A Gentle Rain (6 page)

He rode beside me in f=ull winter tweeds and a mohair sweater, as if prepared to hunt down a stag on the heath of some ancestral estate or to chase me should I decide to nudge my Thoroughbred's flanks and bolt. The cold lay on me like a thick glove. I wore jodhpurs, boots and a thick sweater. No hat, no gloves.

I wanted to be numb.

"Perhaps they intended for me to find it, some day. Perhaps they intended to tell me I was adopted."

"And thus to admit to the world-not to mention the contentious and often competitive Whittenbrook family-that they'd lied about the birth of their child? They felt they saved you from a life as an unwanted baby. They felt they could offset their guilt by giving you the best life, the best opportunities, any child could desire. And they never wanted you to luiow the truth."

"Then why did they keep the adoption papers?"

"Frankly, I doubt they expected to die. Ever." He smiled sadly. "Thus, they couldn't imagine the papers would be left behind for you to discover." He hesitated, then: "I wish you could have seen their faces when I presented you to them in Brazil. It was love at first sight. It truly was."

"Did you purchase me for them? How much did I cost? Was I a bargain?"

"Please. It was, in many ways, a routine private adoption. I made some discreet inquiries via certain connections. I spoke to adoption attorneys across the United States. My liaisons informed me that an appropriate baby, healthy and newborn, was available in a small town in northern Florida. After that, the process was relatively simple."

I wound my hands tighter in the leather reins. My bay gelding, a fine hunter-jumper from Uncle William's stables, tucked his elegant head at my subtle command. I had, after all, trained in dressage with the head of the Brazilian Olympic Equestrian Team. I was a Whittenbrook. Whittenbrooks could sit a horse. At least, the real ones could.

"Did I have a given name?" I asked quietly. "Aside from `Unnamed Female Child?"'

"Your biological parents gave you up immediately at birth. They did not name you."

"My biological parents. Sedge, I feel as if I was grown in a Petri dish."

"No, my dear. You were born the usual way. Quite healthy and quite normal and quite adorable."

"My birth parents were high school sweethearts? I saw their ages in the paperwork. Giving birth tome and then giving me away was their decision? Did you ask their lawyer whether they wished to keep me? Of course, at their ages I expect they were more interested in applying to college than marrying and raising a child."

He said nothing. The soft whisk of our horses' hooves in the snow was the only sound. "Was I ... Sedge, was I the child of some terrible circumstance? Do you think my birth mother was raped?"

"Oh, Kara. No, No. It was nothing like that."

"Then what?"

He stopped his horse, and I halted mine. I stared at his strained expression. The soft creak of fine English saddlery merged with the whoosh of our horses' breath. "Your parents were ... compromised. Unsuitable."

"Because they were underage?"

"Let me ask you something. There is no need for you to pursue this matter. You are a Whittenbrook, your adoption was perfectly legitimate, and there is no question that you remain your adoptive parents' heir. No one but you and I know the truth. Search your heart. Do you really want to know more?"

"Yes." No hesitation. "There are two other people who know the truth. My biological parents. They know they gave me away. Sedge, what if I have brothers and sisters?"

"You don't."

"So you have researched my birth parents in the years since!"

"When you turned twenty-one and came into your trust fund, your parents asked me to find them. To ascertain their ... fate."

My heart squeezed and released in tight knots. "You discovered that my birth parents turned out to be awful human beings?"

"No, not awful. Just unexpected."

"Unexpected? Please, the look on your face is terrifying in its sympathy. Please, just tell me what was wrong with them."

He exhaled slowly. "My dear, by all accounts they were and are lovely, gentle souls, and, to their credit, they have remained together as a devoted couple all these years. But I cannot tell you how they felt about giving birth to you, or whether you would matter to them now. And I cannot encourage you to seek them out. There's always the risk that they-or the people surrounding them-might try to take advantage ofyour status and wealth. There's also the risk that the sheer heartache might be more than you can bear. And more than they can bear."

