Rebound (6 page)

S
aturday mornings surf sessions at County Line with Grey are the best part of my week. Usually, we surf the point break, but we’re not up for sharing today and it seems like everyone and his brother, or half-brother in my case, is here. So we take the beach break, which can be mushy and gutless on weaker days.

Today is not a weak day.

The rides are incredible, steep and fast, but carrying lots of power. Just how I like them. I pull myself onto my board after surfing yet another spectacular wave and check my diver’s watch. Almost eleven o’clock. Grey and I have been out here since eight. It’s no wonder my arms feel like lead weights.

Eighty yards out, Grey is just standing up. I watch him carve the face of a wave like he weighs nothing. I do fine out here, but these
are his kinds of waves, tailor-made for a fearless nineteen-year-old shredder on a shortboard.

Grey sees me and rides my way.

“Adam! Oh no, Adam!” he yells as he draws closer, waving his hands. “Look out! I can’t stop! Look
out
!”

He charges right at me. A few non-locals nearby don’t know what to think, especially an older man on a longboard. They’ve seen him surf and know he’s awesome. The best guy on the water. But Grey has a way of making you believe things even when they’re clearly not true.

With fewer than a dozen feet between us, he cuts back and rides over the break. I have to duck dive under the wave, so I only see the beginning of his backflip into the water.

We surf for different reasons, Grey and I.

I come to find peace. He comes to raise hell.

We surface close together, and he’s laughing. “Did you see that old guy’s face? He thought I was actually going to hit you! What a moron! Like I couldn’t surf circles around that old geezer!”

“Yeah, the old guy. Moron.”

Grey shakes his head. “Aw, c’mon, Adam. I wasn’t trying to give him a heart attack.”

“Yes, you were.”

“But it’s not like I could
actually
do it. And I can’t believe you’re ditching me tomorrow,” Grey says, in his classic way of changing subjects with zero warning. The kid barely graduated high school, but his mind’s always churning, going a hundred miles an hour in ten directions at a time. He’s brilliant, but most people can’t tell. They don’t see past the swearing and partying, or the tattoos. That’s how Grey likes it.

“Have to,” I tell him. “It’s a work thing.”

“Whatever. Responsibility sucks.” Grey rubs his eyes, bloodshot after three hours in saltwater. We have the same father, so we look
the same in a lot of ways, but he’s olive-skinned and darker than me, which makes the signature gray eyes common to all Blackwood men stand out more on him.

“We need to eat,” he says. “I’m so hungry, I’m about to throw up.”

“Ten more minutes.” I’m starving too, but I’m not ready to give this up yet. The water’s turning glassy and calm, so I stretch my arms out and hang them off the end of my board.

“I’ll be at the car,” Grey says and paddles into the next wave.

I watch him stand up and fly toward shore. Eye color isn’t the only Blackwood trait we have in common. When our minds are made up, they’re made up.

A wave of tiredness hits me, a mix of sleepiness and muscle-fatigue. This is the feeling I love. I know I’ll sleep well tonight. Hopefully a full night without nightmares. Without waking up at the crack of dawn with the sound of Chloe’s laughter in my ears.

I try not to think about the question Alison asked. About what happens after we die. I can’t think about it. Can’t let Chloe seep into more of my waking life.

Out of the blue, I remember telling Alison what this means to me. The surf. How she’d closed her eyes, imagining it. I wonder if she’s ever tried it.

I’ve caught myself thinking about her too much this week. Or watching her as she worked at the conference table in my office. Or sitting right next to her during meetings, when there were other seats available. I’ve been observing her. Creating my own Alison Quick profile.

She dresses to kill. Designer stuff, but she puts some flair into things, managing to look classic and modern at the same time. The only constant in her wardrobe seems to be her diamond “A” studded earrings, which works great. When we talk, I always have somewhere to look.

