8. Izzy
Chapter 8
Izzy
I sabel Brooks’ Assets:
2018 Ford F-250
Quarter horse mare, Millie. Papered. 11 years.
Quarter horse gelding, Chromey. Papered. 19 years.
A lot of pretty saddle pads. (Too many, but I’ll never admit it.)
Three saddles; two western, one English.
Six bridles. Various conditions.
Kingsley riding boots.
Some jewelry from Mom.
Lucchese boots from Aunt Helen (2 pair).
Various used clothing.
A Tiffany’s necklace Mom and Dad gave me when I turned 12.
Used furniture: bed, nightstand, chest of drawers, table, four chairs, sofa, armchair, coffee table.
As I stare at my meager list of belongings, I’m not sure I could find a buyer for any of it, and even if I did, there’s no way I’ll get to anywhere near a hundred grand. Plus, I’d die before I’d sell Millie or Chromey. Does that mean I’m not devoted to Tim? Does not selling Drago mean that same thing? I mean, I barely know the new horse, so why was I so emotional about it? I still feel a little sick about sending Müller away, but I felt worse about selling him that beautiful, quirky, misunderstood stallion.
Why did the judge set Tim’s bail so high? It’s so unfair, especially since they froze all his assets.
I wonder whether I might be able to sell his trailer or truck and just tell the buyer we’ll sign the paperwork later. I doubt anyone who wasn’t shady would agree to something like that. Which reminds me of the men who came over looking for money. Could they be somehow related to his partners who are screwing him over? Maybe they lied and told the guys Tim owed them money in their place.
The only way I can think to possibly earn a hundred thousand dollars in a quick timeframe is totally insane. I know there are a lot of horse races in California, which isn’t that far away. I’ve never even raced a horse—I’m no jockey. Aaaand, I’m five foot eleven and a hundred and forty-six pounds. Hardly jockey material.
Maybe I could find someone else to ride him.
Not that it solves my documentation problem. I have papers for another horse, a dead thoroughbred stallion, that maybe I can get an expedited transfer on so he’s in my name? But then I’m back to forging signatures from a woman whose horse really is dead. Plus, I’m going to have to do some digging to discover if there even are any horseraces with big purses this weekend.
The night before, I sent an email from Tim through my phone to the Müller guy. I know his login for work so I can help with paperwork from time to time. But now, if I want to look all this stuff up, I need to do it on a computer. Pecking at the keys on my phone’s too slow. I try to login to Tim’s computer—what did he say about his password? It’s a date that’s important to him? I try the date we met—nope. The day of our first date. Again, no. Our anniversary. Nope. I try various configurations of those dates, with and without the year. Still no dice.
Finally, I try his birthday.
That works.
His password is. . .his birthday? Really? It’s so obvious. But at least I’m in. My fingers fly over the keys. Within two minutes, I discover the Breeder’s Cup is this weekend! It would be nuts, but. . .oh, snap. I can’t even enter. It’s invite only. The Breeder’s Cup Festival week has quite a few races I could enter.
Which means I need to see how quickly I can transfer ownership, so I’m clacking away and then poking around on the Jockey Club website. It looks like, with expedited processing. . .I’m peering at the screen, trying to figure out what I might be able to do, when an email notification pops up for Tim’s outlook.
I glance at it, barely paying attention until I notice my own name. The subject line says Izzy’s Recommendation. And it’s from Doctor Hartfield. She’s the vet I’ve been working with almost five days a week for two years, now. My fingers are trembling a little as I click on the email. It’s not to me, but it’s about me.
I think I’m entitled to read it.
I can’t think of a single reason she’d need to email Tim about me. When the email opens, I can barely breathe.
Tim:
I still can’t fathom what circumstance precipitated your request, and I hate that I honored it. Izzy Brooks has been nothing but a phenomenal vet tech, and her help has been absolutely pivotal on several cases. She always goes above and beyond. She cares about what’s best for the horse, and she approaches clients with care and consideration. I feel that people like her, who truly love the animals, are the very best candidates for vet school.
