Borrowed Horses (35 page)

They fluttered around me. Connie collected the casserole dishes and disappeared into the kitchen, Dawn poured coffee, and Jenny hugged me, the tears wet on her cheek. “I’m so sorry about Foxy,” she said.

I started and pulled back from her hug. Connie and Dawn were back. “You don’t know. The police officer didn’t tell you? The detective?” I looked at each of them.

“I told the police I couldn’t talk to anyone yet. It’s all too sad, losing the barn and everything,” Jenny said. Dawn handed her a mug.

“It’s my fault. Foxy’s dead because of me.” I stared at Jenny, unsure to believe she knew as little as she said.

Connie stared. “Detective Watson didn’t say anything like that to me.”

“Are you sure you’re all right, Joannie?” Dawn said. “You sound kind of crazy right now.”

I closed my eyes. Not seeing them made it easier to speak. I tried to put my thoughts in order, but they flew from me as I reached for them. “New Jersey was a disaster. Mom was sick again. I was in bad shape driving home. I wanted to leave it all behind, and I pushed too hard. I made it here, but the Chevy broke down the next day. Water pump.”

“Joannie, what does this have to do with anything?”

“A guy stopped to help me, and one thing led to another. To an affair. For two weeks, things were intense. Maybe unhealthy, I don’t know. I thought it was love. We spent every moment together.”

“Joannie?”

“Then I found out that he was married.” An oily swirl twisted on the surface of my coffee. “That Dave was married.”

The room was incredibly still. For the first time in our long friendship, I’d surprised Dawn. Jenny’s knuckles whitened, gripping her coffee cup as if to choke it.

“I didn’t know it was your Dave then. I didn’t meet you until another couple of months later. As soon as I found out he was married, I broke things off. Only.” I paused. There was no easy way to say any of this. “We met again at El Mercado’s that night after you fell in the ditch, and Dave started calling again. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t.”

I told the truth, but not all of it. I didn’t tell them I’d had to change apartments, or how he’d followed me to work. I tried to cause only the necessary pain, but that did not dull the blades in my mouth. “Then there was Timothy the other night. I set that up. I just meant to end things, for it to be over. I never thought this would happen. Dave set the fire. He burned down everything because of me. To hurt me.”

Jenny’s skin glowed livid but she wouldn’t look at me. She stared off into the corner at the blank television set. “It’s a lie,” she said, her voice shaking. “Dave never cheated on me. Why would you say that?”

“Jenny, I’m sorry.”

“That’s all you can say? After all you just said? Sorry?” Jenny wouldn’t look at me. Instead, she kept staring at that damned blank television where we’d watched the Eagles play the day she and Dave had quarreled.

I had hurt her enough. There was nothing I could say now. Dawn and Connie would comfort her.

Quite suddenly, she walked out. I followed her into the kitchen. She tossed the nearly full cup of coffee down the sink. Her face was white as she carefully washed and dried her mug, refusing to acknowledge me. She returned it to its place on the shelf, positioning its handle to be exactly in line with the sole remaining cup. What had she thought when Dave didn’t come home last night? Had she told Dawn or Connie? Wiping the counter, Jenny’s hand knocked the amaryllis bulb. She picked it up with the towel as if it were something toxic and looked at it only briefly, scornfully, before throwing it in the garbage. She dried her hands and folded the dishtowel into perfect thirds to hang neatly over the oven door handle. I’d always kept my house clean, but now it was immaculate. She was better at this than I was; that was her point. Her wrath was bound in dishcloths. Whatever I had given Dave, it was not a perfect house.

She picked up her coat and turned to me, face set into a porcelain mask. “I’m glad Foxy’s dead,” she hissed under her breath. She walked out, pulling the door softly but firmly shut.

For a moment, I stood stunned. In her words,
I’m glad Foxy’s dead
, I felt the first surge of hatred rise.

Connie and Dawn stood at my back. “She didn’t mean it,” Dawn said. I had never seen her so lost for words.

“She meant it,” I said.

“Not what she said about Foxfire. She couldn’t have meant that. It’s just shock.” Dawn was trying to convince herself. She wasn’t even looking at me, but at the door Jenny had refused to slam.

Connie’s face was grim. “I’ve got to get out of here,” she said, as if her anger too would erupt like vomit.

I hadn’t apologized to her. Now, it seemed too late. “Where are the horses?”

Dawn answered. “We hauled them to Eddie’s. Looks like we’ll be trail riding for a while.” She paused, and her face seemed again to screw up in confusion. “You didn’t tell me any of this? Not one word until now? This way?”

I looked for an olive branch. “I can call some places with indoor arenas, see if I can find a place for us to ride.”

Connie shook her head. “You really are unbelievable, Joannie Edson. You think those barns would do
you
a favor? You’ve never been one for winning popularity contests. You were too busy winning horse shows.” She said it with a scorn I didn’t expect. “You’ve beaten their best at every show, and every one of them thinks that if they’d had Foxfire, they’d be the ones with the ribbons. If I want an indoor arena to ride in, I’ll call. I could use something to do.” She walked out, holding the door for Dawn.

Dawn hesitated only for a minute. “You couldn’t trust me with even a word of this?”

I had no answer. Dawn waited a full minute, staring at me before closing the door between us. I thought I’d prepared myself for their anger until I actually felt it. I’d never expected that they wouldn’t forgive me. Not Connie and Dawn.

