Carole (5 page)

Dear Kate,

Sorry it took me, like, two months to write back to your last letter. It kind of got lost for a little while. Actually, I just found it stuck in with the information packet from Moose Hill (that’s the riding
camp where Stevie, Lisa, and I go every summer, in case you forgot), which arrived in the mail the same day back in May.

Anyway, it sounds like you and everyone out at the Bar None are doing pretty well—or at least you were back in May! You’ll have to write back and let me know how things are going out there these days. I’m sure you’re busy with hordes of dudes who are thrilled with all the wonderful people and horses at the Bar None (not to mention your mother’s fantastic cooking!). In the meantime, I have some good news and some bad news to report.

I’ll start with the good news. I’m sure Stevie would say I shouldn’t give it away right at the start, so I’ll give you the background first. Have we ever told you about Pine Hollow’s Fourth of July picnic? We hold it every year, and it’s always lots of fun. All the riders and their parents and friends are invited, and Max fires up the barbecue and serves hamburgers and hot dogs and stuff while everyone talks about horses.

This year Stevie and Lisa and I already knew it was going to be even more special than usual. See, we decided it was past time for Max to settle down with some nice, horsey woman. He’s seemed kind of lonely lately, and besides, we wanted to make sure he would have some heirs to take over Pine Hollow someday, just like he took it over from his father, and his father took it over from
his
father before that.

But you know Max—he hardly ever thinks about anything except horses, horses, horses. Normally there’s nothing at all wrong with that, but in this case we were afraid it might keep him from finding the wife of his dreams. So we decided to step in and make it a Saddle Club project.

We figured the picnic would be the perfect place for Max to meet lots of new people, so we invited all the young, attractive
single women we know. They all showed up, along with the usual crowd, and everything seemed to be going pretty well. The weather was hot and sunny, the sodas were cold, and everyone was enjoying themselves. Max and Mrs. Reg seemed a little confused about all the extra people we’d brought, but they didn’t ask too many questions, so we didn’t offer too much information.

At one point we were talking to Max (and introducing him to some more of the women) when he mentioned that he wanted to make an important announcement. Not right then, though—he scurried off toward the tack room to “take care of things,” and we were a little afraid that we’d scared him off. You know, by overwhelming him with so many beautiful, intelligent women.

We were getting hungry at that point (if you think babysitting little kids is tiring just try baby-sitting thirteen adult women sometime!), so we went to get in line for burgers while we were discussing Max’s behavior. Mrs. Reg and Deborah Hale—oh, I almost forgot to tell you, Deborah’s this newspaper reporter who’s been hanging around Pine Hollow doing research—anyway, the two of them were cooking. We were a little surprised to see Deborah there, since we figured Max would be too busy during the picnic to help her with her research.
Especially
since he had his hands full with tons of single women as well as the usual horses and students and stuff!

In any case, she didn’t seem to be having much fun. She kept squinting and wiping her eyes from all the smoke blowing into her face, and it didn’t help her mood at all when she noticed that some of the hamburger meat was green. It turned out it was just Stevie’s brother Chad’s way of getting back at her for turning his underwear pink (don’t ask!). He had dyed the meat green with food coloring before she brought it over to Pine Hollow. (We volunteered to bring some of the food for
the picnic since we were inviting so many extra guests.) The green meat thing was actually sort of funny once we figured it out, but I guess Deborah wasn’t amused. Mrs. Reg smoothed things over, though, and we suggested that Max give his demonstration for the beginning riders. He was muttering something about his big announcement, but we figured that could wait a few more minutes.

The demonstration went really well, we thought. All the women seemed interested in what Max was teaching them, and he took his time with each one of them, which we thought was a good sign. I was especially excited when he recognized my old riding teacher from Quantico, Margery Tarr, and it turned out they knew each other already. (Margery didn’t need to learn anything at the beginners’ demonstration, of course, but she was interested in seeing Max’s teaching methods, since she’s an instructor herself.) They seemed to like each other so much that for a few minutes I was sure she would end up being the one. But then Max says, “Hey, Margery, are you still seeing that same guy?”

