Bitter Business

glassy and still that we could see our reflections. When Peaches finally reined in the palomino and I followed suit, slowing to a walk, it was with a real pang of regret. It was only after we’d walked for a minute that I realized I was winded, felt the horse’s heaving sides beneath my legs, and saw the flecks of foam along its flanks. We must have galloped for miles, but in my mind it had only taken seconds.
    I looked up at the sky. The sun had dropped lower on the horizon. Clouds were gathering.
    “This is the place where Jack’s oldest boy drowned,” said Peaches. “I’ve only been down here once or twice. Jack won’t go near the place. Dagny’s dying has brought it all back to him as if it were yesterday. You can’t imagine the hurt.”
    “I can’t imagine anything worse than losing a child,” I said. “Now Jack’s lost two.”
    “And the ones who are left hate my guts,” said Peaches in a voice ripe with bitterness. “When I fell in love with Jack I didn’t expect the world to understand. It’s not just that he’s so much older, but he’s also a hard man and rough around the edges. I know what people think— you’re blond and you work in TV, so you must have the intellectual capacity of a hamster. But I’m not stupid, and I really thought I was ready for what the world was going to throw at me when I decided to marry Jack. So the whispers didn’t bother me, or the assumption that he must have left his wife for me. But the one thing I never anticipated was the extent to which I have been vilified by his children. I never expected them to run to me with open arms and call me Mommy. But the level of their animosity never ceases to astonish me. Dagny was the only one who was ever fair to me, and now she’s gone. I can’t even begin to imagine what we are going to have to endure from Lydia over the next few weeks.”
    “You never know,” I offered. “Sometimes it takes a tragedy like losing Dagny to bring a family together, to make them realize what’s really important.”
    Looking out over the still water of the pond, I found myself fervently hoping that what I’d just said was true, that the Cavanaughs would somehow find a way to pull together in the wake of their loss. But I knew from experience that the physics of tragedy more often works in the opposite direction.
     

16
     
    I swung my leg across the saddle and slid down to the ground, feeling suddenly short after having surveyed the world from the top of a horse for the last two hours. Following Peaches, I led my mount up to the hitching post, not surprised to find that I’d developed the rolling cowboy gait that I knew preceded a pair of very sore legs. Standing with one hand on the saddle horn and the reins in the other, I was startled to see Eugene Cavanaugh charging across the stable yard toward me, his face distorted with fury.
    “Who said you could ride that horse?” he demanded furiously.
    I was completely taken aback. It was Peaches, emerging from the shadow of the bam with a bridle over her arm, who answered him.
    “I asked Tom to saddle Scarlet for Kate,” she answered with a steely edge of warning to her voice.
    “That’s Dagny’s horse! How dare you take it out without permission!”
    “Whose permission?” Peaches inquired with studied sweetness. “I was under the impression that all of these horses belong to your father, or am I wrong? Maybe you and I should go back up to the house and ask him whether it was okay for me to let Kate ride one.”
    Eugene stood mutely rigid, furious at the rebuke but unable to reply. Peaches may have married into a nest of vipers, I reflected, but it was obvious that she was more than able to defend herself.
    A battered pickup appeared around the bend in the road and pulled up to the bam. Two men in overalls and baseball caps jumped out of the rear, the backs of their necks sunburned from hours behind the wheel of a tractor.
    “Howdy, Mr. Cavanaugh. We just come back from checking the road over by the grave just like you asked. I’m thinkin’ maybe we should put down some of that sand we’ve got bagged up in the yellow barn on account of there’s bad mud in a coupla spots, but it’s up to you.” Peaches took the reins from my hand and led my mount into the bam. I followed her, not eager to be caught in further conversation with Eugene.
    “Sometimes I just can’t abide any of them,” Peaches announced from between gritted teeth as she bent to unbuckle the double