Chapter 2 #2
“I mean, he’s only one of the most boundary-breaking auteurs of the twentieth century,” Oren said, laughing.
A beat of silence passed. Aurora quite liked the idea that they didn’t know what to make of her and felt they needed to be on their best behavior.
They weren’t much older than she was, and she could feel that they found her attractive—even as they knew that they could not pursue that attraction, given who she was and what she could maybe do to their careers here in the stables.
It wasn’t that Aurora really had power here at the White Oak Lodge, of course. But it was nice to pretend—especially given how powerless she’d been over the previous few months, back in Rome. Especially given all that had happened to her.
But it was better not to think about that now.
In the silence, Aurora walked over to the nearest horse, a black beauty with a star on his forehead. His nose was soft against the palm of her hand.
“So beautiful,” she breathed. And then she asked the boys, “Have you both worked in stables all your life?”
Kenny looked annoyed and turned his back slightly to her, while Oren kept up that superb smile and said, “We grew up around horses back in Kansas, actually.”
“Kansas. Wow.” Aurora wasn’t entirely sure where Kansas was, as her American geography wasn’t so stellar, but she knew it was far away from Nantucket and maybe quite flat and away from water. “Quite different from around here.”
“Worlds away,” Oren agreed. “But we went to film school in New York.”
“Ah. New York is a place I know about,” Aurora said, laughing. It now made sense to her why they’d been talking about her great-grandfather. They’d maybe learned about him at film school. Perhaps they’d been passionate about his films before studying film in the first place.
“Is that why you’re working at the Lodge, then?” she asked. “Because of my great-grandfather?”
Oren laughed. “We couldn’t get jobs in film, not in the city. It’s too competitive,” he said. “We thought a summer on Nantucket Island would clean out the cobwebs and help us figure out what to make next. We were thinking about documentary work.”
Kenny remained quiet. Aurora suddenly found it difficult to look at him, as though his intensity would suck her in.
“My Aunt Charlotte makes documentaries,” she remembered.
“We’ve seen some of them,” Oren said, still speaking for them both. “She’s good.”
Kenny crossed his arms. Aurora didn’t know what to make of him. Did he hate Charlotte’s films? Or did he hate Aurora for bothering them during work?
Just then, her cousin Gwen, who was sixteen or so, appeared in the doorway, flipping her hair behind her shoulders.
Ever since Aurora’s arrival last week, Gwen had acted sort of as Aurora’s shadow, following her around to see what kind of mischief she got up to while causing as much mischief of her own as she dared.
“What a beautiful horse,” Gwen said, pressing both hands against her chest and eyeing the black beauty beside Aurora.
“I’ve been dying to go riding all spring long. ”
“Do you want to go now?” Aurora asked Gwen. She wanted to seem spontaneous and good-willed, especially in front of these guys. She didn’t know why.
Kenny made a terrible sound in his throat, as though he wanted to block this outrageous idea but didn’t know how.
“I’d like that very much!” Gwen said.
Aurora turned to smile at Oren. “Just a short one? For cousin Gwen?”
Oren’s forehead was slick with sweat. He raised his shoulders. “You can ride him outside the stables for a little bit if you want to,” he said. “But we’re done with work in about an hour. We need to make sure everything’s put away and cleaned up.”
“I only want to ride for a few minutes,” Gwen promised.
“Just a few minutes,” Aurora said sweetly. “We promise we’ll get out of your hair pronto.” She’d learned this English expression to “get out of one’s hair” a few days ago from her cousin Xander, and she’d found herself using it endlessly. She rather liked the poetry of it.
When she returned to Rome—in some amorphous future—she imagined that she’d show off this American dialect and impress her friends.
But the thought of returning to Rome just now turned her stomach.
Having ridden horses back in Italy at her grandmother’s estate, Aurora was able to ready the horse for Gwen’s ride, so that Oren and Kenny could keep working.
She helped Gwen select a helmet that fit her head perfectly, then put her hands down in a kind of scoop so that Gwen could first step on Aurora’s hands before throwing her leg over the horse’s back.
It was clear that Gwen didn’t know what she was doing, not really.
The horse let out an awful grunt, then threw his head back, ruffling his hair.
A shiver of fear went down Aurora’s back. Gwen, too, looked frightened.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Like back in California?” Aurora asked Gwen. There was a terrible fear in her voice, which she knew wouldn’t help Gwen get her head around what she was doing.
“Maybe she should get down,” Kenny said darkly. “We have things to do. We have to clean up.”
“I’m fine,” Gwen said in a meek voice.
“She’s fine!” Aurora parroted, although her fear felt thick around her, like a cloud.
All at once, everything changed. The horse, overwhelmed and overworked and maybe too hot for whatever this was, threw his front hooves into the air and tossed Gwen from his back.
Gwen fell like a bag of potatoes. Aurora heard a terrible and sharp crunch.
Kenny threw himself at the horse, taking his reins and guiding him out of the barn and into the fresh air to calm down.
Aurora and Oren fell to their knees beside Gwen, who was holding her wrist and crying quietly. Her eyes were rimmed with red.
From the looks of her arm, which hung limply, she’d broken a bone.
“Oh, Gwen,” Aurora breathed, hating herself, hating how frantic and outrageous she could sometimes be. “Oh, Gwen. I’m so sorry.”