Personal Note: I wrote The Mercy because what I believed only happened in other families—bad families with serious problems—happened in our family. I didn’t want to write a professional article or another non-fiction book. I wanted to share what it feels like. Maybe through this story one person will find a little peace in the horror. That will be enough.
The Mercy
Chapter 1 …
Sunday Morning Coming Down
A police black and white screamed past the warm-up ring and the horse under me exploded in a copper-sheened bolt of lightning. Oh, Lord, let me live.
My gloved fingers scrabbled for a chunk of braided mane. Too little, too late. Still, maybe if I could—I risked a downward glance. Tried to reset my boot in the stirrup.
Mistake. The sandy ground soared up and slammed into my face. Ow—ow! Shit in a shoebox.
Torrents of sweat plastered my shirt to my back and I was blind. The annual August horse show wasn’t called the “Texas Hotter than Hell Classic” for nothing. I rolled up on one hip. My attempt at sophistication already shot, I gave into the urge and rubbed sand, saltwater, and Maybelline deeper into my eye sockets.
Why did the Pot Police have to pick today for one of their swirly lights and shiny badges melodramas? The sweeps, intended to intimidate the junior equestrians who tended the knee-high marijuana hedge behind the hay barn, were a waste of taxpayer funds anyway. The fathers of the Flower Mound Country Club farmers, among the highest profile attorneys in Texas, flicked away pot charges like too much sugar on cinnamon toast.
Not to mention that I’d established a new personal best for shortest time in the saddle. I needed deliverance and fast. Translation: I needed Camilla Cervantes. Camilla had saved me from horses out to kill me since we were five and, in the months since the suicide, she’d snatched the back of my collar each time I leaned too far over the abyss.
Good ole self-centered me. My rear in the sand, my hand out for help when Camilla had troubles of her own. I’d seen an odd glint in those straight-shooter green eyes of hers last night. A shine that, were she anyone else, I’d have read as fear.
Riders, trainers, and barn workers–including the groom who’d rescued my runaway bad boy–trekked between the barns and the warm-up ring. I patted myself down. My exhibitor number was miraculously still pinned to my back. Most of most of my equestrian togs had survived the crash. Only one vicious smear of horse lather on my hunt coat.
Yes, a coat. In August. In Texas. Which shows how your life can twist off once your priorities are out of whack.
Now to escape the warm-up ring alive. Think NASCAR with a figure-eight track. Then require half of the drivers to race in a clockwise pattern while the rest cannonball in the opposite and head-on direction. To keep things interesting add a hearty sprinkle of confused drivers cutting back and forth across the track.
Take away the safety gear and erect walls, fences, and water hazards randomly on the raceway and you have this morning’s horse show warm-up ring. It was amidst such delusional gaiety that I sat in the hot sand surrounded by hyped riders smartly turned out in tawny breeches, dark hunt coats, and French-cuffed white shirts with gold cufflinks. Trainers thwacked whips against their boots and bellowed commands. Terrified assistants scurried about adjusting heights and switching out fences with no regard for the safety of themselves or others.
Each rider, dead set on besting every other rider in the ring, was absorbed in a relentless self-centered agenda. There is only one rule in the warm-up ring: Absolutely no spirit of cooperation will be tolerated.
Camilla was on the horse show grounds, I knew that much. I’d seen her white Jaguar parked near where she’d parked yesterday. By now she’d have sensed I was in trouble. Camilla has powers. She says she can see the woman I used to be still inside me. I’d have to take her word on that.
Hoof beats closing in rattled the fillings in my teeth. I dug my fingers in the sand and spun out of the way.
“Heads up!” Diana Sloan, the self-appointed supreme monarch of the Flower Mound, screamed, as she galloped by so close to my face I caught the tang of her custom-blended Neiman Marcus fragrance. Her mare, as tranquil as Diana was aggravated, floated past and sailed effortlessly over the four-foot Ferrari Wall, a silver barrier emblazoned with a crimson trio of Ferrari rearing horses.
The Ferrari Wall was the sinister obstacle my horse, NoMoneyNoMoneyNoMoney, had refused to jump three times yesterday in spectacular fashion. And was the original reason Camilla agreed to meet here before my first class. So where was she?
Yep, my horse’s registered name is NoMoneyNoMoneyNoMoney. I know. Perfect.
Diana cantered loose and easy toward a white picket scoop gate, not bothering to hide a smile. Hey, I’d just made her day.
She’d shrieked “Heads up,” but what Diana really meant was: Just because you can’t afford a decent horse, doesn’t mean the rest of us should have to risk our lives! While I trusted the other riders to give me a break, Diana had reason to be less than careful. Or, she believed she did. If I’d been Camilla, Diana would have done her ‘accidental’ best to trample the manicured hooves of her half-million dollar Austrian mare all over my friend’s tiny half-Mexican body.
As for me and NoMoney, Diana’s distain had a point. What kind of nutcase not only drags herself out of a comfortable bed to blister in the sun, but also shells out a fortune she does not have for the privilege of jumping a fresh-off-the-track racehorse–whose prior training consisted of “turn left and go fast”—over tiers of potted plants?
It would mean a lot to me if, just once, Diana was the rider who pranced in front of the judges with smudges on her coat and skid marks on her face. Of course, with the perfectly coifed golden curls, long legs, and classic features—earning her the nickname Lady Di–the judges wouldn’t even notice.
I, too, have the blonde hair, but that’s where any likeness to the ladies of the Flower Mound drops off. Old money breeding shows in the bones, in the hands. Wrists and fingers are slender and delicate, suitable for diamond tennis bracelets and heirloom nuggets. One look and you knew these ladies did not pay for riding lessons by working the Taco Bell window after school.
