Tennessee Reunion Read online

  She did, too, but by the time she finished, she’d been stepped on twice and run in circles.

  Before she went back to her cottage to shower and change to dry clothes, she walked out to the far pasture to give a couple of apple treats to her Trust Fund. “I miss you, big guy,” she whispered when he came up to her and whickered softly. “Maybe there’ll be time for another trail ride tomorrow.” After the minis, it felt strange to lean against his shoulder without being able to see over his back. Tom Thumb could easily walk under his belly. She laughed. Trusty would be horrified.

  While she showered, she considered how best to structure the training for the helper horses. She had already decided Tom Thumb should be her initial candidate. When Vince suggested the same thing, she felt as though Victoria would think he had made the decision.

  That was petty. They were both right. Tom was the obvious choice. He was smart, he was kind, and he liked people. She’d work with all the horses, of course, but she’d ask Victoria to let her focus intensively on Tom first. At this point she wasn’t even sure what behaviors he should be able to do.

  So, first thing was a curriculum. She wanted to speak to someone who needed a helper horse. No one in the area was actually working with one as yet. Should be relatively simple to train Tom Thumb to visit nursing homes, once she’d house-trained him, but that didn’t make him a helper horse. He could be trained to carry saddlebags, but could he learn to open cabinet doors? Could he learn to alert his deaf owner that the phone was ringing? Or his blind owner that he was about to step off a curb or into traffic? Could he walk up stairs? Or ride elevators? Or airplanes? Or escalators? Or ignore dogs and cats and motorcycles? Or children running at him? Or adults petting him when he was working?

  “I have no idea what I’m doing,” Anne said to her reflection. She dragged a comb through her damp hair, pulled on a clean T-shirt and denim shorts, sat down at her desk and called her friend Emma Logan, who lived two miles down the road from Barbara’s clinic.

  “How’s Baby Diana?” she asked.

  “Teething. Don’t ask. You can hear her in the background. What’s up? How’s the new job?”

  “Other than being saddled with Barbara’s vet Vince Peterson, who I would like to slug about half the time? I do not have a clue what I’m supposed to be doing...”

  “Uh-oh. You are coming to dinner tomorrow night, aren’t you? Maybe I can help.”

  “That’s the thing. I need a guinea pig.”

  “Oooh-kay. I don’t have any handy right this minute.”

  “A people guinea pig. I need to know what a person requires in a helper horse.”

  “What about the kids you trained at your old stable?”

  “I’ve talked to them and made notes, but that’s not the same thing as having them right here with the horses.”

  “I haven’t been in the horse show world for a long time. Let me think about it. Maybe I can come up with a couple of candidates for guinea pig of the month.”

  * * *

  THURSDAY EVENING, ANNE, Victoria and her husband, Edward, drove to Emma’s house together for dinner.

  Emma was older than Anne, but their love of horses had created an early bond that remained strong even though they no longer lived close to one another. Emma’s father, David French, and Anne’s father, Stephen MacDonald, had played handball and golf regularly until Stephen married Barbara Carew and moved to Williamston.

  When a newly jobless Emma moved into Barbara’s old cottage, she found herself the foster mother of three orphaned baby skunks. She managed to con her neighbor, Seth Logan, a fish and game officer, into helping her raise the babies. Along the way she and Seth fell in love, married and now had an eight-month-old daughter named Diana. According to Seth, Diana was the smartest and most beautiful child in the history of mankind.

  Anne had found Seth intimidating when she first met him. He arrested poachers, fined people without hunting and fishing licenses, and from time to time had to deal with well-protected marijuana crops and illegal stills.

  Now comparing Seth’s size to Vince’s, Seth didn’t look so intimidating after all.

  After they were settled, the women with white wine, the men with beer, Stephen MacDonald proposed a toast. “Next time, dinner at our new place. Mine and Barbara’s—without horses in the foyer.”

  Barbara added, “We’re near enough finished to sleep there, but we’re far from being ready to entertain anyone.”

