Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
NANCY
“Holy!” Karl breathes as we pass through the gates to my parents’ home and head up the long, tree-lined driveway. “You sure you want to get your stuff?” he asks, looking around.
“It’s a facade,” I mutter, trying to calm myself down. “Just like the hotel. Nothing is as it seems.”
My parents aren’t here. They left yesterday morning for Belgium on their annual tour to find my mother’s next great mount. They’ve never come home empty-handed. She always finds at least one.
Celeste’s car is sitting in front of the garage, and I have the urge to ask Karl to turn around. I don’t need my stuff. I’ll get new stuff. I have savings.
Karl’s hand squeezes my thigh, grounding me with its weight. “You’ve got this. Whose car is that?”
“Celeste’s,” I sneer, scowling as I lean back in my seat. “I’m not sure I can face the condescension,” I admit.
“We.”
“What?” I ask, confused.
“We will face it. You’re not doing this alone. What I told you in Toronto wasn’t a one-time thing. It’s a whole life thing. When you go into battle, I go in with you. It’s non-negotiable, beautiful.”
This man. “You’re awfully dramatic, Karl Hore. Has anyone ever told you that?”
He leans across the bench seat, his hand sliding around the back of my neck. “Never,” he whispers, his gaze intense as he pulls me in for a kiss.
If I wasn’t so nervous about how things were about to go, I’d be a puddle on the floor. Between his words and his lips, I have a hard time letting any doubt seep in. He makes me feel like I can take on any challenge life throws at me.
“Let’s do this.” I swing the door open and hop down from the truck. Time to get this over with.
My room is exactly how I left it. Everything in its place, exactly how my mother likes it.
Karl is standing beside me, silently taking it all in, and I wonder what it’s like through his eyes.
I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the room at his parents' place was his. There were bits of him all over it. This room, well, it’s just a room.
A place where I slept and dressed. There are no pictures of me with friends or posters of my favorite singers.
The tack room has more of me in it than this place.
“It’s very… clean,” he says.
“Were you expecting a messy room?”
“Not messy, but more, I don’t know, you?”
I take it all in again. It’s my mother’s style to a T.
Her color palette, her furniture taste, and her framed prints, including an impressionist-style painting of her on her first World Cup horse.
This room could be hers. My family exists to support my mother and her goals.
Being here is a reminder of that. A big reminder of all the things I’ve missed out on because of her and her ambitions. It’s a spotlight on her selfishness.
Arms wrap around me, and I’m pulled into a warm body. He doesn’t say anything as he holds me, and I have a weird feeling that I should be crying. That he’s expecting me to cry. And that’s fair; I’m always crying these days, it seems.
“Did no one ever tell you that breaking and entering is a crime?” My sister’s voice comes from the door, and I turn in Karl’s arms to see her standing there, the disapproval on her face a younger version of our mother. It’s a look I’m far too used to.
“I still have a key,” I mumble, stepping away from Karl and putting the suitcase I brought on the bed. “I’m only here to get my clothes. Then I’ll be gone.”
“Good,” she sneers as if she’s completely unaffected. “You should probably leave your key when you leave, seeing as how you’re moving out.”
“Fine,” I say, tossing three pairs of jeans into the suitcase.
“Fine,” she mimics, turning and walking out of sight.
Karl looks at me with wide eyes as if he doesn’t know what to do about what he witnessed. Celeste and I have such a different relationship than he has with Matt.
I shrug it off and continue throwing stuff in my suitcase.
It doesn’t take long to gather my clothes.
I take one summer dress that is simple enough to wear on a normal day but would work for a night out.
Then I wrap my jewelry box in a sweater and nestle it in the bottom corner, held secure by two boxes of Converse shoes.
“What about this?” Karl steps out of my closet holding Puppy.
A wave of nostalgia washes over me as I take in my husband holding the stuffed animal I told all my secrets to as a kid. Hidden away in the corner of my closet after my mother informed me at eight that I was too old for stuffed animals.
Walking over, I slip the old brown and pink dog from his grip. “Yeah, he comes.” One day Puppy will go to our son or daughter.
“I’ve got a stuffed elephant in a box under my old bed,” Karl says, turning back to the closet.
