There were half a dozen colts in the pasture, all long legs bucking in the air, releasing energy in bursts as they bucked and played. The owner had tried to point out a filly nearby, something straight down from Secretariat and from Seattle Slew's sire, but he just wasn't interested. He knew what he was looking for, and bloodlines weren't it. He'd had too many failures down that route to place much importance on it.
"That one's dam is the same as Bold Forbes's." But he was a little short in the leg.
Darren pointedly ignored him. His eyes followed the colts as they played, disappointment welling up inside him. He'd heard wonderful things about the horses that came from there, but every one seemed to be just another run-of-the-mill racer who might see a win or two in Saratoga, but never the Triple Crown. Every one, but—
One colt, a smaller, lanky bay, broke away from the group, heading toward the fence where Darren stood. He picked up speed as he went, and it seemed like it took him only a second to reach the fence, and then he was up, leaping over the fence, his hind legs just clearing it without contact.
Darren just smiled as a dozen men dropped their work to run after the colt, who kicked and bit at them playfully. "That's the one."
x
"Have you ever thought about having children, Mr. MacElroy?"
She was busty, slender, fine-featured, and the more annoying than a fly that just wouldn't go away. Darren had asked her why she wasn't in the seats with everyone else — her filthy rich father had special seats, even, a prime spot to watch the races from — but she wouldn't give him a straight answer. She touched his arm gently and he shuddered; he had to remind himself repeatedly that he had to wait until after the race to walk away. It was only a few more minutes until it began. He could wait.
He watched the odds going up and smirked. He had trained the colt well: Figure Nine's number came up with the best odds, which was far from unexpected. At the rate he was going, the two-year-old would be an easy entry into the Triple Crown.
"No, I haven't," he answered. "I don't have time for kids, Miss Wolfson. My horses are my life."
"But it's an awfully boring life." She pouted at him, but he ignored it; the horses were in the gate. Any second...
The were off, and the roaring off hooves pounding into the dirt drowned out anything else she had to say, aided by the screaming of the fans. They whipped by on the outer track; Darren couldn't hear the commentary, but he easily spotted Figure Nine, steady in the middle and hugging the inner rail. Perfect.
It was harder to see on the other side of the track, so when there was a sudden panicked uproar Darren wasn't sure what to think. There was only one thing he could think of that could cause a noise like that from the crowd: a horse had fallen.
He heart beat fast as he saw the horses cross the line at the other end. He looked around for Figure Nine; he wasn't there. His colors were missing.
He couldn't hear the name of the winner over the rushing of blood in his ears, but he heard Miss Wolfson's voice just over it.
"God, isn't that the one you trained, Darren?"
x
In the end, Figure Nine was about as lucky as he could have been — he didn't break anything. He didn't have to be put down. He would just never race again.
"There are plenty of other colts to train out there," Figure Nine's owner said, clapping him on the shoulder. "You've got Don't Touch That to work with, don't you?"
Darren was silent, watching Figure Nine stroll through the pasture. His head was low, and he looked like he was shaking with energy, but there was a slight stiffness to his front left leg.
"You can't let one bad turn stop you, Darren. You have to get back up and try again, even if you have to start over."
"How much do you want for him?"
The other man was startled by the abruptness of the question. "What? For Figure, you mean?"
"Yes. How much would it take for me to take him off your hands?"
"Well, ah... We can't use him much anymore, but in a few years he might make a good stud. He doesn't have much for his bloodlines, but he had a great run, and anyone could see he was headed—"
Darren cut him off. "Whatever it is, I want him. I have the money, I'm sure." He turned back to watch Figure Nine, who trotted toward the other end of the pasture with a slight limp. "And I quit."
x
"You should just see them, Darren, they're fantastic. Fairchild looks so cute in her outfits, and Stranz is better than any of the other boys Robert is training."
"It's just a shame Katie doesn't have anything like that to distinguish her." Darren noticed that the Van Waldenburgs didn't really seem to care that much that Katie wasn't as good as their other children at anything. Mostly, the seemed to ignore them. Part of him felt he could understand, but for the most part he didn't care.
"They're prodigies, Darren. They're going to take the gold one day. No child has ever been so fantastic on the ice, I swear."
