Remember (7 page)

chapter twelve

Y
ou know someone is a good friend if they are willing to help you shovel horse shit.

Win tossed a rake full of dirty straw and shavings into a wheelbarrow and then stopped to brush her hair out of her eyes. “I have no idea what doing stuff like this is supposed to teach a person. Parents talk a big game about how they’re teaching us a lesson, but what the hell is the lesson supposed to be? That life is unfair? Most of us know that already.”

I dumped another load into the wheelbarrow. My arms were already aching. “I have no idea.” My parents had told me that being grounded wasn’t punishment enough. In fairness, having to hang around our giant house—which had every electronic device known to man, spa bathrooms, a media room, and a sauna—wasn’t exactly a real hardship. My dad wanted
me to clean the bathrooms, but we already had a maid who came twice a week and did them. Wiping down already-clean counters wasn’t rough. They called Laura and arranged for me to go to the barn and muck out the stalls. I think they thought that was an appropriate amount of shit for me to be dealing with. Win came with me, which was cutting the work in half and giving us a chance to hang out, since I was only allowed to go to school and the barn.

“It’s a good thing I like your company,” Win said. “The things I do to spend time with you.”

I tossed her my water bottle. “I owe you one.”

“One?” Win’s perfectly tweezed eyebrow arched. “Oh, I think when we get into ruining-manicure territory, we’re talking about more than one. We’re talking a big favor here. If I need an organ, I expect you to cough up a kidney no questions asked.”

“Any organ I’m not using is all yours.”

“And I want a chance to ride your new horse when you get it.” Win hefted a bag of shavings over her shoulder and started to spread them around.

“
If
I ever get another horse,” I said.

“Your dad will back down. He loves telling people about his future Olympian. If he can’t brag, how will everyone know how fabulous he is?”

“He’s not like that.” He was exactly like that, but it bothered me when other people noticed.

Win paused to wipe her brow. “You don’t have to defend him all the time.”

“I don’t.”

“Parents are supposed to be annoying. It’s their job.” She waved off whatever I was about to say. “You think about what kind of horse you might get? Vanners are nice.”

“And cost about twenty thousand.”

Win shrugged like it wasn’t a big deal. “Insurance should cover some of it. How much did your dad have on Harry?”

“I don’t know.” I pushed the wheelbarrow out to the back of the barn and dumped the dirty hay and came back in to hang up my rake. “I’m guessing now isn’t the best time to ask him either. I’m doing my best to fly under the radar until all of this blows over.”

“Laura would have a copy of any insurance policies in her office,” Win said.

A flutter of excitement rippled through my stomach. “Think she would let us see them?”

Win cocked her hip. “Never ask permission when there’s a chance they’ll say no. Much easier to apologize later.” She headed over to Laura’s office.

I trailed after her, my rubber Wellington boots squeaking on the floor. “I’m not sure this is a good idea. Adding breaking and entering to my crimes isn’t going to get me off my parents’ shit list anytime soon.”

Win turned the knob. The door clicked open. “Look! No
breaking required. It’s unlocked.” She paused in the doorway. “Honestly, would Laura care we were in her office? If you were coming in here to use the phone or grab a bridle, would you even think about it?”

“No,” I hedged.

“There you go.” Win slipped inside.

I looked around to make sure none of the grooms were near and followed her. Laura’s office might have been in a barn, but it looked like it could have been a fancy library in a British estate. The back wall was floor-to-ceiling bookcases stuffed with everything from books about various horse breeds to the mystery novels she liked to read. Her desk was an antique rolltop, one of those ones with all the little cubbyholes for papers. Next to the desk were two modern metal file cabinets that looked out of place.

Win was already kneeling by the desk and sliding open one of the file cabinet drawers.

“I’m not sure we should go through her stuff.” I hovered near the door.

“I’m not planning to read her diary. It’s not like she’s going to keep a list of her sexual history out here. All of this is stuff related to the stable. Besides, we’re looking for paperwork on your horse. Technically, they’re your records.”

I had a sinking feeling that if Laura came around the corner and saw us elbow deep in her things, she wasn’t going to see it that way. Win shut one drawer and moved on to the
other cabinet. Her fingers ran quickly over the tabs, her bright red nails flashing. She pulled out a folder and held it aloft.