She hums to herself when she prepares her coffee—always with
cinnamon dusted on top. She talks to her horse trainer every morning and smiles the entire time. She’s good with names—she had everyone in the office down by the second day—but she isn’t exactly friendly with them. Even with her own team, she’s courteous and cordial. It surprises me. She admitted to me that she liked horses better than people at the Gallianos’ party, but all week I’ve seen glimpses of the girl who was spontaneous and sweet that night. And fun and sexy as hell.

I get the feeling she’s holding back. Catwoman is closer to the real Alison. But why does she hide that side of herself? I catch my train of thought and mentally punch myself. I’ve just spent ten minutes thinking about how much I wish she wasn’t on my mind. Shit.

As I paddle in, I think of the boating trip tomorrow, spending the day on Graham Quick’s boat to talk shop. That’s going to be special. Me, Alison—and Julia, who I had to invite after I told Alison I’d bring her along. I don’t know why I said it. Maybe the way Alison looked around the new complex, drinking it in, excited. I needed to put more distance between us. Julia had struck me as a solution.

I shake my head. Great idea, Blackwood. Throw a girl who has nothing to do with anything into an enclosed space, at sea, with the people you need to impress most. But I don’t have much choice. I said I was bringing a date, so I’m doing it.

When I get to my Range Rover, I see that Grey has already loaded his board on the rack, but he’s nowhere to be seen.

“Damn it.” I lift my board up next to his, snapping it in.

When the shit hit the fan back home a few months ago and he came to live with me, I promised myself I wouldn’t become his parent. I’m not starting now. I’m his brother, not his dad.

Grey’s a result of a “timeout” my parents took the year I was four. Dad hooked up with Grey’s mom, Lois, and nine months later Grey was born.

Dad never made any attempt to hide Grey when he and my mother got back together. For years, I had this vague awareness that I had a half-brother out there somewhere, but Grey didn’t become real to me until Lois flaked out on raising him when he was five. When he showed up at our house in Newport with a Spiderman backpack, my life changed. I’d been an only child, and suddenly I had
a brother
and I loved that. Him. Right away. But it wasn’t like that with my mom. She’d never planned on a son who wasn’t hers, and Grey’s never been easy.

Their relationship has been tense since the beginning, but something big happened between them in August that drove Grey out of the house. Mom hasn’t told me what it was, and neither has he. One day, Grey just showed up at my door and told me he was done with “your mother.” Done with all the Blackwoods, except me. I let him into my house. Gave him a home, and haven’t pushed him on it. I’m the last person who should judge a guy for being secretive, but I do wonder what happened.

I climb into the Rover and start the engine. In less than twenty seconds, Grey comes crashing into the passenger seat, out of breath like he just hauled ass. He has a beer in his hand and he smells like weed.

“Jesus, Grey. I left you for ten goddamn minutes.” So much for not being his parent.

“I got bored. Then I met some nice people.”

“Get rid of that.”

He jumps out of the car, finishes the beer and tosses it into a trash can. “Hey, did I tell you Julia texted me?” he says before he’s back in the car.

“No. Why did she text
you
?”

“She’s done with rich business owners. She wants to try out nineteen-year-olds with
huge
—”

“What did she say, Grey?”

“She didn’t want to bother you at the office or something, but she can’t go to your boat outing tomorrow. She’s got a callback for some role she really wants.”

Awesome. This is the only time Julia’s ever backed out on me—when I need her. “Were you ever going to say something?”

Grey shrugs. “When I remembered to, and I just did. Anyway, what’s the big deal? You’re not even into her.”

“I told Alison I was bringing a date, Grey.”

“Who’s Alison?”

I can’t believe this. I stare at the waves in the distance. I can’t show up dateless. I need a buffer between Alison and me.

“Adam.” Grey shoves my shoulder. “Who’s Alison?”

I put the car in reverse and back out of the parking lot. “Someone from work. From the people who’re going to invest.”

“Ah . . . Got it.” Grey laughs. “She must be a really hot investor.”

If he only knew.

M
y father and I pick our way across an expanse of parched scrub, following our ranch manager and groom, Joaquin, to a squat tin shed out in what feels like the middle of nowhere. Really, we’re a half hour north of Santa Clarita, in a town with a population in the double digits—just a long stretch of dirt paths leading off the highway, and ramshackle farms resting in dusty valleys.

