Amanda always had a betting pool at her tailgate, asking guests to make dollar wagers on each race. The maiden races were pure fun because the horses were unknown and untested in racing, which meant bets were often placed because someone liked an interesting name or the color of the jockey’s silks. The winner always donated the money to one of Amanda’s charities.
Her position as secretary of the Goose Creek Hunt gave her the clout to secure a railside space next to the finish line for her picnic. Although post-time wasn’t until one o’clock, I knew from experience that her party started at eleven when the gates opened. It was twelve-thirty when I parked the Mini on the grass field behind the paddock where dozens of cars and trucks had already lined up in ragged rows. Pépé and I walked toward the enclosed area reserved for patrons, past a line of empty horse trailers. Today all the horses that were racing were foxhunters since the Point-to-Point was the GCH’s annual fund-raiser. Mick, I suspected, would be in the owners’ tent near the stables and the jockeys’ area though he’d promised to join us once the races began.
As we got closer to the paddock I saw Shane Cunningham on a chestnut thoroughbred, talking to Sunny Greenfield. He wore his foxhunting Pinque, the red jacket that supposedly got its name from the British tailor who first made them, and a black hunt cap. Though he wouldn’t be racing, he’d be out in the field once the races started, working as an outrider to bring back any horse that got away from its jockey. He waved an arm over his head when he saw me and Sunny turned around. When we got to the paddock I introduced them to my grandfather.
Sunny was cool but polite. “You’ll have to excuse me. I’d better get going,” she said. “I have an appointment with a client in Charlottesville.”
“You’re missing your own Point-to-Point?” I asked.
“Can’t be helped. I think it may turn into a big job.” She glanced at Shane. “I’ll talk to you later.”
She nodded to Pépé and me. After she left there was an awkward silence and I wondered what she and Shane had been discussing.
“I hear your neighbors are trying to get you to close Highland Farm to the hunt,” he said to me. “Are they giving you much grief?”
I thought about Freddie. “Nothing I can’t handle.”
“Good for you. So we’re still on for Tuesday?”
“Of course.”
“Okay if I come by before that and check the jumps and fences?”
Shane was one of the Goose Creek Hunt’s whippers-in, which meant he not only helped the Master of the Hunt but also was responsible for controlling the hounds—catching stragglers and making sure the pack stayed together as they chased the fox. Though the name sounded savage, a whipper-in didn’t abuse the hounds. Instead he rode ahead with the pack, often alone, before the other members of the hunt joined him.
I was glad he was conscientious enough to check in advance that nothing was damaged or broken before the meet, especially after what happened this morning. If whoever dropped Freddie off at my door decided to do some real harm out in the field, a rider or horse could get hurt.
“Of course you can come by,” I said. “When would you like to do it? We’ve been letting one of Quinn’s friends hunt deer lately since we’re overrun. I need to make sure no one’s out shooting that day.”
“How about Monday morning?”
“Monday’s fine.”
He touched his hand to his cap. “Thanks. I’d better go. They’re calling the riders to the starting line.”
“We’d better go, too,” I said to Pépé.
We got to Amanda’s crowded tailgate as the race, a novice flat, was about to begin. The horses, four-year-olds and up, had never won a race on the flat and would run for a mile and a half on turf only—no jumps or hurdles.
“You’re too late to bet.” Amanda sounded disappointed as we joined her at the fence where a dozen jockeys and horses waited for the starting gun.
“We’ll bet next time,” I said. “Sorry we’re late. I had to take care of something at the vineyard.”
“The riders are up.” The voice, which came over the speaker from the tower next to us, spoke soothingly. A moment later the same calm voice said, “And away they go.”
Amanda watched the course through binoculars as the horses moved farther away. “Good Lord,” she said. “I think I bet on a dud. Well, forget that race.”
“It’s only a dollar. And you give it to charity,” I said.
She lowered her binoculars and clutched her wide-brimmed hat as a gust of wind rustled the leaves in a nearby oak tree and blew others that had already fallen to the ground in a small whirlwind around us. “I still like to win,” she said. “Come on. Let’s get some champagne.”
We made our way through a crowd of her friends and family who clustered around the buffet tables or congregated in small groups with their food and drinks. A few older guests sat in the camping chairs, which had been arranged in rows facing the racecourse. People dressed up for these parties—women wore dresses or skirts and jackets with jewelry or scarves with foxes or horses on them. Men dressed in blazers, buttoned-down shirts, and khakis; the horses and foxes showed up on ties, cuff links, and belts.
The fashion exception was a teenage girl who leaned sulkily against Amanda’s car with the martyred expression of someone who’d been ordered to show up or else. Black makeup and clothes—lips, eyes, and nail polish on chewed fingernails went with tight, ripped jeans, high-topped black laceless sneakers, and a ratty jacket. Her lower lip and nose were pierced and she wore a studded leather collar around her neck that looked like it belonged on a dog. It took me a moment to recognize Amanda’s daughter Kyra. The last time I’d seen her, a few years ago at a landowner’s party given by the Goose Creek Hunt, she’d been a pretty, sweet-faced girl with honey-colored hair. Now the hair was midnight black and streaked red like bloody stripes.
Amanda noticed her, too. “Excuse me a moment,” she said and walked toward her daughter. She kept her voice low but Kyra, who looked as though she’d come to prove a point and embarrass her mother, did not.
“I told you I didn’t want to be here.” She folded her arms and looked away. “There’s nothing wrong with the way I’m dressed. I look fine.”
“Kyra—”
The girl bent and picked up a dirty satchel from the ground. “Can I go now? I have to meet someone. I showed up, didn’t I?”
Amanda looked as though she were trying to salvage whatever she could from the situation. “I want you in by midnight.”
Kyra slung the satchel over her shoulder and gazed at her mother with a look of contempt and incredulity. “I’ll be in when I feel like it.” She turned to leave. “Stupid cow.”
“Kyra!”
Her daughter walked away, head down and satchel bouncing on her back, but with a spring in her step that said she wasn’t sorry she’d just humiliated her mother in front of her friends. I felt sorry for both of them but I knew what I’d just witnessed was probably nothing compared to what went on at home.
After my mother died, Mia decided to pay God and everyone else back for her loss by getting into as much trouble as possible as fast as she could. Her downward spiral and the screaming matches with Leland over boys, school, booze, and drugs scared and exhausted all of us. No one knew if she was prepared to go past the point of no return when there’d be no saving her. I used to lie in bed at night and wonder whose life had become the living hell—Mia’s or the rest of the family’s? Then I would try to recall the past and which cracks she’d slipped through that I’d missed seeing, until finally one day I woke up to find my sweet baby sister had become a raging, rebellious stranger. Though Mia had calmed down since then, we still weren’t out of the woods. Last spring she’d nearly gone to jail after a drunk driving accident had resulted in a death.