“Bingo.” She plopped the file on the desk and I stood next to her. The folder had Harry’s official name, Hermes of Caelum, on it. Win flipped past copies of the invoices for his boarding and farrier bills. There was a copy of his original registration papers, and in the back of the stack was the insurance sheet.

Win whistled. “Girl, you can get yourself a fine horse.”

I saw the insurance amount, but something else caught my eye. I pointed at it. “Hey, check that out.”

Win shrugged. “So?”

“It’s the date that we took ownership, but that’s the year before I was born.”

Win shot me a look. “I thought you got the horse for your sixth birthday.”

“I did.” I stared at the page as if I expected the numbers on it to change. It didn’t make sense. I remembered getting Harry. I remembered every bit of it. Neither of my parents were interested in horses; why would they have bought one for themselves? Why would they have kept a horse hidden until my sixth birthday? I was all for a birthday surprise, but planning one before someone was even born seemed a bit excessive.

“We should go,” Win said, suddenly sounding nervous. She went to sweep the papers back in the folder.

“Hang on.” I whipped out my phone and took a couple
of photos of the page before sliding it into the folder and then shutting the file cabinet with a click.

Win stuck her head out to make sure the coast was clear. We left, pulling Laura’s office door closed behind us. We went up to the empty lounge that overlooked the indoor arena, and Win fired up the cappuccino machine. “Well, that was weird,” Win said, summarizing my feelings. “What are you going to do with the pictures? Very spy thriller to think of taking them, by the way. You know I love it when you’re all sneaky.”

“I don’t know. I wanted a copy.” I didn’t tell her the first thought that had come into my head: If something happened later and the file disappeared, I wanted proof. I sounded paranoid. I leaned back on the leather sofa and tried to relax. The lounge at Hampton Mews was better than most people had in their home. Money can’t buy everything, but it can make a barn into a palace. An image of the date kept flashing in my head. “It doesn’t make sense, does it?”

Win watched out the window to the arena below. A group of young kids were practicing cantering in a circle. “Not really. Could be one of those things where once you know the answer it will make perfect sense. Might be a simple typo or something.”

“Maybe.” I watched the horses run around in the paddock below. Win didn’t like conflict. If she could believe in an easy answer, she would. “Lately it feels like a lot of stuff’s not making sense in my life.”

“The false memory thing?” Win asked. I’d told her Josh’s theory about what I was experiencing. I’d even looked it up. He wasn’t wrong about the brain screwing with a person. Memory was pretty fluid. I read one study that talked about the weakness with eyewitness testimony. If people saw a robbery and then were asked to pick who they saw out of a lineup later, their minds would replace the image of who they saw with the person in the lineup. Even if later they saw the real criminal, they wouldn’t recognize him. The other story that freaked me out had to do with how other people could mess with your memory. They’d done this study where they had people tell a family member a totally made-up memory:
Remember when you got lost at the mall and fell into the fountain?
The person would at first say they didn’t remember it. Then the family member would add more details:
You must remember. You were wearing that red coat. The one with the buttons shaped like little boats.
The subject would then start remembering the situation, even though it had never happened. Even after they were told it was a fake memory, most of them would argue, saying that it couldn’t be fake—they remembered it too clearly. What I’d learned from my research so far was that the brain was a weird thing and not to be trusted.

Of course, if you can’t trust your own memory, you’re sort of screwed. That pretty much summed up my life at the moment.

“This would be when I should admit you were right; I
shouldn’t have had the procedure,” I said to Win. “All I wanted was to stop feeling so lousy about Harry, and now everything is a million times worse.”

Win sighed. “I think it started with Harry, but that wasn’t all,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong; I got why you were upset. Harry was an awesome horse.” Her voice trailed off.

“But,” I said.

“But you seemed over-the-top upset. There was something not right about it. Off.”

“I had Harry since I was a little girl.” I felt the need to justify how I had acted, even though I was uncomfortable with it myself.

“Apparently, you had him since before you were born. And even if what you remember is right, isn’t that weird? To get a Hanoverian for a six-year-old? They’re huge. It’s not exactly a starter horse. I always thought that was strange.”

I felt the fight ooze out of me. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I could try to debate it or try to understand it. “What do you mean about me acting off?”

“Like I said, I expected you to be sad—it was an awful thing, and I know you really loved him—but I still thought you would act like you.”

