THE EARLY-SPRING DEW glistened as dawn struck the lush grass of the Barzonni training paddock. The only disturbance in the chilly air was the heavy snort, rhythmic breathing and thundering hooves of Rowan as Rafe urged his father’s prize Thoroughbred around the second quarter mile of track.
Rafe was far from a professional jockey, and at six foot one, he’d never aspired to the career, but no one knew Rowan’s talent, spirit and desire to run like Rafe did. Every beat of Rowan’s heart matched his own. Blood pulsed through his veins, suffusing his body and mind with oxygen, and Rafe’s lungs filled and exhaled the crisp, clean morning air like an elixir. His exhilaration grew as the horse sped up, and Rafe leaned his head closer to Rowan’s neck, shouting encouragement. He knew Rowan sensed his pride, his own need to push them both to their physical limits. No run was a test or trial. Each one was the end game. It was for the win.
At moments like this, Rafe and the horse were one, moving fluidly through space and time, gobbling up track as if they weren’t part of the real world. Together they were magic.
They were coming up to the third turn, so Rafe pressed his thighs into Rowan’s sides and dug in his heels just enough to communicate it was time for Rowan to unleash all his power.
Rafe and his father had built their home track together, board by board, truckload after truckload of precisely mixed sandy loam, clay and base soil when Rafe was only fourteen. Angelo had always dreamed of owning a Kentucky Derby winner, so they’d fine-tuned their track to the exact specifications of Churchill Downs in Louisville. And no ordinary racehorse would do. Angelo wanted fame, but not necessarily fortune—though his farm had yielded a fairly large one over the years. His four sons were his legacy, but a moment in the winner’s circle would erase all his beleaguered childhood experiences, or so he’d told Rafe. Rafe never once forgot what he was racing for.
Rafe’s father had come to America after living most of his young life on the streets in Sicily. Angelo had told the boys he worked hard because he never wanted anyone to take his land from him. As long as he tilled the earth and watched vegetables grow, he knew he’d never have to scrounge through garbage for a meal. Some townspeople said Angelo was a thief, that he’d stolen bankrupt farms from their neighbors over forty years ago. But Rafe never believed his father had done anything wrong.
The fact was that Angelo was a driven man. His need to control his future and that of his sons overrode everything else in his life. Angelo was not demonstrative or thoughtful. He didn’t often tell his sons or his wife that he loved them. Instead, he toiled from dawn till long past dusk to keep the farm solvent. His hard work had made him wealthy over the years, but Angelo never saw it that way. He was always one failed crop away from destitution. He taught his sons to keep their sights on the abundance that came from the earth.
Angelo was also a man of contradictions. Though he loved horses, he never bet on a race in his life. To him, gambling was the same as burning money. A waste. But the thrill of being victorious at a race, the prestige that came from owning a winner and the possibility that his name would be attached to a horse that made history was Angelo’s dream. And he didn’t believe in half measures. When he realized Rafe shared his love for horses, Angelo did everything he could to encourage Rafe’s passion and involvement in the sport.
Rafe had raced over a dozen Thoroughbreds around this track, but no horse had ever measured up to Rowan. He was the son of a Preakness-winning sire and a mare that had won over a million dollars at Santa Anita, Arlington and other tracks in her lifetime. Rowan had been born to race, and Rafe believed that with the help of their trainer, Curt Wheeling, they were finally about to triumph.
As Rafe and Rowan headed down the final stretch, Rafe tried to imagine what it would be like to be the jockey on Rowan’s back during a professional race. Thousands of spectators would be watching him, critiquing his skills, the nuances of the tugs he gave the reins, the directions he shouted into Rowan’s ears and the lean of his body in the saddle. They would cheer and yell for him, and his boyhood dreams would become reality.
The sound of Rowan’s hooves as they pounded the dirt filled Rafe’s ears. In the distance he could hear his father’s voice rolling toward him like an oncoming storm.
“Push him out, Rafe! Put your knees into him!” Angelo shouted. Rafe could see his father out of the corner of his eye, holding his stopwatch at eye level, and he smiled to himself. Angelo never let that stopwatch drift a quarter inch out of his sight, always fearful he’d miss a split second of vital clocking.
Curt Wheeling pulled off his ever-present cowboy hat and smacked it against the white fence. His thick salt-and-pepper hair sprang into a half-dozen spiky cowlicks. “Let him free, Rafe! Let him take you to the limit!”
Curt also held a stopwatch, the one his father had given him fifty years ago on his sixth birthday. Curt had come from a long line of horse trainers, and the Barzonnis were lucky to have hired him. Curt had been let go from his last job in Texas because the owner wanted a younger man. Since coming to Indian Lake, Curt had fit right in and had bonded with Rowan just as Rafe had.
Rafe heard their instructions and leaned his chest against Rowan’s withers, keeping his head low to reduce wind resistance. When he got this close to the finish line, Rafe always wondered how many seconds faster Rowan would be with a jockey who was sixty pounds lighter and nearly a foot shorter. At the same time, this ride was so thrilling that Rafe couldn’t—wouldn’t—dream of relinquishing the track to anyone else. Angelo always said that if Rowan could run with a lanky, hard body like Rafe’s in the saddle, he could race to the stars with a professional jockey. Training Rowan with an anvil on his back was good for the horse, his father had said.
“C’mon, boy! This is it! Now—fly!”
That was all Rafe had to say. Rowan’s strong legs beat out a rhythm that Rafe had never heard from any horse before. His hooves hit the ground and carried them so fast over the finish line that Rafe wasn’t