Golden Filly Collection One (14 page)

“I’ll get you,” Trish hissed, her cheeks hot. Sweet sixteen—how dumb can you get. But inside she felt warm, glad that her friends cared. They’d even brought her a cupcake with a candle and several small presents wrapped and tied with crimson ribbons.

“You guys are awesome.” She ignored the tears brimming in her eyes. “Thanks.”

“How long till you race?” Doug asked.

“Seventeen days.” Trish swallowed at the thought. “We run two weeks from Saturday.”

“We’ll be there.” Everyone nodded.

“Just think, ‘Trish to win,’” one of the football players said. Someone else took up the chant. “Trish to win. Trish to win. Trish to win.” The words swelled around the room. Hands clapped. Feet stamped. Whistlers gave it all they had. The walls reverberated with the din.

Brad and Doug hoisted Trish up on the table so she could be seen by all.

Cheeks flaming, Trish waited for the cheers to die. “Thanks, guys.” Her voice rang true in spite of that familiar boulder. She grinned at another whistler. “You are totally awesome. Thanks.” She climbed down amid more cheers and whistles. She saw the teachers lined up against the wall. They hadn’t even tried to quiet the room down.

“Even the teachers were clapping.” She shook her head in amazement as she and Rhonda joined the line at the tray window.

“I know.” Rhonda dumped her milk carton in the trash. “We all want you to win. No one from Prairie has ever won a horserace before.”

The rest of the day raced by. “See you at seven,” Trish tossed over her shoulder as she got out of the car.

“What are you wearing?” Rhonda leaned forward on the seat.

“Denim skirt, I guess. And that rust Shaker sweater.”

“Okay. I’ll wear a skirt too.”

“And I’ll wear…”

“Shut up, Brad,” the two girls chorused and slapped their palms together in a high five.

Trish whistled for Caesar as she ran up the walk. What a birthday.

That night at the restaurant, Trish looked around at her family, light from the flickering hurricane lamps reflecting off their faces. She could even imagine her father the same as before in the dim light. Until he coughed.

The six of them had been a family for all the years the kids were growing up. Brad and David, she and Rhonda—the four musketeers.

Trish smelled the carnations in front of her. Both spicy and sweet—just like she felt at the moment.

When the waitress brought a birthday cake with sixteen candles, she wasn’t surprised. Everyone sang “Happy Birthday” again and she blew hard, her wish the same as her prayers.
Make my dad well.

“Oh my!” Her eyes widened as she opened the first of several boxes stacked in front of her. “Racing silks.” She lifted the crimson and gold long-sleeved shirt from the tissue paper and held it up. Light glinted off the shiny fabric. She held the shirt to her face, feeling the coolness. “Thanks,” she breathed as she laid it back in the box on top of the white pants. She grinned at her father and mother. “They’re beautiful.”

“Even the right color,” Rhonda said. “Open mine and Brad’s next.”

“A new helmet! Thanks, guys.” She smiled and put the hard hat back in its box.

“What do you think mine is?” David pointed at the long, slim package left in front of her.

“You sure didn’t try to disguise it.” Trish lifted a new whip out of the box. “Thanks, David.”

She looked around the table. “Now I’m all set. Think how great this stuff will look in the winner’s circle! Thank you, everybody.”

“Tee, I have something more for you,” her father said when they got home. He went into his bedroom and brought out a flat package. Trish looked at him with a question in her eyes. “Go ahead. Open it.”

It was a beautiful book with a Thoroughbred’s head on the cover. Inside the pages were blank. Trish had a puzzled expression.

“In all his visits with me at the hospital, Pastor Mort encouraged me to start a journal. Writing things down has helped me in the last few weeks, and I thought it might do the same for you.”

She flipped through the pages. The flyleaf read, “To my daughter, Trish, with all my love. Dad.”

“I wanted to say so much more—”

“The mare’s down and in hard labor.” David poked his head in the door. “Should be any time now.”

Father and daughter stared at each other a few seconds. Matching smiles creased their faces. Trish grabbed both their down vests and they headed out the door together.

“You want to change first?” Hal shrugged into his vest.

“Naw. Let’s get down there. Give me the keys and I’ll drive.” She paused. “Or would you rather walk?”

“I’d much rather walk.” Her father dug in his pocket. “But we’d better drive. Here are the keys.”

Hal leaned his head back on the seat even on the short stretch to the stables.

A glance at his face in the light from the dash made Trish aware how exhausted he was. Deep lines from nose to chin creased his face. Without a smile to hold the facial muscles up, his skin sagged. While he didn’t wheeze, his breathing was shallow and quick. Any exertion made him stop to catch his breath again.

That ever-present snake of fear slithered back to her mind and hissed,
He’s dying and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Dad…”

“Um-m-m”

“Do you think you better go back to the house?” She tossed the keys in her palm. “This could be a long wait.”

He opened his eyes and reached for the door handle. “Don’t worry. Let’s go see that mare.”

Don’t worry. Such an easy thing to say,
Trish thought as their footsteps sounded loud in the quiet barn.
And such a difficult thing to do.

Together they leaned over the stall door. David sat in the deep straw, stroking the mare’s head.

“Good thing she recovered so quickly from that virus. She had time to get her strength back,” Hal murmered.

“Will that affect the foal?” Trish asked.

“No, it was far enough along to be safe.”

As they watched, her body shuddered with the force of a contraction.

Two tiny hooves emerged, then withdrew.

“I brought you a stool.” David nodded toward the corner. “Trish, come take my place so I can pull if I need to.”

