25. Maximillian #2
“Then someone moved it. Maybe the groom…”
“Giselle.” Elle’s voice drops, and the temperature in the room seems to fall with it. “Stop.”
The mask slips. Just for a moment, I see something underneath, something harder and older than the concerned sister act. Then Giselle’s expression smooths again.
“I don’t understand why you’re treating me like a criminal,” she says. “I came to support you. That’s what sisters do.”
“You sent me a message hoping I would fail.” Elle’s voice is quiet but relentless. “You said everyone would be watching. And now you show up here, at my equipment, hours before my rein comes apart in the middle of a course.”
“You’re twisting everything.” Giselle looks toward the official. “I saw something loose and tightened it. That’s all.”
“What was loose?” Elle asks.
“I don’t remember exactly.”
“Then tell him what you touched. He has the equipment outside. Show him what you fixed.”
Giselle doesn’t move. The security officer shifts beside the door, and her eyes dart toward him before coming back to Elle.
“You don’t understand,” Giselle says, her voice dropping. “You’ve never understood. Everything has always been so easy for you.”
“Easy.” Elle’s voice cracks on the word.
“The horses. The talent. The husband who looks at you like you’re the only person in the room.” Giselle’s composure shatters completely. “Do you know what it’s like to always be second? To always be compared? To watch you get everything while I get nothing?”
“So you tried to hurt me.” Elle’s voice is barely above a whisper. “You came here and you tried to make me fall.”
“I wanted you to know what it feels like.” Giselle’s voice rises, losing control. “To have something taken from you. To lose something you thought was yours.”
“I could have been killed. My horse could have been injured.”
“You were supposed to fall.” Giselle’s face contorts. “You weren’t supposed to get him back under control.”
Elle goes so still that I can hear my own breathing.
“You damaged my tack.”
Giselle looks toward the door, then back at her sister. “I wanted them to see you fail for once. That was all I wanted before, too.”
The words hang in the air. I feel Elle go rigid beside me.
“Before?” Her voice is barely audible.
“Last year.” Giselle laughs, the sound ugly. “You’ve spent this whole year thinking it was an accident. Thinking you were just unlucky.”
“Giselle.” I hear my own voice, low and warning. But Elle lifts her hand slightly, and I stop.
“What happened last year?” Elle asks. Her voice is quiet, controlled, but I can see her hands trembling.
Giselle looks at her sister, and something in her face shifts. Not regret. Something colder.
“I frightened him,” she says. “Your horse. I stepped out near his path while you were riding. I wanted to startle him, make you mess up, make everyone see that you weren’t as perfect as they thought.”
Elle’s hand finds mine, gripping so hard I can feel her bones.
“I didn’t think he’d come toward me.” Giselle’s voice has gone flat, recounting facts. “I thought he’d shy sideways, maybe throw you off balance. But he came straight at me, and you…” She stops, shaking her head. “You turned him. You pulled him away from me. And you fell.”
“I saved you.” Elle’s voice breaks. “I saw you in his path, and I turned him away, and I fell because I was trying to keep him from running you down.”
“I didn’t ask you to save me.” Giselle’s chin lifts. “I didn’t need saving. You did that yourself, because you always have to be the hero.”
“I spent a year afraid to ride.” Elle’s voice is shaking now. “I thought I’d lost everything. And it was because you wanted to embarrass me?”
“You got better.” Giselle’s voice is dismissive.
“You always get better. You got your horse back, you got your husband back, you got everything. And I got nothing. I got lessons that ended because you couldn’t stand to share him, and a reputation ruined because he had to tell everyone I didn’t deserve what I’d earned. ”
“I put you on her horse without her agreement.” I can’t stay silent anymore. “That was what I told them. It was the truth.”
Giselle turns on me. “You could have seen me. You could have looked at me as something more than her sister. But you never did. Not once.”
“You were my wife’s sister.” I keep my voice level. “I never wanted that to be anything else.”
“It could have been.” Her voice rises. “If you’d just…”
“No.” Elle’s voice cuts through, hard and clear. “It couldn’t. And this isn’t about him. This is about what you did to me. What you’ve been doing.”