“I sure am,” Margery replied. “And he still refuses to learn to ride. I guess blah blah blah.”

Okay, she didn’t really say “blah blah blah” at the end. Probably not, anyway. I didn’t hear a word because I was so disappointed.

Still, at least Max had twelve other women to choose from, and I figured they were all madly in love with him by then, so I wasn’t too worried. I
was
kind of surprised to hear that Margery was in love with someone who didn’t even ride, though. I mean, she’s just about as horsey as a person can be. Sometimes adults are hard to figure out, you know?

I didn’t have much time to think about that, though. There was a shout from the direction of the barbecue pit, and when we turned to see what was happening, we saw flames.

“Oh no!” Deborah yelled.

Mrs. Reg had been standing near us, watching Max’s lesson, but she acted fast. There was a bucket of partly melted ice nearby. She grabbed it, ran toward the barbecue, and sloshed it over the fire.

“Nothing to worry about!” she called. “A hamburger just caught fire for a second.” Then she turned to Deborah. “Are you okay?” she asked her more quietly.

Deborah nodded, but I thought she still looked pretty upset. I’m not sure, but I think there were even tears in her eyes.

“Is she all right?” Max asked, looking worried.

Stevie was closest to him, so she answered. “Yeah, it looks like the smoke really got to her, though.” She looked at Deborah. “You should splash your eyes with cold water!” she yelled to her helpfully.

Deborah didn’t answer. She just turned and ran into the stable. We had no idea what was wrong with her. And we didn’t have much time to worry about it, since all those women were still waiting for Max to go on with his demonstration.

Anyway, she reappeared a little while later, after the riding demonstration was over. Stevie had helped Mrs. Reg finish the cooking, and by then everyone had moved on to dessert. Max was talking to a whole group of women about the history of Pine Hollow. After a little while, though, he got up and went to get some more dessert.

We followed him, pretending we were still hungry, too. “Are you having a good time?” Stevie asked him innocently.

“I’m having a marvelous time,” Max said. “Your friends are really great fun. It was a good idea to invite them. And now I think I’ll sit with my mother. I want to talk with her for a moment.”

“Oh, no!” I blurted out, thinking about our plan. Not wanting Max to catch on, I quickly added, “I mean, please sit with us. It’s the big picnic, and it only comes once a year.”

Max hesitated, but then he gave in. “All right, if it really means so much to you. I suppose I can speak with Mother later. But I do have an announcement to make,” he added firmly.

“An announcement?” Stevie asked. “Oh, I get it.” She waved her hands to silence the crowd. “Everyone, Max has an announcement to make. And that is that the mounted games demonstration will start in five minutes. So get your seats now!” She turned back to Max. “Good thinking. We’ve got to keep this show on the road, or the fireworks will be starting before we know it.”

That’s another Pine Hollow tradition—watching the Willow Creek town fireworks from that little hill behind the stable. It’s a great spot to see them from.

“Actually,” Max said, “that wasn’t the announcement I had in mind. But it’s all right. I’ll make it later.”

After that we all got to work setting up for the games. The costume race and the relay races went very well. Everyone seemed to enjoy watching them, and I
know
my friends and I had fun doing them.

Then it was time for the grand finale—Stevie’s favorite, the super soaker target shoot. Before we got started, though, we noticed one problem. One of the targets we’d set up was tipping over because the easel holding it had broken.

Lisa and I just kind of stood there and stared, not sure what to do. But Stevie thought fast. She told us that she noticed Deborah standing on the outskirts of the crowd, looking kind of out of it, and she figured this would be a perfect way to get her involved in things and maybe help her have some fun at the picnic. So she
asked her if she would mind standing in for the broken easel—holding up the target.

Deborah agreed. I guess she was happy to have something to do. In no time at all, everything was ready to go.

Just as Stevie had predicted, the crowd loved the game. People roared when the riders missed wildly, and they cheered on their favorite riders. I’m pretty sure most of them—even the adults—were wishing they could take a turn with the water guns themselves.

