glo-ry,” Macy called as she ran. She had never been an exerciser and had a brief-but-intense stint as a smoker, and was now paying for both. Her breath came in heaving gasps. “Shit,” she muttered. “Shit, shit, shit!” She knew all too well how fickle horses could be, and that the one galloping away from Glory could just as easily spook, change directions, and head back toward her. Loose and scared horses in motion tended not only to stay in motion, but tended also to become increasingly frantic. And Glory didn’t have a goddamn clue what she was doing.

In the far-off distance, over the heavy wheeze of her breath, Macy could hear faint sirens making their way down the highway. Good thing, too, given what Macy expected to find at the top of the hill.

What Macy actually found stopped her short.

There stood Glory, with a horse several times her size and the fur of its neck lathered white with sweat, holding the reins and patting its shoulder. Glory, who, as far as Macy knew, grew up, if not smack-dab in LA, then pretty close to it for her whole eight-year life. The closest that little girl had probably ever been to a horse was the kind you dropped a quarter in outside of the grocery store, if those were even still around.

A woman who seemed to know the horse—or at least knew its name: Pim—took the reins from Glory, thanking her, and Macy took the opportunity to grab Glory herself, moving her away from the horse, which was now dancing as a throng of people rushed toward it.

“That was a very brave thing you did,” another woman said to Glory, tousling her hair.

“Thank you!” Glory said.

Macy bent down and slung her arm around Glory’s shoulders, pulling the girl to her. “You could’ve been really hurt,” Macy said. She held Glory close, and Glory tried to wiggle away from her.

“But I didn’t!” Glory beamed, clearly proud of herself.

Macy bent down onto her heels, to Glory’s level. “How in the world did you catch him? That horse was going like a bat outta hell, Glory. Weren’t you scared?”

A smile crept across her face again. She shook her head. “I gave him grass.”

“You did
what
?”

“Like this,” she said. She bent down and grabbed two fistfuls of the long grass, pulling it out at the roots, then held it far in front of her. “He stopped and came right over. He seems like a real nice horse.”

Macy shook her head. Glory had either never been told she couldn’t do something, or she had been and it simply hadn’t sunk in. Take a bus across three states and into another country? Sure! Worm her way into a family she didn’t know and who didn’t know her? No problem! Tame a runaway horse? Might as well give that a whirl, too.

“How did you know to do that?”

Glory shrugged. “Dunno. I think I saw it in a movie once. I guess it works in real life, too. Do you think I was brave?”

Right as Macy was about to answer, she heard a woman behind her say, “Whose kid is that anyway?” The question was not kind or curiously inquisitive. It was angry and hunting for a target.

Macy turned and drew Glory to her. The woman asking was a backyard trainer named Patricia Knettles, and as long as Macy had known her, she hadn’t ever not been a pain in the ass. You could count on Patty Knettles to be the first one to stick her nose where it didn’t belong, and the last one ever to offer help.

“She’s mine,” Macy said.

Patty Knettles looked Glory up and down, and then looked at Macy. Her face twisted into a look that could only be interpreted as, “Yeah, right.”

“Maybe you’d like to keep an eye on her, then, instead of letting her wander around here and almost get herself killed,” Patty said.

Macy felt her face flush hot. She wanted to lob a barb back at Patty, but the only words she could conjure were:
You’re right—this was probably a mistake.
So Macy grabbed Glory’s arm and marched away. And as she walked, she heard bits and pieces of the exchange between the gaggle of women who had gathered: “Irresponsible,” “She was always a little flighty,” “Kids can’t be expected to babysit themselves.”

Macy couldn’t be sure if it was one of the women who had said that, her mother-in-law’s voice in her head, or Macy herself.

 

Glory jogged to keep up with Macy.

“Do you know anyone here who’s going to ride soon?” the girl asked. “There are some really cool horses. I met one named Midnight—because he’s black—and Apollo, and Cadbury, and a short one that was my size named Peanut Butter because that’s what color he was, too. Oh, and Pim. I guess I met Pim, too, but I didn’t know his name when I caught him. He’s a nice horse, isn’t he? He sure seems like it.”

Oh, dear God
, Macy thought. There was, without a doubt, some deity sitting on a mountaintop or cloud looking down at her and laughing its ass off right now. Macy shot a middle finger toward the sky.

“What’d ya do that for? Were you flipping
me
off? Because that’s not a nice thing to—”

“For crying out loud, Glory. I was not flipping you off. I’m just not having—” Macy was going to say that she wasn’t having the best day—or week, or life, for that matter—at the moment. But she realized just in time that that would have elicited another
why
from Glory, and that answer would have elicited a
why
as well, and on and on, until Macy had talked herself right to death at the girl’s urging. So instead, she said, “Can we just both be quiet for a bit?”

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” Macy said. “I just don’t feel like talking right now.”

“That’s fine. My mom says that a lot, too. Only she says would I just shut up already or asks if I ever shut up. So then I usually leave and go down the street to find my friend Jilly, and we’ll go—”

“Glory?”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, okay. Sorry.”

Glory was walking with her right arm raised straight up in the air. A few people were staring at her. At them.
Someone just kill me now
, Macy thought.