The door opens. Two police officers enter, a man and a woman, their expressions professionally neutral. The show official steps toward them and speaks quietly, indicating Giselle. He has been taking notes; now he closes the notebook with his finger holding his place.
“Signorina della Rovere?” The female officer addresses Giselle directly. “We need to ask you some questions about an incident that occurred here today.”
Giselle stares at her, and I watch reality settle over her face. The official has heard everything. So has the security officer by the door. She’s just admitted, in front of witnesses, to deliberately causing the accident that changed her sister’s life.
“I want a lawyer,” she says, her voice suddenly small.
“You’ll have the opportunity to arrange that.” The officer moves closer. “Right now, we need you to come with us.”
Elle hasn’t moved. She’s standing beside me, her hand still gripping mine, watching her sister being guided toward the door. Giselle stops at the threshold and looks back.
“I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt,” she says. “Either time. I just wanted you to understand.”
Elle looks at the woman beside her sister, then back at Giselle.
“You knew what happened to me last time.” Her voice is quiet. “You knew, and you did it again.”
Giselle opens her mouth. For once, nothing comes out.
The officer guides her through the door, and she’s gone.
The room is very quiet. The male officer asks whether we need a moment. Elle nods. He follows his colleague and Giselle into the adjoining room, leaving us with the security officer and the show official.
I turn to Elle. She’s staring at the door where her sister disappeared, her face pale, tears tracking silently down her cheeks.
I move into her line of sight. Her eyes find mine slowly, as though she has been looking at something a long way behind the door. When she reaches for me, I take her other hand.
“She did it.” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “The fall. The year I lost. It was her.”
“I know.” I pull her closer. “I know.”
“I kept going over it.” She looks down at our hands. “What I could have done differently. Whether I should have seen her sooner, whether I could have kept my seat if I’d been better. And she knew I was doing that.”
Her thumb presses against mine, hard enough to hurt. I don’t move.
“I asked her if she was all right afterward. I remember asking someone to make sure she was all right.”
“You saw her in danger,” I say. “You tried to keep her safe.”
Elle nods once, but her face crumples before she can answer. I brush a tear from her cheek, and she steps into me, putting her forehead against my chest.
“She’s my sister.” Elle’s voice breaks completely. “She’s my sister, and she wanted to hurt me.”
I close my arms around her, feeling her grip tighten at my back. The security officer quietly excuses himself. The show official follows. We’re alone in the small office, my wife crying against my chest.
I remember Elle sitting on our bed, trying to explain why I could find time for a lesson with her sister when another morning together required a quieter week. I remember being tired. As though tiredness explained what I had done with the hours when I wasn’t.
Giselle frightened her horse. I was the one who left my wife alone with the fear afterward. Nobody made me do that. Nobody made me put her sister on Sovrano and call it a tribute while Elle sat in the stands.
The woman holding on to me has already had to decide whether she can trust me again. Now she has to question a lifetime with someone else. I rest my cheek against her hair and keep my hand still against her back, where she has put it.
But Giselle let her sister suffer for a year believing she had simply failed. She watched Elle struggle and said nothing. And then, when Elle finally found her way back, Giselle came here and tried to take it away again.
I hold Elle tighter, pressing my lips to her hair.
“I’m here,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” Her voice is muffled against my chest. “I know.”
We stand there for a long time. Eventually, Elle’s breathing steadies, and she lifts her head. Her face is tear-streaked, her eyes red, but there’s something in her expression that looks like the beginning of anger.
“The police will want their statements,” she says. “We should finish with them.”
“Are you sure you’re ready?”
“No.” She wipes her face with the back of her hand. “But I want it done.”
When she asks for the officer, I open the door.
The woman returns alone; her colleague remains with Giselle in the adjoining room.
Elle takes the chair nearest the desk and answers what she can about this morning.
When the questions turn to the earlier fall, she asks for a moment to put the sequence in order, then begins again.
I sit beside her until the officer asks to hear my account separately. Elle loosens her fingers from mine without looking away from the woman.
“Tell them about the leather,” she says. “What you saw when we changed it.”
“I will.”