  Since they married, Stephen and Barbara had been living in her old apartment attached to the clinic’s stalls, while they built their new house in a grove of woods in the pasture.

  “Vince, are you managing all right living in The Hovel?” Emma asked. Before the renovations, Emma had christened the Victorian cottage she inherited from her great aunt The Hovel. The joke had stuck. Now everyone including the mayor, Sonny Prather, called it that, though Emma’s stepmother, Andrea, a decorator, had turned it into a charming house.

  “I shared a student apartment off campus with three other guys in vet school, then I lived in a bunkhouse in Wyoming the summer I spent there breaking mustangs. The Hovel is palatial by comparison. In our apartment, the roaches battled the geckos for floor space.”

  “Eeew,” Emma said. “Hate roaches.”

  “You love geckos,” said Seth.

  “Not in the house with the baby. Vince, Barbara says your father raises cattle in Mississippi.”

  “On a very large chunk of the delta,” Edward added and lifted his glass to Vince.

  “My family’s homeplace has been added onto over the years. If land was for sale, my family bought it. Then they’d add more rooms onto the house. I could never live there again. Look up ‘dysfunctional’ in the dictionary—you’ll find pictures of my family.”

  “Everybody has a dysfunctional family,” Seth said. “One of these days I’ll take you out fishing and tell you about mine. Least your family could afford to send you to college. I’m going to be paying off student loans until Diana has grandchildren.”

  “Gifts from my family don’t come with strings. They come with bridge cables. Daddy still wants me to practice at home. Look after all his cattle. He’ll build me a clinic...”

  “Watch it, buster,” Barbara said. “You promised when I hired you that you wouldn’t go work for Daddy.”

  “He’d have to send both my brothers up here to hog-tie me and drag me home. Come to think of it, I can whup both my brothers. I think you’re safe.”

  “How about the girl next door?” Anne asked. As the words left her mouth, she wondered why on earth she’d asked. She could feel her face blush, took a drink of her wine and nearly choked.

  “The girl Daddy picked out for me...” He held his hands up. “True, I promise you. He offered to build her a big house down the road from our homeplace, as well as build me that clinic.”

  “Hey,” Seth said. “Not a bad deal. Want to swap?”

  “You’re out of luck, buster,” Emma said. “Diana and I have you and do not intend to let you go. You are stuck with us in Tennessee. You will not, I repeat not, think about moving to Mississippi. Besides, you don’t like cows.” She leaned over and kissed him on top of his head.

  “Oh, shucks, just my luck.”

  Everybody laughed, then Barbara said, “Finish telling us about the girl next door. Imagine turning down an offer like that.”

  “I never asked her, but she would have said no. She lives across the road, not next door. We’re friends, but that’s all we’ll ever be. She’s not interested in anything more. Neither am I. Since all I’ve learned from my father and my brothers is how to get divorced, I plan to avoid divorce by never getting married. Easier in the long run.” He raised his glass. “Cheaper, too.”

  “Hey,” Emma said. “No babies?”

  “Joshua and Cody, my two brothers, each have a pair of boys. What the Brits call an
heir and a spare. I’m off the hook. There are heirs in place after the three of us brothers are gone.”

  “Have girls,” Seth said. “I like them.”

  “You like Diana.” Emma slapped him on the shoulder. “Vince could have holy terrors. Come on, y’all. Let’s eat before Diana wakes up and wants to eat, too.”

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING, Vince joined Anne and Victoria for coffee beside Victoria’s pool in what had become a casual daily staff meeting.

  Anne said, “As of early this morning, I think I’ve found a guinea pig for our training program. Emma reminded me about her last night.” She leaned back on the chaise longue beside the swimming pool and rested her sore neck and shoulders.

  “What are you talking about?” Vince asked.

  “We need someone with actual needs to work with me while I train Tom.”