I rubbed my head. “What do you mean, I should have acted like me?”

“Positive. Trying to find something good out of the situation.”

I sighed. “God, I must be annoying.” I flashed on an image of one of those Disney princesses singing a fa-la-la-la song to a bunch of chipmunks, completely oblivious to the fact that someone is trying to slip her a poisoned apple.

Win smiled. “Sure, you’re irritating sometimes, but on the whole I like you that way. You do things. You don’t sit back. You’re always looking for a way to turn a situation around, to make something positive out of something shitty. I thought you’d use what happened to Harry as motivation to raise money for the SPCA in his memory or become a vet so you could find a cure for colic. That’s more your typical MO.”

Her words felt like a blow. As soon as she said them, I knew she was right. It was almost as if I could step outside myself and see an alternate path. One where I responded to Harry’s death by making it matter instead of sitting back and doing nothing. Donating money to a camp that helped disabled kids learn to ride, or to stop animal abuse. “Something’s wrong with me.”

Win was quiet for a second. “I think you might be right. The question is, what’s next?”

I jumped off the stool. “I figure this out and find a way to make it better. After all, that’s what I do.”

chapter thirteen

T
hey say there’s no place like home, but anyone who says that has clearly not seen my hometown. I was born in a small town. It’s close to Washington State University in the southeast part of the state. My dad went to school there, and for the first few years after graduation he worked in their research labs. Our family moved to Seattle not long after he founded Neurotech, just before I turned ten. I couldn’t remember us ever going back to visit. We didn’t have any family in the area, and now that I was driving into town, I realized why we didn’t stop by just for the heck of it. The place looked boring with a capital
B
. I could have checked most things on the Internet or by calling around, but I’d hoped that if I went there in person, I would have some flash of insight, shake something free in my brain.

My only insight so far was that this town was clearly where run-down strip malls went to die. On each side of the road there were clusters of stores: payday loans, dollar stores, shoe outlets, and every fast-food emporium known to man. The kind of place where the hair salons have those annoying names like the Kwick Klip and Wild Hair. Everything looked washed out. The snow had melted a few weeks ago and mud was everywhere. Not much looked familiar, although when I passed the Dairy Queen I had a memory flash of going there as a kid for ice cream cones dipped in the waxy chocolate.

I turned off the main road. I really hoped this five-hour drive wasn’t going to be a huge waste of time. I didn’t mind the long drive—I was used to going a long way for a horse shows—but I didn’t want this to be pointless. As far as my parents knew, I was staying at Win’s for the night, while in reality I was driving back and forth across the state. I’d just been taken off my official grounded status. Technically I was still on parole, and I was already lying again.

I glanced down at the passenger seat and the handwritten directions. Win had loaned me her SUV, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out her GPS. Her car had more gadgets than seemed possible. If a rocket launcher had popped up from the roof, it wouldn’t have surprised me at all. I couldn’t even figure out the radio. It kept randomly skipping stations. I didn’t like driving Win’s SUV. It felt too much like trying to control a school bus.

I didn’t have my own car. I’d been promised one for graduation, but until then my parents felt I could use theirs. It wasn’t like there weren’t enough to choose from. My dad had three cars. There was a restored two-seater 1960s Aston Martin sports car that he only took out on sunny days. Most of the time it sat in our garage, where he could go out and buff it with a soft cloth. It was his “I’m James Bond” fantasy car. He had a BMW sedan that he drove most days, and a big SUV that he drove when the weather was bad. He said we needed the SUV in case we ever needed to move or haul things. My mom didn’t even bring up the fact that we weren’t the type to move or haul things ourselves. If we bought something large, we would pay to have it delivered. She just smiled and rolled her eyes when he brought it home. The thing drank gas like it was its own mini environment-destroying machine. My mom had a Lexus, which I drove most of the time if I needed a car. The problem was there was no way she wouldn’t notice me putting a spare six hundred miles on it. Thus I was stuck trying to maneuver Win’s giant luxury SUV on this road trip.

I cruised past a church, and another memory clicked into place. We used to go there. I could remember shifting in the pew, my butt growing numb from sitting on the hard wood, and how I wanted to go home where I could watch cartoons on TV. We didn’t really attend church much anymore. Sometimes at Christmas we’d go, but that was it. I couldn’t remember when we’d stopped going on a regular basis.