It feels good to be in jeans and boots. To have survived the first week on the job with Adam. It didn’t take long to get used to having him nearby, to stop stealing glances at him, at the way his hair curled over the pressed collar of his shirt, at the way he pushed away from his desk whenever something required real consideration, like he needed space for his thoughts.

The work is easy, at least. His records are impeccable. As Nancy says, “You could eat off them.” And everything looks good. He
makes sound choices, building an enterprise slowly but being brave enough to leap at the right times.

Still, there’s something there, a caginess. A need to control the script. Just like at the restaurant. A couple of times I caught him looking out the window, and his expression looked so far away and sad. But when he caught my eye, the mask snapped into place, and he gave me a practiced smile that seemed worse than his sadness.

The sky is a brilliant blue with feathery clouds hanging near the horizon. The white sun bleaches the ground and angles off the shack’s roof to create a blinding corona. I reach for my sunglasses, trying to tamp down the prickles of anxiety and excitement building in me. I never know what we’re going to find, how damaged a horse will be, whether it will be filled with promise or too far gone to save.

“What do we know?” my father asks. For a second, I think he’s asking about Adam, but I’ve already done my debriefing.

“Not much,” I reply. “Missy from Horse Rescue just said the owner’s had an ad on Craigslist for a couple of weeks. Selling two horses, a thousand dollars each.”

My father frowns. “Too cheap.”

I nod. “Her guess is that the owner is old and that it might be a problem of neglect rather than abuse.”

“Let’s hope so,” Joaquin says. He lifts his baseball cap to wipe perspiration from his brow. “I don’t know if we can house another angry horse. Not with Persephone still needing so much work.”

“That one’s unreachable,” my father grumbles.

“I just don’t believe that,” I say. It’s true the little palomino quarter horse is a hard case—but she’s young, little more than a yearling. Already, she has the bearing of a champion and thoughtful amber eyes that follow my movements around the paddock. I’ll reach her. “She just needs time.”

“Her time’s costing
me
money,” my father says. “If we can’t get her to do what we want, she’ll have to go.”

“Wow, Dad, I’m glad you don’t have that philosophy about your daughters,” I tease, but he’s already straightening up and plastering on the wide, disarming smile he uses on people he doesn’t know.

I follow his gaze to a heavyset older man who leans against a rusted cistern a few yards away. He’s got a gleaming sunburn-pink scalp under thinning silver hair and wears coveralls and heavy work boots. “You Quick?”

“Depends on who’s chasing me.” My father’s standard line.

We introduce ourselves to the man—Mr. Hance, who gives me a dispassionate once-over and says, “Suede’s not much of a riding horse. No energy these days.”

“How old is he?” I ask.

“Five.”

That surprises me. A five-year-old horse is young, still. Energy shouldn’t be an issue, which makes me think Missy was right about neglect.

“Why don’t you show us,” I suggest.

He leads us into the outbuilding, which has a bowed aluminum roof and no floor but rocks and scrub. Inside, a couple of flimsy partitions separate the place into makeshift stalls. There’s barely any hay in here. No tack. And it’s dark and full of cobwebs.

But it’s the odor that gets to me most of all. The smell of animal waste and ozone, which means fear, mixed with the sickly sweet odor of infection. I’m scared of what we’ll find.

“That’s Suede,” Hance says, pointing into the shadows.

My father puts a hand on my shoulder. “Why don’t you let Joaquin in first?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” I say, though of course I’m not. This part, the anxiety before the seeing, always gets to me. Still, I need my father to stop protecting me. He has to know I can handle the difficult parts. That I’m up to the challenge.

I draw a breath and move toward the stall. Joaquin, my father, and Mr. Hance follow.

Inside, a horse stands in the corner—a beautiful Appaloosa with an ebony base and a gorgeous white and black spotted patch over his rear back and flanks. Right away, I see that his ribs show, and his tail is tucked in tight to his body. He’s in some pain.