  Vince sat up. “Whoa, there. Do you have the faintest notion how much trouble you could get into working with a person with disabilities when you don’t know what you’re doing?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do. I have trained blind kids and kids with cerebral palsy. They’ve learned to ride and to drive. One of my carriage driving kids is showing her horse at shows and winning. She’s in a special carriage fitted with a wheelchair. I had a student paralyzed from the waist down. I trained her sixteen-hand Friesian gelding to lie down so she could mount him.”

  “That’s different from relying on a mini horse like Molly to help you while you shop in a big box store.”

  “Not that much. That is why the person who works with us the first time has to have a limited disability that can benefit from having a helper horse, but won’t be in danger if something goes wrong in the initial phases of training.” She topped off her coffee, added artificial sweetener and carefully avoided looking at either Vince or Victoria. “I’ll be working closely and supervising...”

  Vince rolled his eyes. “Do you have any idea how you’re going to accomplish this so-called training? Or where you’re going to find a...” he held up his first and second fingers in a quotation mark gesture “...slightly disabled candidate who’s willing to risk life and limb training an untrained dwarf miniature horse?”

  “Yes, I know how to train the VSE, and I have mentors who are as close as my phone. Yes, I have found my human helper. Thank you for your support, Doctor.” Anne shoved her chair back, took her coffee and stalked off toward her cottage to get ready for today’s problems.

  As she brushed her teeth, she glowered at the mirror. One of these days—and soon—she was going to throttle that man. Unfortunately, he had a point. She needed two things. Very soon when she had done the preliminary work she needed to visit someone who was training minis as helpers. Second, she needed a willing candidate to train with a beginner horse. If she could train one, she could train others.

  * * *

  “VINCE PETERSON, YOU may be a good doctor, but you can be a royal pain with people,” Victoria said.

  Vince raised his hands chest-high in a gesture of surrender. “I’m just sayin’ someone has to keep a hold on reality. It’s too soon to be talking about bringing in someone to work with an untrained horse worked by an untrained trainer.”

  “Anne is not untrained. She was working with a riding for the disabled program in Memphis very successfully until they lost their grant. That was a bad enough blow to her self-esteem. Now here she is trying to do something really good, and all she hears from you is that she’s not smart enough or...”

  “Hey, I never said she wasn’t smart, Victoria. From what I’ve seen, she’s smart and conscientious. She just hasn’t proved she knows how to train the animals. We’ve barely begun teaching these guys to behave, much less do any of the behaviors they need to aid an owner. It’s not supporting the people who need help, and it’s likely a waste of effort.”

  “Then it behooves us to stand behind her any way we can, Vince. She told me you didn’t like her. I can certainly see why she would believe that.” She glanced past his shoulder. “Here she comes. Be nice.”

  “I’m always nice.”

  “Except when you’re not. So, Anne, ready to get started on the hellions?”

  “In a minute.” She set her coffee down and leaned on the table with both hands. “Just listen before you say no. This won’t mean anything to you, Vince, but, Victoria, do you remember Becca Stout?”

  Victoria nodded. “The girl who was so badly hurt at the Florida young rider finals last year? How’s she doing?”

  “What happened?” Vince asked.

  “Her jumper crashed a fence on a cross-country three-day event course, fell on her and rolled. She was wearing a protective vest and a hard hat—otherwise I don’t think she’d have survived. She’s been back and forth to Atlanta for rehab for the past year. Her leg’s healed, and so’s her broken pelvis, but the doctors say she’s never going to be completely free of her balance problems. She had a bad concussion. They induced a coma and kept her in it for nearly a month.”

  “So she’ll never be able to ride again?” Victoria asked. “Oh, dear, she’s a senior in high school, isn’t she?”

  “Actually, somehow, with tutoring she managed to graduate two weeks ago. Her horse, Aeolus, boards at the barn I worked with in Memphis. I was exercising him for her before I came here.”

  “She can’t ride him?” Vince asked.

  “She says she’s like the White Knight in Alice Through the Looking Glass. She can’t stay in the middle of the saddle. I just got off the phone with her. Her horse, Aeolus, has been sold, and it’s killing her. She doesn’t want to be around to see him leave.”