"That's great," Darren said, not really thinking it was great at all. He was only at the same party as people like the Van Waldenburgs because some people thought he was going to return to training thoroughbreds one day.
"Soon," they would say, pretending to be trying to soothe him. "Soon, you'll forget all about that business with Figure and get back on your feet. It's your life, Darren. You'll come back."
He wasn't going to forget Figure Nine. He'd built a barn and bought extra property just so that he could sleep knowing he wasn't far away. He would never forget Fig — even though sometimes he thought he should. It had been a year already, and he still wasn't over it.
"Who's that?" he asked, trying to divert the conversation. He pointed to a young girl hanging off the arm of a man he didn't recognize, smiling and showing off her missing front teeth for a wealthy baseball player.
"Who?" Mrs. Van Walderburg looked over, squinting. "Oh, that? That's little Alice. Haven't you heard? Phil Green adopted her a year or two ago. He's going to make her a ballet star. She's almost as good on stage as Fairchild is on ice."
"Have you ever thought about having children, Darren?" Mr. Van Waldenburg asked, sipping scotch.
x
He looked at the stopwatch and shook his head. "You're going to have to do better than that, Jessie."
The seven-year-old looked up at him from the water, pushing up her goggles as she sniffed, her nose irritated by the pool's chlorine. "But I'm tired, Dad. Can't I take a break?"
Darren considered it for a moment, and then reluctantly nodded. The girl gave a cheer and pushed herself out of the water, running toward the bathroom. He stared after her, smiling slightly. She just needed practice. She would get there — she would be a winner eventually. All MacElroys were winners.
Except Mack had come in second in his archery competition — and he was beaten by a kid two years younger! Elizabeth had injured her ankle on a hurtle and wouldn't be able to run for another two weeks; Sammy was actually starting to say she didn't want to play tennis anymore and Ricky had thrown his jockstrap right into Darren's face when he told him to get back on the soccer field. A broken nose didn't hurt his legs, anyway, did it?
But they still had time, their coaches reminded him. They were still growing, the doctors said over and over. They just need love, the men and women at the orphanages had insisted.
Darren just needed a winner.
He sighed and walked to the nearest pay phone. "Hey, Jackie. Listen, could you set up something for me at the orphanage in— yeah, that's the one. Thanks."
It wasn't that he didn't love his kids. He just loved winning more.
x
It was far north, in the upper reaches of Canada. Darren worried about the kids, and about Fig, but he figured that if he could make it there by morning, he could be back in the States by night, and one day wasn't too much of a loss, especially if he came back with a winner.
Almost all of the boys were playing hockey. They were extremely competitive, and, to Darren's surprise, the nuns encouraged it, allowing the boys to check each other and barely even bothering to break up the fist fights that broke out. They were all lovely women, but they had something below their kind and loving exterior — something that was shaping those boys into rough-and-tumble competitors who wouldn't take a loss. Darren liked it.
"Hat trick!" one boy shouted after the puck went into the net, pumping his fist into the air.
"That's Gregory," Sister Abigail told him, nodding. "He's quick, and his aim is unbeatable."
Darren watched for a minute more, but when Gregory fell down and couldn't manage to get back up, slipping frantically on the ice while the others passed him, he shook his head. "I don't think so. They don't have the right kind of... potential."
Sister Abigail shrugged, hiding her disappointment, and they headed back up the hill to the orphanage.
Just over the top, he noticed a mop of blond hair whizz by; after a moment he could see it was another boy, on the younger side, skating all on his own. He was only half-interested; most kids couldn't really begin to show any promise that young, and if he wasn't even good enough to skate with the older kids yet, he certainly wasn't going to help Darren any. Maybe in a few years.
"That's Jimmy," Sister Abigail said. "He doesn't like hockey. He usually just skates up here on his own." There were other nuns up on the hill, watching him, too, but they weren't cheering, weren't pushing him to work harder.
"I see." He was of no use to the MacElroys.
"Oh, just wait a moment — you have to watch this," Sister Abigail said suddenly. They were at the edge of the ice now, and she grabbed his arm, stopping him. He pulled away, rolling his eyes, but turned to look. He had a little time to spare before he had to go back to catch his plane; he had left extra time for filling out papers, but it appeared it wouldn't be necessary.
