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She could still remember standing there, pure humiliation filling her as people walked by. She’d never felt so invisible. She’d never felt so desperate. She’d never gone back.
She plucked a binder from the shelf inside the barn. “How about you inspect, and I’ll make the notes?”
“Sure,” Trey said. Sometimes they argued, but usually only when Beth didn’t want him to do something. He’d claimed he’d love to have TJ follow him around Bluegrass, but Beth didn’t buy that for a second. She hadn’t let her son go next door and bother the cowboys there.
TJ seemed to do whatever he wanted though, and she’d first met Trey when he’d brought TJ home after finding him in the hay loft.
“All right, Buttercup,” Trey said as he unlatched the door. “I’m comin’ in.” He entered the stall, and Buttercup just stood there and looked at him with doleful eyes. He inspected her legs and feet, saying, “She needs new shoes.”
Beth made a note, and she had a feeling a lot of the horses would need new shoes. She quieted the rising panic by reminding herself she had a budget for this.
After the fourth horse, Beth swallowed, breathed, and asked, “Have you heard of the Sweetheart Classic?” she asked.
Trey looked up at her as he exited the stall. “Sure,” he said.
“You guys ever enter that?” She couldn’t quite hold his gaze, and she looked to the fifth stall in the barn.
Trey went toward it. “No,” he said over his shoulder. “Number one, it’s not a qualifying race. Number two, it’s…odd.”
“Odd?” Beth’s heart skipped a beat and then picked it up again.
Trey entered the stall with Midnight Moonlight and did the inspection. “Shoes,” he said. “He’s got something with his teeth too. There’s spots on this side.” He had his hands in the horse’s mouth, and Beth wanted to tell him to be careful.
She made the notes while he joined her. “The Sweetheart Classic isn’t horse racing. It’s an amateur community event.”
“Right,” she said. “There’s still money to be won, and a horse.”
Trey smiled at her like she was a small child with big dreams that would never come true. “I suppose.”
“We can’t all be billionaires,” she said, her idea of asking him to enter the Classic with her disappearing. She turned and left him standing in the barn, her goal the stables past the walking circle and the huge garden she planted every year.
The sight of it made her tired, because it was time to harvest, and she had only done about a quarter of the work. There was much to do following the harvest too. She knew how and had made applesauce in the past. Creamed corn she froze in bags. Pumpkin pie filling. Squash soup.
She didn’t want the food to go to waste, but she couldn’t possibly harvest it all and preserve it too.
“Hey now,” Trey said, catching up to her. “What are you talking about?”
“I want to enter the Classic,” she said, keeping her gaze straight ahead. Talking to him about this while she was slightly irritated with him was actually a good idea. She could deliver the facts and send him home to think about her proposal.
“You’ve got a horse you think can win?”
“Yes,” Beth said. “Somebody’s Lady.”
“Then enter her.”
“She needs some training up,” Beth said. “But I could get her ready. I just can’t enter her.”
“Why not?”
She sighed and paused in the shade of a tall willow oak. In just a few more weeks, all the leaves would turn a beautiful shade of red and fall to the ground. Beth wouldn’t be able to rake them by herself, and she pressed against the hysteria threatening to overtake her.
She just had to keep swimming. She wouldn’t drown.
“It’s theSweetheartClassic,” she said. “Run on or near Valentine’s Day. You can only enter a horse as a…” She cleared her throat. “Only…”
“Married couples who own the horse together can enter.” Trey looked up from his phone, shock plain on his face. “You have to be married to enter the Sweetheart Classic.”
“That’s right,” she said, walking again. Looking at him was too hard.