I coasted to a stop in front of the elementary school. I got out and walked around the squat one-story building. There was no one around on a Saturday. I cupped my hand to the glass and peered in the windows of a classroom. Around the tops of the walls the teacher had hung brightly colored letters and numbers. They’d cut out tulips from construction paper and taped them along the rail to the whiteboard. There weren’t any desks, just large tables with itsy-bitsy chairs pulled up around them. It seemed impossible that I’d ever been that small. I strolled around to the side of the building. The playground was covered in a thick carpet of wet pine needles from the giant trees that ringed the outside. There was a row of swing sets and a climbing gym shaped like a pirate ship.

I sat on the swing and pushed off and tried to remember what I could. The school was familiar. I had a flash of walking down the hall to the cafeteria, jumping between the black and white checked tiles. My second-grade teacher was Ms. Klee. Someone in my class had spilled water on my art project, and when I cried, Ms. Klee let me be the leader of the line for the whole week. I’d broken my arm in this playground. I’d been standing on the swing, and when I jumped off, my pants got snagged in the chain, and I fell face-first and broke the fall by sticking my arm out. My memories felt almost like photographs, short images, some bright and clear, others distant and fuzzy. Some disappeared entirely the moment I tried to focus on them. There were also big black holes. I could remember
breaking my arm, but when I tried to remember Mom taking me to the hospital, there was nothing. I remembered Ms. Klee being nice to me, but I couldn’t even remember who my teacher was in fourth grade.

Win described her memories like a bread-crumb trail. One memory would jog another and that would lead to another until they started to string together into a longer story. My memories were more solo. If they had ever been connected, the string that held them together had dissolved long ago. Win also seemed to remember more about when she was young. We couldn’t decide if that was because she had a better memory, because she’d had a more interesting childhood, or if there was something off about me.

I walked back to the car. Seeing the school hadn’t knocked anything useful free; maybe my childhood home would. Our house wasn’t far from the school. I drove there without having to look at the map; there was some memory at least. I parked across the street and stared at our old home. Clearly, things in our lives had changed a lot since my dad started his own company. The house was even smaller than I remembered. We could fit it three or four times over into our current place. It was a small brick bungalow that looked like it must have been built a long time ago. The whole neighborhood was full of old houses. There was a bike lying on its side in the driveway. A group of kids a few houses down were running around in the front yard playing some version of football, or possibly trying
to kill one another. It looked like a regular neighborhood, one that screamed “average America” and got used in political commercials during election years.

I stared at the house, waiting for something to happen. Nothing. There were a few more snapshot memories. We used to have the Christmas tree right in the front window. My bedroom had pink curtains, and I didn’t like them; they were too girly. I wanted something more grown-up. In the kitchen there was a built-in alcove with benches for the table. I could picture the layout of the rooms and how at Halloween we kept a giant wooden bowl filled with the candy on a small marble table by the front door. I could remember a birthday party with clown cones from Baskin-Robbins. My best friend had been a girl named Nicole. She’d convinced me we could camp out in the backyard during the summer, but we’d gotten scared and run inside before midnight. I remembered the house was a collection of odds and ends. Not like now, where my mom bought furniture by the roomload, designed to go together. Back then our idea of design was just having things that were mostly clean.

I’d really hoped that seeing my hometown would make a difference, but I had no more information than I’d had before I came. I had one last stop before I was going to need to turn around and head back to Win’s place. It was my last chance to figure something out. I had no memory of where we’d stabled Harry when I was little. There was only one large stable that
advertised it was available for boarding, but in this area there would be a lot of farms that would have taken in private boarders. If we hadn’t kept Harry at the big stable, I had no idea how I’d find out what private barn we’d used. I crossed fingers I’d get lucky.

Rolling Meadows was at the end of a long road. A road that had last been repaved some time around the Revolutionary War, based on the giant potholes that were large enough to nearly eat Win’s SUV. The front paddock had a group lesson going on, with four young riders trotting in a circle around the instructor. I watched them for a few minutes before going inside.

An older woman polishing a saddle looked up. “Can I help you?”

“I think I used to used to board my horse here, and I wondered if you might have the old records,” I said.

She stood up and brushed her hands off on her jeans. “How long ago?”