"I may not be an iron-willed Whittenbrook, but I believe I can fend off a few familial parasites and gold diggers. Tell me tivhat's tivrong tivith my birth parents."

He shut his eyes for a moment, then met my gaze. "To coin one of the kinder terms, they are mentally retarded."

I sat on the snowy ground beneath a winter oak. My gelding dozed, exhaling warm, white steam near my face. I had a somnambulant effect on horses. I spoke melodic Portuguese and native Amazonian languages to them, and they seemed to think it a secret code. South American horse whispering was my specialty.

As a very young child I sometimes dreamed beautifully odd dreams of moonlit woodlands filled with a kind of music, like shy drawls calling to me inside a waterfall. Mother said I was remembering where I came from in heaven, and Dad, carrying me high on his privileged shoulders, again told me the story of how I, Kara Whittenbrook, had been born in their arms beneath the exotic glow of a Brazilian moon, and how no one on earth could possibly love me more than they.

Was that much true, at least? That they'd saved me from an unloved life?

I put my head in my hands, mourning for Mother and Dad but angry at their deception. "I'm going to Florida and see what kind of people my birth parents are," I told the gelding. "I have to find out who I really am."

He nuzzled my hair and blew sweet vapor on me. Yes, I had a way with horses.

At least I knew that much.

Chapter 3

Ben

The Thocco Ranch

If anybody'd asked me to predict the other events that were about to change my life forever-the first one havin' been Joey's diagnosis-I'd never have said, "Oh, I'll probably buy a killer horse." I thought I was smarter than that.

It was spring auction day at the Talaseega Livestock Barn. We got out the Sunday Stetsons and plenty of cologne for a trip to Talaseega, site of the biggest cattle, horse, donkey, mule and goat auction in north Florida.

Ranchers like me went there not just to do business but to socialize and trade gossip. You could see everything from new trucks to new boob jobs. Talaseega provided some fine people-watching opportunities. Especially if the people were females wearing tank tops and skin-tight jeans.

But with Joey's diagnosis weighing me down, I'd've been happy to trade the springtime Talaseega trip for a beating with a big stick. It was a four-hour roundtrip drive, and that's a long haul when you're caravanning a sickly brother, a truck pulling a trailer full of nervous yearlings, and a van full of persnickety ranch hands.

I loved my crew, but there was no getting around it: They didn't make life easy. I was the trail boss for seven men and three women who had, let's call it, a special way of looking at the world. Not that they didn't work hard; they worked like dogs. Their day, like mine, started at dam-i with chores for a thousand head of beef cattle and fifty horses. They never complained.

Yeah, they worked like dogs, but getting `em ready to go somewhere was like herding cats.

"I'm two pecans shy of a pie," I yelled through a bullhorn pointed at the cabins and trailers across the creek from the main house. "And if those two nuts don't get their behinds into the van pronto, they're staying home alone."

Cabin doors popped open. Cheech came out with a brand-new turkey feather twirling from his hatband. I watched as he hung his camera around his neck. God bless digital. Now Cheech could take a thousand cheap pictures of his favorite subject. Rocks and feet. "Vengo este momento, Boss," he yelled.

Cheech trotted my way over the creek bridge like a bow-legged sailor. He was a Cuban Yosemite Sam. A plastic grocery bag dangled from one elbow. Cheech toted his snacks and drinks any time he left the ranch. He had a thing about his food and wouldn't eat anything but ranch chow. Whenever I took the hands to dinner at The Fat Flamingo, a local buffet restaurant, Cheech took a lunch box and I bought him iced tea just to keep the manager happy.

On the other hand, Cheech's weird food ideas made him a wonderworking food psychic where animals were concerned. He handled all our feeding chores. When it came to mixing livestock feed for maximum benefits, Cheech was a gourmet chef.

I turned my bullhorn toward his neighbor. "Bigfoot, leave those cats be! They don't need to know your schedule for the day. They've already got it memorized. Come on!"