“We can do rock, paper, scissors to decide which one our firstborn will get.” He’s already back in the closet, so he doesn’t see me frozen in place.
Karl says all these things so casually. It’s the same way he asked me to marry him, like he’s suggesting pizza for dinner or something.
“Fuck!” His curse is accompanied by the sound of a skull hitting a shelf, followed by laughter. He walks out of the closet, rubbing the top of his head, chuckling as he winces. “I knew I was going to do that.”
I set Puppy down beside my suitcase and go to him. “Right here?” I ask, running my hand through his hair until my fingers reach where his are still resting atop his head.
“Mmmm,” he hums, one hand wrapping around my waist, dragging me closer. “I may be concussed.” He grimaces.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he backs me up against the wall, eyes boring into mine.
“Should probably get you to the hospital,” I whisper.
“Probably, although I’ve got an unusually hard head.” He bounces his eyebrows, and the little seductive spell he’d begun casting disappears as my cackle splits the air.
The sound of the front door slamming cuts me off, and Karl’s face hardens as he steps back from me.
“You should probably go talk to her.” He looks around. “I’ll get things packed up.” He gestures at the bed where things are piled haphazardly.
I know he’s right. This isn’t all just a change for me. It’s all new for Celeste too, and I’ve only been thinking about myself through everything. I suppose I do have a bit of my mother in me.
“You don’t want to come with me?” I ask, not sure if I want him to or not.
He shakes his head as he pulls me back to him, his hands framing my face as his lips meet my forehead.
“You’ve got this,” he utters, with far more confidence than I feel, against my skin.
I know exactly where my sister went, but I take my time. She needs time to cool off, and I need time to figure out what the hell I’m going to say to her.
The house is exactly how we left it. My life is completely different, and part of me feels like this place should be too. But everything in here is precisely the same, and I’m struck with how sad that seems now. Part of me wants everyone in this family to experience the thrill of change.
I stand at the bay window in the living room, staring out at the stable.
There isn’t much activity today with half the staff over in Europe with my parents.
At this time, most will be on their lunch break.
Celeste will be either in the office reading the latest issue of Horse World, or she’ll be chatting with her old pony Storm.
Once I’ve collected myself, I head out, wringing my hands the entire way, practicing how I’ll greet her.
Soft murmurs come from the old section of the barn. The wing where the companion horses live, far from the shiny aisle of the Grand Prix horses.
“I don’t think she cares.” I hear Celeste say.
“Why would she? She’s free.” I stop dead at that.
“You won’t leave me though.” She giggles, and I can only assume that Storm has his teeth clasped around her zipper.
The pony is obsessed with zippers. She sighs, and my heart sinks because Storm will inevitably leave too.
He’s already twenty-two, and while ponies can live well into their thirties, it’s not a given.
“Celeste?” I call quietly, and her responding grunt makes me second-guess the decision to come out here. I’m interrupting her therapy session.
When I look over the stall door, Storm’s ears flick back.
He’s not listening to me. He’s annoyed I’m here.
We’ve been on the outs since I was a kid and he’d taken off, galloping with the bit in his teeth back to the barn, scaring the ever-loving shit out of my ten-year-old self.
I’ve never trusted a pony again, and thankfully my mother had moved me onto a horse.
“What are you still doing here?” she grumbles, eyes fixed on Storm.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“Oh wow, thanks for thinking about me,” she cuts me off, her face set in a grimace so hard I imagine she’ll have a headache if she keeps it up much longer.
“I don’t know why you’re angry. Figured you’d be hap—”
A laugh that resembles our mother’s slices through the space between us, stopping me mid-sentence. The similarity is uncanny.
“You thought I’d be happy, Nancy?” She stands, brushing shavings off her jeans as she walks out of the stall.
“Why the hell would I be happy? You realize this puts everything on me, right? She’s pissed, but she doesn’t have you to be angry at, so it’s all directed at me.
You were a buffer.” She stops in front of me, eyes hard, brows furrowed.
“So I was supposed to put my life on hold so you didn’t have to deal with our mother? I was supposed to stick around being a constant disappointment? Being miserable so you could carry on being the daughter she wishes I was?”
“No, Nancy, you weren’t supposed to upend your life because some guy wanted in your pants.”
“Is that what you think this is? I married someone so I could sleep with him?”