“I’m not sure when we started.” I didn’t add that the whole reason I wanted to see the records was to check the dates. “We moved the horse eight years ago.”

She shook her head. “’Fraid you’re outta luck then. We shred records after seven years.”

“Maybe you remember him? His name was Hermes of Caelum, but we called him Harry.”

“Sorry. I’ve only been here a few years.”

My hopes fell to the floor in a limp heap. I’d been sure that
if I saw things from my childhood again, memories would fall into place, or there would be a big “aha!” moment, but the trip had been for nothing. “Okay, thanks.”

She snapped her fingers. “Hey, you should check with Juan. He’s been here forever. He might remember.”

A jolt of adrenaline hit my system. “Where do I find him?” If she told me he was on vacation, I was going to start screaming. My emotions couldn’t handle much more of the roller coaster.

She jerked her head toward the door. “He’s out back working with one of the colts.”

I spotted him right away as soon as I stepped outside. He had a young horse on a lunge lead. The horse would start to rear, and then Juan would lean forward and make a soft clucking noise in the horse’s face. He might have been in his fifties, or he could have been a hundred and ten. His skin was as worn as an old saddle left outside for a few summers.

He saw me standing there and nodded to let me know he’d be with me when he could. I watched, impressed. He had the touch. A regular horse whisperer. You could see the horse responding to his slightest movement. He circled the horse a few more times before he slipped the bridle off and stroked its nose. Juan whacked the horse on the side and let it run loose.

“Pretty horse,” I said, leaning over the fence.

“They’re all pretty. Just sometimes it’s easier to see.” He smiled, his teeth flashing white in contrast to his dark skin.
“Some wear it on the outside, some on the inside. The really blessed have it both in and out.”

“I’m looking for information about a horse that might have been boarded here years ago. Hermes of—”

“Harry.” He kicked a clot of dirt with his boot.

My heart lurched. “You remember him?”

“Hard to forget him. He’s a beauty.”

My eyes filled with tears, surprising me. I’d thought the feelings were gone. “He died.”

Juan pulled off his gloves and wiped the sweat off his face. “Sorry.”

I liked that he didn’t say anything else. He just let me be sad. I quickly rubbed my eyes to clear them. “I was hoping to fill in some blanks about when he was young. Do you happen to know how long he boarded here?”

He shrugged. “Jeez, hard to say. I’m not much for keeping a calendar. It was a long time ago.”

“What do you remember about him?”

Juan paused. I appreciated that he was thinking about it. He wasn’t giving me a flip answer. “Spirited. Loved to jump, that horse. You can train just about any horse to show, but some of ’em, some of ’em love it. You can see it.”

I smiled. Harry had loved it.

“You’re the little girl, ain’t ya?”

I jerked and he laughed.

“Not that hard to figure out. You got the same smile. I
remember you on that horse even when you was a wee bitty thing.”

“Do you recall when I got the horse? Was it for my sixth birthday?” I held my breath, waiting for him to answer. I wasn’t sure which way I wanted him to answer—confirming what I’d always known or opening up a whole new option that was starting to seem more and more real.

He burst out with a laugh. “Sixth birthday? Where’d you get that idea? Child, you were riding that horse when you were still in your mama. I used to tease her that she was going to push you out into the world while in the saddle.”

“My mom?” I was confused. She hated horses.

“One of the best horsewomen I ever met. When you was a baby, she would put you in one of those baby slings around her chest and trot around the ring with you on the horse. We joked that you were going to ride before you walked, and that was pretty much true.”

I strained to make sense of it. My mom had zero interest in horses. I couldn’t remember her ever riding. She didn’t even like to be around the barn when I was there, let alone on a horse. She’d always maintained she was scared of them, and she sure acted afraid. She backed away quickly when Harry got too close, like she thought he was going to chase after her. And why did I remember getting Harry for my birthday if he’d been around since before I was born?

“You okay?”

I looked up, almost surprised to see Juan still there. “Yeah. I’m okay.” It was a lie, but there wasn’t anything else I could say.

“Wish I could be more help. Anything else I can tell you?” He rested his boot on the fence rail, but I could see him glance quickly at the colt. He had work to do.

I shook my head no and thanked him for his time. There’s no right way to ask someone what’s wrong with you. And even if I did ask, he wasn’t going to have any answers, but I had a hunch who might.