Dartmoor Futures: Violet Part 3

 Uncle Ten is my fave.

You can read Part One and Part Two of this little future-set Dartmoor story in previous posts. 

It was alarmingly easy to get spoiled for life’s normal drudgeries when your honorary uncle was filthy stinking rich. The club leaned on Ian when necessary, but tended to push back against some of his more lavish offers of assistance. Vi was glad Walsh’s stubbornness had given ground in this instance; even gladder that a miserable twelve-hour car ride turned into a quick, cushy flight back on the jet, laid out on a plush leather seat with a movie playing half-watched in the background.

Eden met them at the airport with the Rover and, to no one’s surprise, Abbie spent the whole ride out to Briar Hall talking nonstop, from an in-depth analysis of all the ladies’ race day hats to her five-star review of the chocolate-frosted yellow cake at the hospital cafeteria. She didn’t mention the race itself, or Rally, or the fall, because despite being a hyperactive demon, she wasn’t, in fact, as stupid as Tenny liked to say.

At the house, she tried valiantly to walk all the way from the car up to her old bedroom on the second floor, but her busted arm made it impossible to use crutches, and so Dad carried her. She had tears of frustration in her eyes by the time he set her down on the bed, and he wisely made no mention of them.

That first night was…hard. Luna had foaled, and Emmie shared photos of the new colt – a chestnut with a star and snip like his mother – from her phone. Dinner was fried chicken and roasted veggies and sparkling water, because her meds came with an alcohol warning. Becca and Shane came over, and Abbie wanted to stay to eat with them, so that meant Eden did, too, and Fox showed up with a cake sent from Maggie. Tenny and Reese showed up late, well after ten, tired and rumpled from traveling.

Vi, asleep on the sofa thanks to her latest round of pain meds, woke as she was being lowered into her bed, this time by Tenny.

She floundered and jerked in his hold, disoriented.

“Easy,” he said, in the same voice he used on the horses, and it was instantly soothing.

The lamp clicked on, and there he stood, in his battered jeans, hair falling across his forehead; face creased with worry and eyes sharp as ever as they scanned her. “You okay?” he asked, and it wasn’t the way her parents or anyone else had asked. It was no bollocks, now, I can tell if you’re lying.

Exhausted, hurting, dizzy and fuzzy and so utterly not herself, her meager composure collapsed and she clapped her hands over her face before the sudden tears could fill her eyes and spill over.

At least, that was what she tried to do. Her bum arm, wrapped in a cast and secured in a sling, wouldn’t cooperate, and so she only covered one eye with her good hand, and tears coursed hot down her other cheek, the kind of ugly, messy tears that dripped off your nose and left you with an awful case of the hiccups.

“Thought so.” Tenny nodded and fetched the tissues off her dressing table. Plunked the box in her lap and then perched on the side of the mattress. He sat silent, watching her with a calm expression, for the long minutes it took her to quietly sob it out, mop her face, and blow her nose one-handed. When she was done, and down to sniffles and hiccups, he plucked the dirty tissues from her hand.

“Gross,” she accused in a still-watery voice.

He shrugged and effortlessly sank each into her wastebasket all the way over in the corner, perfect three-point shots. “You’re forgetting I was there for the Night of Excess Pineapple.”

“Oh, God. I was four.”

“Yes, and I’m now immune to your disgustingness.” His haughty, superior tone dragged a croaky little laugh up her throat, and she felt better.

But not good. She flopped backward onto the pillows and stared up at the ceiling, eyes achy from crying; another pain to add to the list. “Two years,” she said, defeated.

“Come again?”

“I couldn’t hack it two years on the track.”