Stevie was very pleased with the reactions, of course. “Everyone seems to be having a blast,” she said at one point, looking around with satisfaction.

Betsy Cavanaugh was standing nearby and overheard our conversation. She pointed to Deborah. “Everyone but that poor woman holding up the target, you mean.”

We all looked over at Deborah. Most of the water that missed the targets (and that was a
lot
of water) was hitting her, and she didn’t look too happy about it. “Gee,” Stevie said, looking worried. “I thought she might enjoy getting splashed. I guess I was wrong.”

Stevie was ready to stop the game right then and there, since Deborah obviously wasn’t having any fun. But we decided five more minutes wouldn’t make much difference, so we continued, figuring we could apologize to Deborah later.

But after the race ended, we were all so excited that we sort of forgot about her for a little while. We were too busy talking about the games, squirting each other with the leftover water, and so forth. Lisa had noticed Deborah hightailing it to the Regnerys’ house, so we figured she was inside changing into some dry clothes.

But then we heard a door slam, and we saw Deborah coming
out of the house carrying a suitcase. A taxicab had just pulled into Pine Hollow’s driveway, and Deborah headed straight for it without so much as a glance at any of us.

We were all kind of surprised at that, but Max was downright dumbfounded. He stared after the cab with a totally weird look on his face.

“Uh, Max?” Stevie said. “Max?”

He hardly seemed to notice her at first, but then he shook his head. “Not now,” he practically whispered. Then he ran toward the house.

Lisa shook her head as we all stared after him. “I have just one question,” she said. “
What
is going on?”

None of us knew the answer to that. We held a quick Saddle Club meeting to discuss it, trying to figure things out. All we could agree on for sure was that Max seemed pretty upset about something, so we decided to do what we could to help. We got the picnic back into full swing by inviting everyone to help with some easy stable chores, since we figured Max could use some help after the busy day. Most of the guests seemed happy to help with stuff like tossing fresh hay down from the loft and moving fence posts around for the jumping demonstration some of the younger kids were supposed to give. We weren’t sure we could convince them that mucking out stalls was a fun picnic activity, though, so we decided to tackle that one ourselves.

While we were hard at work in the stall closest to the office hallway, we overheard Max and his mother talking inside in urgent, hushed tones.

“Why be stubborn at a time like this?” Mrs. Reg demanded.

“It’s
not
stubbornness, Mother,” Max protested. “I just know there’s nothing I can do.”

“Nothing? That’s not true. You could go after her,” Mrs. Reg said.

“Forget it. It’s no use. She’s never going to speak to me again.”

My friends and I stared at each other, trying to figure out what they were talking about. They mumbled a little bit after that, so we couldn’t understand them. But then Max burst out with his bombshell.

“It’s off!” he exclaimed. “Everything concerning Deborah Hale is off! I’m just thankful I was spared the embarrassment of asking her to marry me in public and then having her run off.”

I don’t know how my friends felt when they heard that, but I felt as if my entire body had just gone numb. I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard, or what it meant. We had ruined the lives of two people. On top of that, we could forget about seeing an heir for Pine Hollow anytime soon.

Stevie was the first one of us to speak. “I have a pit in my stomach the size of a black hole,” she announced.

That pretty much summed it up. We had just realized that all of Max’s weird behavior, all of his patience with Deborah and his absentmindedness lately, was because he was falling in love with her!

We ticked off all the problems we had created for the man we were trying to help. “We brought thirteen single women to the picnic where Max was planning to propose to another woman,” Stevie said.

I winced, remembering something that Max had mentioned to us earlier. “Not only that,” I pointed out, “but he’d told her that the people at the picnic were his best friends.”

“So we made him look like a playboy,” Lisa said.

“And we made her cook green hamburgers,” Stevie added.

Lisa nodded. “And we let her get soaked by squirt guns.”

We went on like that for a little longer before realizing we had
to do something. Max’s current problem was one hundred percent our fault, and we couldn’t just sit around wringing our hands if there was any chance we could fix it.