No one I’ve met would make a finer veterinarian than Isabel Brooks.
I’m ashamed that I wrote her such an ugly letter when she asked me to recommend her. All I can say is that I trusted you and your judgment. Now, knowing that you’ve stolen from all of us, knowing what kind of debt you’ve gotten yourself into thanks to your personal proclivities, I’m sickened. How could I have been such a bad judge of character? How could I have let you convince me that I was helping the world by keeping her out of vet school? I didn’t agree when you told me she had bad judgment but I thought her boyfriend—of all people—would know. I thought, based on what you said, that she must be an alcoholic or something, and you just didn’t want to say it explicitly.
There’s nothing I can do now. My recommendation was already submitted, and I’m sure the vet schools are making their decisions even now. But I hope, for her sake, that USU has more discernment than I had. And I hope you know that I won’t be helping you out ever again. I hope Mark, Greg, and Julie roast your carcass on a spit before this is all said and done.
Becca
Holy guacamole.
I stare at the screen in disbelief. Could she have lost her mind? Could she. . .Tim couldn’t possibly have asked her to give me a bad recommendation, right? It can’t be his fault I wasn’t accepted.
It can’t.
He’s my boyfriend.
He’s been helping me for years.
But why would she send that email if he hadn’t done as she said? She sent it to him , not to me. It’s. . .
It occurs to me then that the title of the message is ‘ Re : Recommendation.’ She was replying to something Tim sent. My stomach flips as I click on the expand button to read his original email. I force myself to focus on the words from my boyfriend himself.
Rebecca,
We’ve been colleagues a very long time. I hope you’ll understand that my message comes from a good place, both for you and for Izzy. I know she asked you to write her a recommendation letter. I’m counting on you to help me out with something very important.
She’s not ready to be a vet. She may never be ready. She has some personal things that would make it impossible for her to even attend school, much less excel, and I’m worried that if she gets in. . .it will be catastrophic all around. Trust me on that. The best place for Isabel Brooks right now is precisely where she already is.
I’m more grateful than you know to have people I can trust around me, people I know will help both me and Izzy navigate these difficult circumstances in a way that will keep her safe and happy.
Tim
His signature block reminds me, with all the initials and letters behind it, how qualified he is to make a determination about my fitness to be a vet. Even if Becca’s mad at him for all the things his partners did to frame him, no one should be better at gauging my potential success as a vet than Tim.
It hurts, reading that he thinks it would be ‘bad all around’ for me to follow my dream. Did he just think I was an idiot the whole time I talked about it? When I doodled little signs that said Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Tim Heaston, was he laughing? Is that why he marked out the second doctor and just left Mrs. ?
But then Becca’s words come back to me.
No one I’ve met would make a finer veterinarian than Isabel Brooks.
Who’s right?
I suddenly need to know why Tim thinks I’d be a bad vet. I know he’ll be furious the sale fell through—that I don’t have his bail yet—and I know it’s going to be awful facing him about that, but I’m too upset about the email. I have to know why he sent it to Becca.
Without even seeing him yet, I can guess how he’ll react when I ask.
“Are you kidding, Izzy? I’m in jail , and you storm in here, not to see me and support me, not with bail money to get me out so I can defend myself, but to yell at me? To ask me about your inadequacies? Well, I don’t have time to deal with your stuff right now. I’m up to my eyeballs in my stuff. And mine is a way bigger deal. Mine is my whole career—you don’t even have a career.”
As I think about what I’m sure he’ll say, I start to wonder. . .
If someone said that to Whitney, if they said it to my mother, I would be livid. I’d never let them tell my sister she didn’t have a career, even if it was true. Why would I put up with it for myself, even if it is all true?
And now I’m convicting him before I’ve even confronted him.
I tear the page of my assets off the notepad and throw it in the trash, and I make a new list.