Despite Walsh’s history with it, racing hadn’t been the obvious career move for a girl born into both a successful boarding and training barn, and a motorcycle club. Her equestrian career had begun early: perched in front of Mom or Dad’s saddle; spending every moment not wasted on school at the barn, feeding apples and mucking stalls and perching on the rail to watch every lesson. It was her whole life, as essential as eating and sleeping and breathing. She’d started the pony club circuit when she was eight: walk/trot/canter and crossrail classes. Had begun jumping more seriously at twelve, possessed of a daredevil streak that Emmie attributed to Walsh, her own equitation pursuits firmly jumpless. At sixteen, she took on her first client horse: a young, hot thoroughbred the owner wanted to three-day event. That was when she’d begun galloping in earnest…and when she’d decided maybe she wanted to gallop all the time.

Through his many moneyed connections, Ian landed her a job at Keenland, straight out of high school, working, cleaning tack, stepping and fetching…and, once she’d proved herself, breezing horses before dawn. It had proved a potent drug, those morning workouts. “You get that from your daddy,” Emmie had said, a little choked up, because her baby had eschewed higher education and was addicted to the slap of wind in her face and the churning power of a horse running flat out beneath her. God knew if a love of racing was genetic – she hadn’t gone to college, after all – but the more the industry tried to beat her up, the harder she clung to it, determined, stubborn, ruthless in her pursuit of excellence.

It had been two years of living out of hotels, barely eating, working out until she nearly passed out; up before dawn and up too late nights watching track footage and poring over Racing Form. She moved from state to state, track to track, never any one place too long. Some of the other riders were friendly – she still needed to call Steph up in Saratoga and let her know what had happened, if she hadn’t already heard – but many were not. It was cutthroat and threatening and stressful. It’ll get better, she kept telling herself. She had to pay her dues. Always forced a smile when Emmie called, and didn’t voice her doubts to anyone save Uncle Ten, when he called and told her to knock off the bollocks.

Well, there was no bollocks, now. Only a dead horse, and her broken body, and her childhood room, just as she’d left it two years ago.

Tenny made a dismissive sound, and she shifted her head on the pillow to get a look at his face. “Please,” he said.

She frowned at him, and sniffled some more.

“You couldn’t ‘hack it.’” He rolled his eyes. “Is that it, then? Hanging up your spurs? Two years is nothing – it certainly isn’t failure. And every jockey worth his salt’s been in the hospital at least a dozen times, I’d wager.”

She couldn’t stop the face she made, the little shudder of horror that moved through her.

And of course he noticed, because he noticed everything. Face softening, tone gentling, he said, “But there’s no shame in deciding you’d rather train horses like your mum instead of, you know, doing the most dangerous thing you can do on the back of a horse.”

She frowned again. “I’m not afraid.”

He patted her leg and stood. “I know you’re not. But just because you’re Walsh’s kid doesn’t mean you have to be so bloody dramatic about things.”

She stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m telling him you said that.”

“Oh no, what will I do when he gives me a disapproving look?” He made an over-the-top frightened face, and that inspired another laugh. He sobered, after. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, love,” he said, seriously. “And that’s a lesson coming from someone who took a long time to figure that out.”

Simple words – but true ones. Words that left her eyes burning again.

He rested his hand on the doorknob, halfway out the door. “Racing’s a shit industry,” he said. “If you want out, that’s not quitting or failing. Figure out what you want your future to be like with horses, and don’t worry so much. You have a stupidly large family and a whole pack of idiot friends cheering you on.”

She dashed at her eyes. “See? Ugh. This is why you’re my favorite uncle.”

He grinned. “I’m telling Shane. Maybe he’ll cry.”

 

~*~

 

“Remember those idiot friends I mentioned?” he asked in a stage whisper three days later. She was at the barn – because Tenny had found her moping in bed and carried her down here – sitting beneath her favorite tree and watching Emmie teach a class of youngsters. An overturned bucket served as a makeshift foot stool and the folding camp chair was fairly comfortable. A warm breeze toyed with her hair, the air smelled of good, horsey things, and she was glad Ten had ignored her earlier protests about staying inside. “Well,” he continued, “the most idiotic of all is coming up on your six.”

“My what?” but she already knew, could tell who it was by that laugh threaded through his voice. She turned her head, glanced back over her shoulder, and there he was: Asher Teague.