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?