Excerpt #2

And did I really think Mom could’ve killed Dad anyway? It seemed so hard to believe. She’d never been unkind to me, but in so many ways, she never seemed to notice what was going on with me. I know Dad couldn’t help resenting me -- I was tied to the horses. Yet short of selling them, I don’t know that she could’ve done anything about it. And maybe she couldn’t have stopped Alex from pummeling Nick and I either. He was, after all, a tyrant. But could she have noticed that I spent all of my time on horses, and aside from them, lived a solitary life?

But I wanted to believe that my mother was kind and loving. I’d see her with my brother’s friends, and think that she was a great mom. They’d all talk to her about what was going on with them, in a way every parent hopes their teenager will talk to them.  She’d sit and listen for hours. And they’d all say that they wished they could talk to their own parents this way. I’d watch, just sitting around the edges, wondering why not me? Why can’t I be listened to like that? But maybe Dad was right, maybe I was the source of the family’s financial strain. Maybe we would’ve been better off without the horses.  

It was then that I wanted my mother to defend me the most. Not so much for me, but for what I loved. I wanted her to tell Dad that I loved the horses more than anything else, and that loving them was not the cause of the family’s problems. I think I really wanted her to tell him, that without the horses, maybe the family would be ok, but I wouldn’t. But maybe it was a system that she couldn’t change. Maybe the family’s happiness needed to be at my expense. But somehow that thought didn’t make any of this seem ok to me. At least it didn’t remove my wish that my mother would have defended what I loved.

Now, the tables were turned. Now it was I who was supposed to defend her. I thought about how things would change if she were convicted. What would life be like without her? Would I be able to keep up the horse business myself? I had gone to a few shows alone while she was in jail, but it wasn’t the same. Mom had always been there, right at the in gate. She’d cheer me on, meet me when I came out of the ring. And she never criticized my riding, instead insisting that I was too hard on myself. I always wanted the horses to be as perfect as they could be. In a lot of ways, I think we fought because she didn’t understand how much I depended on riding perfectly -- needed it. It was all I had, after all, and probably the only thing that held me together throughout childhood. But just give the horses a day off, they’ll be fine. Sure they’ll be fine, Mom, but will I?

Book except #1

When I entered the house, there was no warm smell. Only the faint odor of dog pee. My mother’s dog, Simone, hadn’t taken the news lightly. She was permanently planted on the couch. Her couch. She had done this before. Whenever my mom left her alone, she would retaliate. She’d claim the couch, and adorn it with whatever she wanted. Houseplants, her dog bowl, my mom’s underwear. Alex’s friends had tried to move her. But she snapped at them. Even though she wasn’t particularly a large dog, her bite was intimidating nonetheless. She was my mother’s negotiation. After years of breeding Irish Wolfhounds and discovering that an unmanaged pack of them became aggressive toward the neighbors pets, and even the foals a few times, she thought she should try something different. Simone was a Russian Wolfhound. They are lighter and supposedly more docile. Of course it wasn’t until the last of the Wolfhounds died, five small dogs and one foal with a slashed side later, that my mother thought it might be time for a change. One of those small dogs was mine. My little Rudy, a perfect little white Maltese that I’d got from a rescue. His previous owner had died, and I felt like I had won the lottery. I had always wanted a Maltese, but you never find them at the rescues. If you do, they don’t really look like a Maltese, and the rescues are just trying to pass them off as purebred to get them adopted. I had him only six months. But I should have never brought him home for Christmas with me. Merry Christmas. All I wanted was for my mom to stop the Wolfhounds from killing other dogs, or get rid of them. But my pleas, like many things, fell on deaf ears.