“She’s progressing well,” Hal said softly as another contraction forced the hooves out again. The three of them took their places, ready for an emergency, but relaxed, caught now in a rhythm as old as life.

The mare groaned at the next spasm and a nose joined the hooves.

Three more contractions and the foal slid out onto the straw, securely wrapped in its protective sack.

David took a cloth from his back pocket and cleaned the foal’s nostrils of mucus. The foal snorted and shook its head.

“It’s a filly.” He picked up some straw and began scrubbing the foal clean.

“Good girl,” Trish praised the mare, who lay still through the contraction bringing forth the afterbirth. Then the horse surged to her feet, gave a mighty shake, and began nuzzling her offspring. Trish got up slowly and carefully walked around the two to sink in the straw again at her father’s knee.

“What’ll we name her?” Trish asked.

David left off his scrubbing as the mare took over, cleaning the foal with her tongue. Instead, he tied off the umbilical cord and clipped it with scissors that had been waiting in the pail of disinfectant.

“You name her. She’s yours,” Hal said.

“Mine?”

“Well, she was born on your birthday. I’d say that old mare gave you a pretty special present.”

“Oh, Dad…” Trish couldn’t get any more words past her resident throat lump.

“I know what to call her.” David draped his arms around his knees as he joined them in the corner. “Miss Tee. You know, capital M-i-s-s capital T-e-e.”

“Perfect. Trish, meet your namesake.” Hal hugged Trish and kept his hand on her shoulder.

Trish watched each movement the foal made. The three of them laughed as Miss Tee propped each toothpick leg and tried to stand. Within an hour she was on her feet, wobbling to her mother’s udder and enjoying her first meal. Her tiny brush of a tail flicked back and forth.

The three left the box stall. While David went to get a bucket of warm water for the mare, Trish and Hal leaned on the door to watch the nursing foal.

“With her bloodlines, you should have a real winner there.” Hal rested his chin on his hands. “I can see your entry in the programs. Owner, jockey, Tricia Evanston.”

“Our entry. We’ll have so many by then, Runnin’ On Farm’ll be famous from Seattle to San Diego. Breeders from all over will be bringing their stock to be trained by Hal Evanston.”

Hal remained silent.

Trish trailed off. They had built this dream together, talked it into reality. Spitfire was their great hope this year but next…

“Funny how…” Hal’s voice was a low murmur, like he was talking to himself, “how God brings new life in as old life fades away.”

“God didn’t do it,” Trish snapped. “The mare did.”
And quit talking about life fading away,
she wanted to shout at him.

“I’ll drive you up.” Her flat tone cut each word clean.

Chapter

13

T
rish didn’t talk to her father for two days.

The morning after her birthday he wasn’t at the table.

“Your dad had a bad night,” Trish’s mother explained. “He’s finally sleeping.”

When Trish pleaded homework in the evening, she wasn’t lying.

She’d gotten a D on that day’s chemistry quiz. And midterms were coming up.

She spent every spare minute with the foal. Miss Tee accepted Trish as part of her family and already loved being rubbed behind her ears.

That afternoon Trish brought a soft brush into the box stall. With Miss Tee nearly in her back pocket, she began grooming the mare.

“She’s a beauty,” Rhonda whispered as she leaned against the stall half-door.

The foal scampered to the far side of her mother at the sound of a new voice. “Isn’t she.” Trish continued brushing with long, sure strokes.

The mare flicked her ears, shifted to relax the other hind leg, and went back to drowsing contentedly.

“Do you think she’d let me help you?”

“We can try. There’s another brush in the tack room. I’d like to take her out today.”

The mare turned to face the newcomer as Rhonda opened the stall door and slipped inside. Rhonda stood perfectly still but carried on a singsong conversation while the horse sniffed her proffered hand, the brush, up her arm, and finally blew in her face.

“You smell other horses,” Rhonda said. “And me—I’m no different, just haven’t ridden you for a long time.” When the mare relaxed again, Rhonda rubbed behind the horse’s ears and stroked the brush down her neck.

The little filly peeked out from behind her mother’s haunches. She twitched her pricked ears to free them from the veil of her mother’s long, black tail draped over her face.

Trish chuckled. “What a sweetie.”

The two girls chatted quietly, the mare dozed, and the filly became a little bolder toward the strange person who had entered her world.

“You look better now,” Rhonda said as they dropped their brushes in a bucket.

“How’d I look before?” Trish asked.

“Bad. What’s happened?”

“Well,” Trish chewed on the inside of her lower lip, “it seems every time things start to get better, my dad talks about dying or…” The tears that seemed to stay right behind her eyelids gathered again. “Or he…umm—he’s too sick to come to the barn.” Straw rustled as the mare moved to the water bucket. The slurp and gurgle of her drinking seemed loud in the otherwise silent barn.

“Rhonda, sometimes I don’t even want to talk to him. I don’t want to see him…see how sick he really is. I
hate
all this.” Trish rubbed her fist across her eyes. “And I shouldn’t be angry at
him
. Not my dad.” She leaned into the mare’s neck and let the tears flow.

Rhonda patted Trish’s shoulder, her own tears running down her cheeks. “It’s not fair,” she whispered. “You and your dad, you’ve always been so special to each other. But, Trish, you can’t give up. You know we’ve all been praying. God can work miracles. You can’t give up.”

“I haven’t.” Trish sniffed the tears away. “At least not all the time. I pray and keep saying God knows what He’s doing and I feel better. Then something happens that knocks me right down again. I feel like a yo-yo. Up and down. Up and down.” She felt a tiny soft nose brush her hand. Miss Tee stretched her neck to sniff again.