I am a trespasser, a stowaway on the Queen Mary of elite sports.
As for the long legs, every jumper course atop NoMoney is a battle to keep one less-than-dainty boot on either side of the horse.
Camilla is an inch shorter than I am, but she possesses what I do not—coordination and poise in any situation. And great hair. She’s the only woman I know, other than lusty wenches on romance novel covers, whose plentiful black hair deserved the label “raven,” which is how I spotted her in the drug test tent. A swirl of black hair caught a breeze and peeked from behind the show veterinarian cradling the hoof of a horse who clearly wanted to be somewhere else.
“Pay attention, Jessica!” one of the celebrity trainers shouted. His rider, a fine-boned woman I didn’t recognize, bore down on me. My survival was not a priority on her relentless personal agenda.
I scrambled to the rail, backed up to the fence, and closed my eyes. I’d wait here for Camilla. I’d calm my nerves soaking up the aromas of saddle-soaped leather and expensive perfume and listening to the familiar rhythmic thud of hooves in deep sand.
Really. Why was I out in this heat, my body served up like a banana split for orthopedic surgeons? I could be home asleep with the dogs, the air-conditioner cranked down to freezing to the fourth power.
The woman in the veterinarian tent turned. Not Camilla.
I know there are women out there making better choices. Women who spend their time and money on Pilates, home decor, foreign language courses, European vacations, a decent wardrobe, pool parties, creative writing seminars, charity balls, and beach houses. Women who have undamaged skin and bones without lumps from healed fractures. They aren’t required to work sixty hours a week to pay horse expenses, nor do they jolt awake in the middle of the night picturing themselves splattered all over a colossal silver wall, their blood mingled with the crimson silhouettes of the Ferrari stallion.
I hope they choke.
“Eleven minutes until the first horse must enter the ring,” boomed the show steward’s amplified baritone. “The one minute rule will be enforced,” he said, in a tone usually reserved for a Declaration of War or the Super Bowl kickoff.
Camilla, where are you? More than my trivial, though painful, horse misadventures goaded my rising concern. Last night, after a message that a patient of mine had smashed up the lobby of Shoalbrook Hospital, I’d hopped in my car and was about to scoot when Camilla rapped hard on my window.
“Jess, can you hang around a few minutes?” she’d asked. “I’m making a big change in my life and I need to talk to you.”
“I wish I could,” I said. “But I have an emergency admission over at Shoalbrook.”
“Sure. Okay.”
“Believe me, I’d much rather stay, but the front office staff is dodging clipboards and furniture.”
“Tomorrow, then.” Camilla stepped back from the window. “Tomorrow will be soon enough.”
“You sure?”
“Of course. I’ll meet you in the warm-up ring before your first class, hop in the saddle, and convince NoMoney that the Ferrari horses aren’t fire-breathing dragons. We’ll talk after.”
Her words were assurance enough to send me on my way, but her cadence was off. Still, I’d hummed up the window and driven away, my thoughts already on the best way to handle the out-of-control patient.
Ouch. A clod of damp sand thunked my cheek and shocked me back to the moment. No time left for a practice run. I’d best collect NoMoney, pray, and close my eyes on approach to the Ferrari Wall. Should I be spared fatal injury, Camilla and I would have time later to correct my mistakes.
Two more patrol cars and four understated Crown Victorias streamed past and parked in front of the main barn in that mish-mash way only police cars are allowed to park.
I grabbed the top rail and hauled myself up on my boot heels. A few rows of pot did not merit unmarked cars.
Officers, their faces hidden behind black stretch masks and with automatic rifles in full view, swarmed out of vehicles like streams of pissed Texas fire ants. I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. The mood in the warm-up ring had imploded. Trainers hushed, riders steadied stutter-stepping horses, and green-card-challenged grooms scattered out of view.
Police cars? Assault rifles? Not here. Not at the Flower Mound Country Club. I’d wake up any second now.
An ambulance rolled up to join the police vehicles. No lights. No siren. I knew what that meant. No hope.
An agonizing possibility cracked to the surface in a primal corner of my brain.
No. Not possible. Still, the impact walloped my gut and doubled me over for a full minute. Keep your head down, you’re going to be sick. Keep your head up, you can’t breathe.
Denial kicked in hard. I straightened my spine and reshuffled my thoughts. Expecting the worst was one of my most dependable and least attractive Rose family traits. Camilla would stroll out into the sunlight any moment. “Goooood morning my brave friend!” she’d sing-song, the way she had since we were kids. She’d make a joke about my trademark disheveled condition, climb aboard NoMoney, and save the day.
Saving people was Camilla’s specialty. Her gift.
Don Wilder, the APD Chief of Detectives, stepped out of his Crown Vic and made for the main barn. I’d worked psychological profiles alongside him on enough cases to read his stride and the set of his shoulders. Any wisp of hope flittered from my heart.
My brain couldn’t find a slot for the images that did not belong. No. . . No, no, no. The air whooshed out of my lungs. I gripped the rail and locked my knees. The stable was our haven, our safe place when life stumbled in other departments. So what were men in suits, automatic rifles, and more plain, dread-bearing sedans doing in our sacred harbor?
How could the world change so fast? One minute, today was about my foolish lack of horse show talent and now it was all horror and nausea.
I’d been wrong. Camilla’s car wasn’t parked close to where she’d parked it yesterday.
Her Jaguar was parked exactly where she’d parked it yesterday.
**Each chapter will be archived on the “The Mercy” page shown on the top line of the home page.**