Questions for Tim:
1. Why did you tell Dr. Hartfield that I’d be a bad vet? Why do you think that?
2. Why are bad men coming to your house and threatening me— shooting at me?
3. Why are your partners accusing you of things, and why does everyone believe them? What’s really going on?
I freeze then, my pen poised over the notepad. Am I questioning his innocence? Am I worried that maybe, just maybe , the man who has thugs coming to his house with guns, the man who told my boss to dis-recommend me. . .might be the bad guy after all?
Because if he is, how stupid does that make me?
The only way for me to find out is to confront him. I know him well enough to tell whether he’s lying, or at least, I hope I do. I grab my jacket off the hook by the door, and I throw my purse over my shoulder. I have no idea whether the jail allows visitors, but I’m about to find out. I hope they let me in, and I hope they record our meeting, because if he really did screw not only me, but all his partners, I’m done trying to help him.
In the doorway, I pause.
I should call my best friend Paige. She’s never liked Tim, though, so I already know what she’ll say. She’ll jump on the email and the nefarious men, and she’ll call for his head. Until I’m sure, until I’m absolutely positive that I’ve been wrong about him, I should keep this quiet. He’s in a delicate position, and if there’s any chance I’m wrong about this stuff, I shouldn’t make things worse. Mom and Paige could never forgive all this stuff—the charges and the men and the email.
I have to decide what I think before I tell them about any of it.
I’m almost to my truck when Drago spots me. When he sees me open the door, purse in hand, he loses his mind. He’s bucking, he’s screaming, and he’s kicking the side of the fence. I’m worried he’ll destroy it or himself in the state he’s in. He looks almost exactly the same as he did that first morning, before I ever tried to halter him.
He looks insane.
I glance at my watch. It’s not even eleven in the morning. I have plenty of time, even if the jail officially ‘closes’ at five. I sling my purse into the cab, and I jog across the two dozen yards between me and the nutso stallion. “Drago,” I say. “Calm down, idiot.”
He drops to all four hooves, which is an improvement, and he snorts, pawing at the ground.
“I have a quick errand,” I say. “I have to leave for a little bit, but I’ll be back.” Yes, I’m now talking to a horse like I think he understands me. I’m not sure when I accepted it, but here we are.
He tosses his head, and he screeches.
“I know you’re worried.” Actually, I do feel like he is, and I’m not sure why. I reach my hand through the fence. “You couldn’t see me before, when I was in the house.” I tilt my head. “Did you know I was in there? Could you see me through the windows?” I squint at Tim’s house, not sure how he possibly could.
He sidles closer to the fence, leaning against my hand.
I scratch his shoulder, and he stretches his head out. Then he tosses his head at the gate and throws his nose up in the air repeatedly.
“I can’t come in to see you right now. I’m sorry, but I have to run an errand, no horses allowed.”
And he’s screaming again.
I yank my hand back, worried he might bite me.
He stomps, pawing at the ground, churning up aggressive furrows of earth, then he rears back and slams his big front hooves into the ground again. When he tosses his head, his nostrils are flared and his eyes rolling.
I can’t help my laugh. “These tantrums aren’t very attractive on such a handsome guy.” I tentatively reach my hand through again. “And you may not have learned this yet, but in our world, horses always have to wait around for the humans to finish their stuff.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “You guys think you run things, but you don’t. And sadly, when I decided to keep you, it cost me a lot of money. Then when I went inside, today got even worse.” Any human would judge me for being melodramatic, but a horse can’t do that. I drop my forehead against the fence. “It’s actually been a very, very bad day for this human.” I can’t help my frown. “And now I have to go somewhere they only allow humans to talk to the other human I’m mad at.”
He steps toward me, head bowed, seemingly calmer. I press my hand against the flat front of his face. He sighs. It’s so cute, it actually makes me smile.
“I wish I could take you with me,” I say. “I wish you were a man, just for the afternoon. Then you could come—and I’d be happy for the backup, believe me.”
A jolt of what feels like electricity shoots up my arm and knocks me back on my rear end in the dirt. When I finally regain my bearings enough to sit up, Drago’s gone .
There’s a painfully beautiful man standing where he was.
A very dirty, very naked man.
I really should not be looking, but underneath the dirt, and the smug smile, he has a glorious human body.