When he watched — really watched — the boy glide across the ice, he quickly realized there was something there. What, he wasn't sure just yet — but it wasn't the rough, pushing speed of a hockey player. Jimmy was completely in control of his body, in no hurry and very careful to round out his movements, flowing across the ice like water — no, like air.
When he leapt through the air, turning like Darren had only seen adults do before, it was a done deal. "I'll take him."
x
Sammy had cried and run to her room when Darren introduced Jimmy to his new family. Ricky had yelled, Elizabeth and Mack hadn't paid any attention, and Jessie pulled the boy's hair. "You don't need any more kids!" Ricky shouted, his face turning red. "Aren't we enough? Aren't we good enough?"
Well, no. They weren't. But Darren couldn't say that out loud. He tried to calm the children, but even Elizabeth, who'd always been especially fond of him, gave him the cold shoulder.
Apparently six children was just one too many.
"You never spend any time with us any more," Jessie said.
"I spend lots of time with you."
"I mean not training," she huffed, and then turned back to her dinner. "We never go to amusement parks and on family vacations like other kids."
"What other kids?" It wasn't like they went to public school, or ever saw other kids their age really. Except during competitions, but those kids didn't talk to MacElroys. Darren wouldn't let them.
"On TV," she said. Well. No more television for the MacElroys. The cable bill wasn't much, but it was a useless expense, anyway.
Jimmy sniffled. Darren looked down at the boy; tears were streaming down his face. It hurt him, a little; he had only known the kid a day, but he was already use to his big, toothy smile. He knelt down beside him, searching for something to say. He wasn't great with kids. "Do you want to see a horse?" he asked, before he could think better of it.
But when Jimmy's eyes lit up, he wasn't going to deny him.
x
"Cool!" Jimmy ran to the edge of the paddock, climbing up on the fence and leaning in. Fig was on the other side of it, his head over the rail as he tried to reach some weeds. "What's his name?"
"Figure Nine," Darren answered, glad that the boy had at least forgotten how the other kids had reacted to him. But — well. He didn't usually bring the kids out back to see Fig. Fig was his, and his alone. Besides, Elizabeth would probably get ideas about wanting to ride him. She'd been begging for a pony for months. Darren cringed to think of how the kids might treat him. "He used to be a racehorse."
"Wow..." Jimmy watched in silence for a moment more, his expression filled with awe as Fig walked around. He wasn't full of the same energy he'd once had; he'd gotten fat, even, and he took most things slow. He still had a bit of a limp, even at just a canter. "Did he ever win any?"
"He won a lot. You're going to win, too, Jimmy."
"I'm going to race?" the boy said, turning wide blue eyes up to look at Darren. "I'm not very fast."
"No," he said, laughing a little. "You're going to skate, Jimmy."
His face lit up again, and Darren made a mental note to get him braces. "I'm good at that!"
"Yes, you are."
x
"Where's Mack?"
Darren couldn't bring himself to tell the kids beforehand. It wasn't that they were the best of friends with each other, but he knew it sounded more like a threat than anything else if he let them know they were losing a brother or sister. "He's going to live with some other people from now on."
"Was he bad?" Jimmy asked, looking up from his breakfast.
"No, he wasn't bad." Just bad at what he did. "But he didn't like archery as much as I thought he did."
"I thought he loved it," Elizabeth said, shoving a piece of grapefruit into her mouth. "He was always practicing. He said he wanted to get better."
That was before he'd broken his bow and kicked Darren in the ankle. And then he had to go; Darren didn't hate him, but he didn't want Mack to be another Katie Van Waldenburg, shoved off to the sidelines while his siblings went on becoming champions. It was the same as it had been with Jessie, and with Sammy and Ricky. Two kids were easier to handle than six, anyway.
"Well, I love running," Elizabeth said, nodding."
"And I love-love skating!" Jimmy said, bright and full of enthusiasm. Darren smiled.
"Of course you do."
x
"Help him!" Darren shouted. His face was pale and his hands were shaking. He could feel himself breaking into a sweat. Why couldn't he get Fig to breathe normally?
