more for you than bouncing from track to track, living in roach boxes, hoping for a triple to get us out of last week’s hole.”
The waitress returned and set the drink on the table. Mick lifted the glass, gave the woman a wink and took a long swallow. He put the glass down, the look he gave the liquor more appreciative than the one granted the waitress.
“Believe me…” He leaned back too far in his chair. He teetered for a moment, then steadied. “Your child has more.”
She looked at this man who had brought her to a magical place where horses flew and money multiplied and her mother had always laughed long and full while bits of betting slips floated through the air like confetti. “My baby had a birthmark. A small V-shape on his right thigh. The boy with Reid today has the same mark. He’s my child.”
Her father looked down, studied the liquor.
“He’s my child.” She waited. A song started to play on the jukebox. Sudden laughter across the room made her jump, but at their table, there was only silence.
“A blood test will prove it.”
Her father looked up, studied her. “I did it for the boy.” He looked away. “I did it for you.”
She sat perfectly still, fearing one wrong word, one revealing movement, and he’d stop. Her father took a drink, and then another until when he set the glass down, his hand didn’t shake anymore. She held her breath, the blood humming in her head.
“You were in trouble. I was always in trouble. You know all that.” His hand waved a dismissal before reaching for his cigarettes. “We both wanted to give the child more. The Hamiltons could give him more. He’s growing up well taken care of, never wanting. Plus these people aren’t strangers. They’re his real family. He’s with his father, for Pete’s sake.” Mick took a quick drink.
“Reid doesn’t even know the boy is his son.” The truth was worse in her own thin voice.
“If he’d known the child was his, he might’ve tried to find out who the mother was. I wanted to protect you.”
“He didn’t know who I was that night. No one did.”
“What if he’d decided to find out? What if he’d found out the mother of his child wasn’t some mysterious Southern deb but the gal who mucked out the shedrow stalls?”
It was true. She’d deceived Reid first.
Mick gestured, the ash falling off his cigarette on to the scarred table. “We’re talking the Bluegrass, darling. Where people are assessed just like the horses—by their pedigree. You know that.” He drank, the liquor going down faster. His glass hit the table too hard. “You know that.”
She watched him raise his empty glass as the waitress passed nearby. He’d never forgiven her mother’s family for not believing he’d loved their daughter. They’d thought he was after her money. But he had loved her. He loved her still.
He set the glass on the waitress’s tray, turned back to Dani. “I wasn’t going to see this child treated like the dung they tiptoe past on their way to the box seats.”
She wanted to protest Reid wouldn’t be like that, but she had no right. If she’d been sure, she would have gone to him when she first found out she was pregnant. She hadn’t. An elegant illusion named Danielle DeVries had bewitched Reid that night. The reality was a stable groom named Dani Tate. Once he had learned of her deception, why would he have had anything to do with her?
“The tests from the grandmother’s blood proved the boy was family, and that’s all they wanted to know. Now he’ll grow up a Hamilton. As he should.” Dani knew if her father had a drink, he would’ve raised it in a toast.
“Plus the price on the offspring of a dead son would be much higher, wouldn’t it?”
She’d surprised him, catching him before he could school his expression. She loved her father but she knew his flaws. She felt a whirling in her empty stomach and was afraid she was going to be sick.
He masked his surprise, lit a fresh cigarette, looked to see if the waitress was coming. “I was in trouble. You know that.”
Yes, she’d known that. They’d gone south the next day. Kentucky had always been home, but her father and she worked the East Coast circuit, their location usually dependent on how many miles her father needed between himself and the bookies he owed. Eventually things would cool off or her father would hit enough daily doubles to go home to Kentucky. They had been on their way to Florida when Dani had heard about the accident at Hamilton Hills. She had been working at Hialeah Park when she’d learned she was pregnant. After the baby was born, she’d run, working the circuit west to Santa Anita Park, then up north to Portland Meadows, never staying too long in any one spot. Eventually she’d circled back to the East, settling on Fox Run Farm in upstate New York. She’d never gone back to the Bluegrass.
“I had the lawyer who handled the arrangements only ask for what I needed. Not a penny extra.” Her father’s drink arrived. The drone of blood in Dani’s head became louder. She watched him take a long sip. He leaned back, laced his fingers together like a reasonable man. “What’s fair is fair.”
“You sold your own grandson.” She spoke from the pain and sorrow that always ran through her sparse veins.
His hand slapped the table. “It wasn’t like that.” He leaned forward, lowered his voice. “You couldn’t give the boy the life he deserved. I did.”
There was the rush of blood in her head, the sour taste in her mouth, and the terrible truth. She stood up too fast, her chair scraping the faded floor.
“Where are you going?”
She looked blindly at her father, shook her head. She didn’t know. She was working on instinct now.
“Dani, sit down. Listen to me.” His calm tone only made the confusion inside her worse. She gripped the chair. Her father’s eyes were bright from whiskey but his speech was still clear, his stare steady. “You wanted your child to have the best, and he does. He’s safe and he’s loved.”
“He’s healthy, too. And handsome.” She heard her own anguish. She looked away, her gaze darting about the dim room, unable to look directly at anything. The deep, frantic mix of emotions inside her threatened. She closed her eyes, afraid to make any movement at all. When she opened them, she saw the brightness in her father’s eyes had become moist, brilliant.
“You need a drink, Dani.”
“I don’t need a drink.”
“Something to eat.” She heard the caring.
She shook her head.
“You’re tired. Go get a good night’s rest.”
“I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to drink.” She hung on to the edge of the chair, her knees buckling, her strength gone. Pain and longing were the only life left inside her.
“I want my baby.”
SHE WENT HOME. Not to the small anonymous room in town she’d rented with her percent of recent winnings, but to the only home she’d ever known. The night guard waved her through without a glance at the employee tag she wore around her neck. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen her here after hours.
She parked in the almost empty lot and cut across the gravel and grass to the barns. The cinder block dormitories were dark. The 4:00 a.m. feeding always came too fast.
The shedrow was sleeping. Lights were minimal—the silent flare of a solitary cigarette; subtle security lights turned the night from black to gray; the wink of fireflies.
She walked on, the turf yielding, the gravel, graveyard gray. All paths led to the track. All ended at the winner’s circle. She breathed in the incense of unspoken dreams, the sweat of loss, the rare sweet sachet of success.
Home.