Bigfoot was telling his four cats everything they needed to know about where he was going and when he'd be back. Bigfoot straightened to his full height and waved at me merrily as he tromped across the bridge.

Sunlight glinted off the silver belt buckle he'd won at a Special Olympics rodeo. A breeze fluttered the blue ribbon he'd gotten at our county fair for throwing an old bass boat motor the farthest. Sort of like winning the Highland Games for Crackers.

He loved that prize ribbon, and he wore it on all special occasions. Bigfoot couldn't add two plus two, but he could pick up a two-hundredpound calf as gentle as a mama cat picking up her kitten. There was nothing on four legs Bigfoot couldn't move, carry or hold down with his bare hands without harming a hair on its hide.

I put the bullhorn to my mouth again. "Cheech. Bigfoot. `Foss up. Where's Lula this mornin'?"

Both men grinned shyly and shrugged. They were like kids when it came to talking about their girlfriend.

"I'm right here, Ben," Lula yelled out the window of Cheech's cabin. "Hold your britches. I'll be there in a second. I broke a link on one of my ankle bracelets."

Lula and her older sister, Miriam, had been friends of Mama's. Me and Joey had known `em all our lives. Both were sixty-something, a little on the hefty side, but still full of flash and sizzle. They had some nurse training, so they helped me look after Joey and the others. Lula and Miriam shared a doublewide trailer on the ranch, but most nights Lula slept with either Cheech or Bigfoot. "Their heads may not work right," she liked to say. "But their other parts operate just fine."

She wasn't takin' advantage of `em. Cheech and Bigfoot might be a little slow, but they were grown men, and they knew what they wanted. They liked sex. A lot. So did Lula. The arrangement worked good for all concerned.

With Lula, Bigfoot and Cheech accounted for, I looked in on the yearlings one more time. Then I rapped a knuckle on the door of the trailer's overhead tack bin. "You all set in there, Possum?"

"I'm set, Boss," came the muffled voice.

"Got your water bottle and your fan?"

"Yes, Boss."

"You put fresh batteries in your fan?"

"Yes, Boss. Right side up, this time."

"Awright. Wave your bandana out the vent if you get too hot. I'll stop."

"I will, Boss."

Weird sensations filled Possum's world at every turn. Sometimes even the smallest things drove him to distraction. One of his doctors explained it to me this way: `Ben, you and I see a butterfly outside a window and we think, `What a pretty, soothing sight.' Possum sees a butterfly and counts every beat ofits wings. He can't help himself. That's how an autistic person thinks."

Medication eased Possum's mind a little, but the best therapy was hiding. He loved small spaces. They focused his world and made him feel safe. He lived in a one-room apartment over the horse barn. Well, to be precise, he lived in a small wooden box in the middle of the one room. I built it for him, complete with a twin mattress, air vents, and a light. Some mornings, gettin' Possum out of his box was like pryin' a turtle out of a storm drain.

But like everybody at the ranch, Possum had a purpose and a talent. Put him in a stall with a scared horse, and before you knew it he'd have the horse dozing with its head on his shoulder. Turn him loose in a pen crowded with panicky cows, and pretty soon he'd have `em chewing their cuds like happy campers.

His effect worked on all kinds of critters and varmints. One time I sent him into the crawl space under the main house to check for a leaking pipe. He found the pipe and patched it, but then I had to crawl in after him because he didn't want to come out. He was talking to some mice he'd met.

And I think the mice were talking back.

With Possum, Lula, Cheech and Bigfoot ready to go, I moved on to the van. The ranch van was a 1983 Chevy cargo model. I'd bought it from Lucy's Florist and Decor Shop over in Fountain Springs, then installed bench seats in the back. It still smelled like chrysanthemums.

I poked my head inside the open cargo door and eyed the fortyish couple who looked like something out of an old cowboy movie Riders of the Lost Mesa.