"I'm doing all I can!" the vet shouted back, but after a moment he went suddenly calm, standing up. "Mr. MacElroy, I don't think—"
"Don't say it — just help him!"
"Mr. MacElroy, there's nothing we can do for him!"
Fig punctuated the statement with a horrible, shaky wheeze. "What happened?" Darren asked, his voice quiet.
"I don't know — you said you're the only one he's ever around, but I think there was some kind of parasite, something that would have had to been carried in by someone. Have you been around the tracks lately, Mr. MacElroy?"
"No, you know I haven't—" He stopped. Elizabeth. He'd finally bent to her will, he promised to get her a horse of her own for her birthday, and he'd taken her out to look for the perfect horse. Then she'd snuck back to the barn, she'd tried to ride Fig, almost a month before...
Fig stopped breathing, and Darren felt his insides go cold.
x
"Did you wash your hands for dinner?"
"Of course, Dad." Jimmy smiled at him, his braces glinting in the light.
"It's ready!" the cook called, sticking her head into the hall.
"We'll be there in a minute," Darren called back, taking Jimmy's arms by the wrists and looking at his palms. "This isn't clean."
"What? I washed them, I swear—"
"They're filthy," Darren said, dropping the boy's hands and pulling a bottle of antibacterial gel from his pocket. "Go do it again. Count to one hundred, and turn the water up as hot as you can."
"Dad—"
"Do it," Darren said, his voice commanding, the same way it got when he was making Jimmy try something new on the ice he didn't think he could do. "You don't want to be dirty like Elizabeth was, do you?"
Jimmy had looked like he might protest, but at the mention of his former sister's name he blanched, nodding and turning without a word. There was no arguing with that kind of threat.
Darren hired three extra maids for the house the next day.
x
"He's only thirteen, for God's sake!"
"He's going to be a winner." Why couldn't people understand that? Jimmy was the one. He was the MacElroy winner.
"He needs some kind of a life, Darren!" Jimmy's tutor said, a tight frown on her face. "You can't lock him up forever! You should have seen him, he was so happy—"
"I don't care." His voice was hard, and the tutor stepped back as though she had been hit. "He needs to focus."
"It was just the Blueberry Festival!" But her voice didn't sound so angry anymore.
"It was six hours he could have spent training. Six hours lost." Darren turned away from her, leaving going into the house. He'd have to punish Jimmy and get him to make up for those hours, somehow. "By the way, you're fired."
x
So Jimmy had some ridiculous idea about getting back into figure skating. With a partner. With a male partner.
He'd never beat the Van Waldenburgs. They understood dedication. They were Darren's kind of people.
He pulled his eyes away from the news and away from Jimmy's smiling face, sharing a screen with that of that disgusting Michaels character, passing the living room to go into the makeshift kennel the breeder had set up. Seven pups rolled around, wrestling and chasing each other and chewing on soft toys.
"I've got other buyers set up already," the breeder said, staying behind as he walked into the center of the kennel. "You're getting the first pick, though. They've got great blood; a lot of people breed Goldens as a hobby, but I take it seriously. Their parents have no history of problems with their hearts or hips. A little ear trouble on the father's side, but that's easy enough to take care of. Any of them could be a show dog."
Darren looked at all of them without crouching down, his hands stuffed firmly into his pockets. He'd hired a trainer to help him in the first few months — he didn't want to have to touch the pup. He cringed when one started to pee in the corner, gently nudging another away from his shoe.
"This one," the breeder began, leaning over to pick up a particularly light-colored one. "This one," she said again, "looks very promising to me."
"She has a black spot on her hip," Darren noted.
"Oh, that's nothing; it happens sometimes," she assured him. "If you show her, you can just bleach that. They'll never know."
But Darren's eyes were on one pup crawling out from under the cabinet. It was smaller than the rest, and its fur was a bit red, but he already knew enough to realize it would change a little before it was fully grown. Aside from the red tint, it was beautiful — Golden Retriever perfection in miniature. It wouldn't take much.
The third time was supposed to be the charm, after all.
"I want that one."
He'd have a MacElroy winner yet.