  “I don’t blame her,” Victoria said.

  “Before I got laid off, I was working to move her to carriage driving, but she needs help keeping her balance. She’s a perfect candidate for a helper horse.”

  “Anne, dear.” Victoria patted her knee. “We don’t have a helper horse yet. Heaven knows whether we will ever have a horse that is completely safe for a disabled owner.”

  “That’s the beauty part,” Anne said. “I’ve been working with Becca at my old barn ever since she came home from rehab in Atlanta. She’s been doing yoga and tai chi. Her balance is better, but the doctors say it will never come back a hundred percent. She’s a real horseman, and she’s desperate to do something that will keep her involved with horses, even if only as a groom. She wants to learn along with a mini.”

  “Can she drive a car?”

  “She can drive in town, but she’s not comfortable on the highway yet. I talked to her mother after I spoke to Becca. She’s on board and enthusiastic. Her dad is dead set against Becca having anything to do with horses. He’s scared she’ll try to ride when the doctors forbid it. Her mother says if we don’t find something she can do and fast, she may wind up doing something crazy. It’s not like she’s a beginner. She was in line for a big sponsorship to send her to Germany to train after she graduated from high school. She’s dying to start ASAP. She wants to come up this afternoon. She can stay in the cottage with me. Her mother will drive her up. I’ll take her home Monday morning. See how it goes.”

  Victoria ran a hand down her face. “So soon? Will her mother sign the same hold harmless statement all of my clients sign when they come to board and ride here?”

  “Absolutely. The state of Tennessee says that working with horses is intrinsically dangerous and that the client understands that. So unless we are negligent—which we won’t be—Martin’s Minis is legally safe from a suit. I learned the law when I set up classes at my old barn. If this weekend isn’t successful, we’ll still have learned something.”

  “That you have no idea what you’re doing?” Vince said.

  Victoria glared at him.

  Then Anne glared at him, too. “Among other things.”

  “Which horse are you going to use?”

  “Who else? Tom Thu
mb.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FRIDAY AFTERNOON, ANNE and Victoria watched Becca and her mother park near them at the top of the hill.

  “This is so lame,” Becca said as she climbed out of the front seat of her mother’s Lexus, took a step away and then reached a hand behind her to brace herself against the roof of the car. “Look at that thing in the pasture. That’s not a horse, it’s a skin growth.”

  “It can kick, bite, paw, buck and run away with you. Of course it’s a horse,” Anne said. “Hey, Mrs. Stout. Thanks for driving Becca up.”

  Willa Stout nodded, but kept her eyes on her daughter, who still leaned against the side of the car.

  Becca rolled her eyes. “You’d have to be a doll to actually ride one of the things. Actually, most of the dolls I still have would be too big. This is stupid. I’m going home. Oh my gosh, there’s another one.”

  Out of the shadows under the sycamore tree in the corner of the paddock, Tom Thumb trotted toward Becca.

  “He wants a treat. Have a baby carrot.” Anne handed Becca a truncated carrot. Tom Thumb skidded to a halt and reached across the fence with his lips puckered. “Well, give it to him.”

  With a look of disdain at the stubby little horse, Becca handed the carrot to Tom. He took it gently between his lips, chewed and swallowed, then ducked his head and batted his brown eyes at her. As she turned away from him, he bumped his nose against her forearm and nickered softly. She glanced down at him and whispered, “I swear he’s smiling. Horses can’t smile.”

  “When Tom wants a treat, he can. So give him one.” Anne handed several more miniature carrots to Becca. “He should carry a sign that says, Will Work for Food.”

  Molly joined Tom at the fence and shoved him to get out of her way. She was larger, but his center of balance was lower to the ground, so he didn’t move.

  Becca handed Molly a carrot as well and received a tiny nip from Tom. “Hey! Cut that out.” Tom blinked innocent eyes at her. She reached across the fence and scratched between his ears. For Tom an ear scratch was not as good as a carrot, but it would have to do, so he sighed in momentary ecstasy. Becca snorted.