I assess for a moment, trying to get a sense of the horse’s level of agitation. But I want to throw myself at him and put my arms around his neck, brush his matted black mane from his face, take away whatever’s hurting him.

“Suede won’t cause any trouble,” Hance says. “You can go on and have a look.”

“Looks sick to me,” my father says. I hear dismissal in his voice, and it digs at something inside me. I prepare myself for a battle, knowing I’ll have to give him logic, not emotions, to make my case. “Why are you selling it?”

Him,
I think.

“Just can’t keep up with it anymore,” Hance says. “Too much to feed. Can’t run him the way he needs to be run. And to be honest, he’s sickly.”

I approach the horse carefully, making sure my steps are quiet, relaxing my posture and trying to slow my heart rate. Suede’s shoulders bow, and his flesh jumps, but I don’t see any flies or anything else pestering him.

“Look at the hooves,” Joaquin says.

Gently, I lift the horse’s front leg. He’s shoed, but his hooves have grown over and are deeply cracked and pitted with hay and pebbles. I see what looks like the start of an abscess. That same sickly odor rises from the inflamed spot.

“Poor thing,” I say.

Joaquin nods, and we spend some time examining Suede for other defects. He’s got another, deeper abscess on his back right
hoof, and heat rises from his flesh, making me worry that he’s feverish. He’s all skin and bones; but his ears are pert, his eyes gentle, and he nuzzles my flat palm, breathing out a puff of dry warmth. He needs to be rescued. By me.

I beckon to my father, and he comes over, already shaking his head.

“Not this one, Ali,” he says softly. He frowns sympathetically, but the regret doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “His owner lost the other one. Thinks they might have some kind of anemia, too. It’s going to be too much to care for him. And you’re going to be too busy with Blackwood and our investment.”

“I’ve got Joaquin to help,” I protest. “And I can take care of him in the evenings and on weekends. Let me at least try. I can pay for it out of my own money.”

“Need I remind you that your money is
my
money?”

“No,” I say quietly. “But this is a young horse, Dad. He just needs a little care. You’ll make back your money. I’m sure of it.”

“That’s what you said about Persephone.”

“And I’m still sure of her, too.”

“Alison, you need to have your head in the game. I’m trusting your judgment where this Blackwood is concerned. And your judgment’s still on probation. We’re not talking about pocket change here.”

I’ve lost track of whether we’re talking about Suede or Adam, so I split the difference. “I promise you I can handle both.”

“If that’s the case,” he says, “you’ll have to bring me something meatier than the same obvious financials I can dig up for myself. I need to know about Blackwood, the man. Is he stable? What are his habits? I have Simon and Nancy to give me the dry basics. I need you to go deeper.”

I’m glad the building is dark, so my father can’t see me blush.

“What do you mean?”

“You need to suss out his character, not his ledger. Get personal.” He rests a hand on Suede’s flank, and the horse shudders. “Something scared those investors away, and it’s not the way he does business.”

“Adam said he turned them down because they wanted too much control.”

“Well, that’s his story. But there’s more there. I know it.” He leans against a post and scrapes mud out of his shoe with a stick. “We’ll be out on the boat all day on Sunday. That means cocktails. Getting loose.”

“Dad.”

He sighs. “I’m not asking you to drug and seduce him, for Christ’s sake. Just look for inroads. This isn’t throwing around money, Alison,” he says. “We have to use our heads. And protect the family interests above all. You get that, right?”

I nod. “I get it. And I’ll take care of it. I promise.”

“All right. We’ll give this a try.” He turns to Hance and says, “We’ll take him and all the tack and other equipment you have for him. I’m not paying for a sick horse, but I’ll give you eight hundred for the supplies, and you can throw Suede in for free.” He holds out his hand. “Deal?”

The old man gives my father a vigorous handshake. “Deal.”

But my father’s expression as he looks over Hance’s shoulder tells me that the deal’s really between the two of us, and he expects me to deliver.