Alone in my prim kitchen, I sat absolutely still. There would be no more sympathetic visitors, no more casseroles, no more coffee made. Now, it was simply up to me to see if I could pull together a Joannie out of all these pieces.

I dug the amaryllis bulb out of the garbage and pulled out a mason jar from the box under the sink. Outside, I gathered stones.

It was only after I watered the jar and went to put it in the living room that I saw what Jenny had been staring at on top of the dead television: Dave’s copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
. It’d been collecting dust there for so long, I no longer noticed it. I flipped through the pages, taking in the loamy scent of a dying paperback. Its pages were brittle and brown as fallen leaves. I could tear each page one by one, light them in the gas flame of my stovetop, and pretend I’d made a pyre.

Instead, I crammed it into the glove box of my truck where I could lock it away, where it couldn’t taunt me with the memory of the one person who had, again and again, refused to leave me.

At my parent’s house, I dropped onto the patch-worked couch. I told them about Foxfire dying in the fire and how a man had killed him to hurt me. My father laid down his paper and looked over, and my mother rolled her chair in from the kitchen with her coffee balancing in her lap. I fingered the familiar seams. I felt hot under their eyes as they stared at me. There was an awkward pause that was never there—not at home, not with my parents. I called Pilate. Outside, an early flurry had begun. The flakes were small and stung as the wind pelted them against my skin. I turned my collar up and trudged over the hills, Pilate trotting by my side.

I stopped at the truck on the way back in and pulled from it the box of ribbons, of cups and bowls, of all the prizes Foxfire had ever won. I gave them to my parents. Hugging a woman in a wheel chair has an awkwardness I would never fully learn to overcome, but I hugged my mother long and hard that night, hugged my father, too, thanking them for Foxfire.

The shadows of the next afternoon were long when the detective’s knock startled me from my thoughts. I turned on my living room lamp and let him in. “Do you have a few moments?” he asked. “We know a little more about what happened.”

I led him to the kitchen where I could brew more coffee for both of us. He turned on his belt audio and flipped through his notebook briefly. The coffee maker gurgled while I waited for what he had to say. He sighed and ran his hand quickly from the back of his skull to his brow as if he might squeegee his thoughts forth. He looked at me. “One of the benefits of living in Moscow is that we don’t have many crimes with fatalities, so we were able to get a post mortem pretty quickly. I have confirmation from the dental records now. The remains are indeed Mr. Mason’s. The truck pointed us that way, but of course we had to be sure.” His mouth momentarily settled into a firm line. “As you know, Mr. Mason apparently entered the barn that morning with the intention of committing arson, burning Ms. Thornfield’s barn and your horse with it. His motive now appears clear. What was less clear at first was why he hadn’t escaped. His truck was parked in the barn aisle. He had two packed suitcases in the cab; both escaped damage from the fire. All evidence suggests he had planned to run.”

I poured the coffee, which he took black but heavily sugared. As he stirred his cup, the sugar crystals scraped against ceramic. “Ms. Edson, I don’t know how to tell you this, but it seems only right that you should know. Mr. Mason must have been very disturbed. He had a pair of bolt cutters with him that morning. The best we can figure is, after starting the fire, he went into the stall and attempted to cut the horse’s tail off.”

I stared at the detective, unable to process what he was telling me. “You’re saying that as if Dave was some kind of sadist. You couldn’t have known him. He was a little off kilter at the end, but that’s … that’s…” I had no words to finish my thought.

“We don’t know if that part was pre-meditated. Being in construction, he may have just had them in his truck, but the marks on the bone match those that the cutters would impart.”

I stared at him, wondering if he had told Jenny this. Somehow, the arson seemed believable, but this was too much. Dave said I understood him, but he’d gone beyond me. This made no sense. The Dave I’d known was not so cruel, so hateful.

“At any rate,” he continued, “the horse kicked, breaking Mr. Mason’s leg. He sustained a segmental comminuted fracture of the femoral shaft, preventing him from making it out. Either pain or smoke inhalation caused him to lose consciousness.”

Not “the horse
,” I thought.
Foxfire
. He should have named him. Foxfire deserved that much. Instead, his identity was erased while Dave’s was preserved in formal terms: Mr. Mason. I fought against the story he’d told. Foxy’s final moments were horrific enough. “Foxfire has never kicked a soul in his life,” I said. Kicking was what Zephyr did.

Detective Watson ignored my comment. “It was unclear to us why Mr. Mason would try to do something so,” he stopped and struggled to find the word. Perhaps “sick,” “twisted,” “depraved” carried too much judgment. He was supposed to be an impartial witness to the facts, merely sorting them into a narrative that explained the evidence. No appropriate word came, and he moved on. “The truth is, we don’t understand this part of the crime. From what his wife tells us, Mr. Mason had no documented history of psychological instability. I suppose it will remain a mystery. Human behavior usually is.”

“Does she knows Dave’s dead then? Jenny?”

“We waited until after we were confirmed the identity to tell her, but yes, now she knows. She, um, she doesn’t think much of you right now.” The detective moved his hand over his scalp again then smoothed his pant legs.

“It’s my fault.”

“I’ll be writing my report tonight, and there certainly will be no charges against you. I know that doesn’t help with guilt, but Ms. Edson, I’m not sure you could have prevented this. You just fell in with a bad character. Mr. Mason was unwell.”

My hand shook as I reached for my coffee mug. Dave had cheated me out of a showdown. He’d lassoed the sun and pulled it up to high noon when I couldn’t be there to walk my ten paces and face him. Bolt cutters. Christ.