“Do you love him?” she fires back, and it feels like she’s punched me in the stomach. “You don’t even love him. I can see it. He’s a means to an end for you. A break from our mother,” she spits.
“That’s not fair,” I reply, pushing my shoulders back, trying to appear taller than I am because right now she’s making me feel small.
“Fair?” She laughs humorously. “The only person here who is getting a fair deal is you.”
“This is my life, Celeste.” I take a step toward her.
“Mine. I have spent most of it living for someone else. Being the next big thing. Desperately trying to make up for not measuring up, for being a coward in our mother’s eyes.
Keeping your horses looking pretty so you can fuck off for most of the day and come back to everything ready to go parade around a show ring.
Burying my feelings of failure deep down so I don’t steal a single ounce of attention from you or our mother.
Don’t fucking act like anything has been fair for me.
I’ve been locked away in an emotional prison, and now that I’m free, I refuse to be dragged back into one. ”
“You’ve saddled yourself with someone else who acts like they need you.”
“Maybe I needed him. Did you ever consider that? Maybe I needed someone, and he just happened to be the first person who welcomed that.”
“I needed you,” she yells, jabbing her finger into her chest. “I need you,” she repeats, quieter this time with tears brimming in her eyes.
Vulnerable is an odd look on my sister. She is cocky and self-centered.
A younger version of our mother in every possible way, but the longer I look at her, the more I realize I had been that way too at one point.
Being who and what our mother expected was definitely a survival technique, and I hadn’t been open to seeing that Celeste was now in the same position I had once been in.
Without thinking, I reach out and pull her to me.
She fights me at first, but I hold on for dear life.
I may be small, but I’ve been dealing with thousand-pound animals for my entire life.
I can handle my emotional sister. It is also the only thing I can think of doing because Celeste isn’t exactly a crier.
I didn’t think I was either until recently, but I’d really been suppressing a lot.
I have a feeling that my sister is about to realize she’s been doing the exact same thing.
Sobs wrack her body, and and hot tears spill down my cheeks. I’m sure we’ve cried together, but it would have been when we were much younger, before our mother scolded it out of us. Holy crap, did that woman ever fuck us up.
“I’m not leaving you, Lest,” I say quietly, squeezing her tighter. “I’m always going to be here for you, okay? But I’m happy. I may not be all the way in love with Karl, but I’m definitely on my way there.”
Her breath shudders as she pulls back. “How?” she asks, not bothering to wipe her face.
“How what?”
“How do you know you’re falling for him? How do you know he actually cares about you?”
Taking a deep breath, I try to figure out how the hell to describe how this has all felt. How do I sum up a whirlwind couple of weeks when I’m still trying to understand it myself?
I shrug, leaning against the stall and crossing my arms. “Well, for one thing, I’ve never felt like this about anyone.
For another, I’m not sure I’ve ever really felt loved before, until him.
” This is going to get depressing. “It’s not even the romantic stuff.
It’s the way he looks at me. Everything is we, not me or you.
He talks to me, wants my opinion, and listens to me when I give it.
” Celeste’s tears have stopped, her expression closing off by the second. “Remember her reaction?” I ask.
My sister scoffs. “Can you honestly blame her? You walked up with some hick, declared you were married, and quit.”
“Please stop calling my husband a hick,” I plead. “He’s ridiculously smart, kind, and loyal. He’s not who you think he is. He’s not who I thought he was. And yes, I sprang the news on everyone, but we did the same to his family. Do you know what his parents did?”
“What?” She sounds like someone dragged the question out of her.
“They hugged us. Welcomed me to the family. His dad and brother went and cleaned up the little cottage on their property. I didn’t even have most of my stuff, and that little cottage has felt more like a home than this place ever has.
And I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t do anything the normal way.
Hell, I’m trying to wrap my head around it all, but I’m so damn happy.
And I wish that mattered to my family. I wish my joy and excitement about this new monumental thing in my life mattered to the people who are supposed to love me most.” I struggle to get the last bit out as the tears come fast and furiously.
All I want right now is a hug, and I know the person standing in front of me isn’t the one who is going to indulge that need.
She won’t because it’s not second nature.
“I’m sorry,” I choke out, backing away, turning, and speed-walking out of the barn like a coward.