Deep in the Heart (41 page)

“
I think I’ll go check the water,” Tanner said at the office door. Ike nodded and went into the office. Keith caught the door with his fist and watched the younger cowboy stride out the other side of the breezeway. Then he turned his own steps into the office.

He ran his thumb under his nose as he watched Ike who sat at the desk, sorting papers. “So what happened anyway?”

Ike glanced up but continued with the paperwork.

Keith glowered at the snub. “You’re not going to tell me? What’s up with that?”

It was clear Ike was trying to figure out good words to explain it without angering Keith. “It’s just… We… Well, you knew Dragnet wasn’t ready.” As if that was supposed to make everything comprehensible.

“
Yeah, we both knew that. So what was Paul thinking pushing him then?” Keith put his foot on the hardwood chair and stared at Ike. “I thought we talked about that—hanging back these first few races so Dad would think we were following orders.”

Ike glanced up, and nothing in Keith liked that look. “I was following orders.”

“
Orders? You’re the boss, remember?” Keith laughed softly, but Ike didn’t respond. The ignoring thing was beginning to irk Keith. “Ike, come on. Talk to me, man. We’ve been partners in this thing too long for you to shut me out now.”

Ike stood and went to the file cabinet. “You’re out of here in like a week. What does it matter to you?”

Livid was in spitting distance. “You’re kidding, right?” Keith let his foot slide off the chair. “You know me better than that, Ike. I care about what happens to this place and to those horses. You of all people should know I haven’t busted my butt here for five years to just leave. In fact, if it wasn’t for Dallas, I wouldn’t even move. I’d be here, taking care of things just like I always have.”

Slowly Ike shook his head. He turned to face Keith. “Look, take some advice from an old cowboy who doesn’t hit every trick. Be smart. Get out while the getting’s good. Dallas is a great girl. Concentrate on getting married and making her happy. Get your house. Set up your life, and don’t look back.”

“
Ike, for Pete’s sake, what are you talking about? This place is my life. I can’t just walk away even if everybody thinks I should.”

The trainer’s eyes fell closed, and his slow Southern drawl fell to a crawl. “We didn’t have a choice about taking it easy on Drag. Your dad made it crystal clear that if we undermined his orders, we’d be gone.”

Rage and confusion battled inside Keith. “He told you to race him like that?”

“
I believe his exact words were, ‘Win or you’re fired.’”

“
I need to talk to you,” Keith said the second after he opened his father’s office door less than ten minutes later. He’d already met Patty Ann in the foyer. She confirmed his father’s presence in the mansion today although she had tried to explain that Mr. Ayer was very busy. However, Keith wasn’t about to be put-off no matter who stood in his way. The rage boiling in him was going to explode somewhere and it might as well be in the presence of the one who really deserved it.

His father never looked up. “I’m busy.”

“
Yeah? Well, get unbusy. This is important.” Keith stepped in and closed the door.

“
If it’s not about how you will be half a state away in two weeks, I don’t want to hear it.”

“
You know, you could be just a little less happy about me leaving. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you already have my stuff packed and sitting in my garage.”

“
I thought you said you were here to talk about something important.”

Keith held his anger in both fists to keep it from spilling over. “You told Ike to push Dragnet, and then when he got hurt, you had him put down before anyone could even assess how bad he really was.”

“
Hrumph. It was a business decision, Keith. It’s called cutting your losses. Besides we had insurance, so it’s no big deal.”

“
No big deal? Insurance doesn’t make putting that animal down right. This wasn’t about five dollars on a spreadsheet, Dad. This was a racehorse. A quarter-million dollar, promising racehorse that had more potential than any one I’ve ever seen trained.”

“
Yeah. And he fell. Big surprise.”

“
Big surprise? Yeah, no kidding. We both know you set him up for that fall. You knew he wasn’t ready and rather than having a little patience and putting in a little effort to get him ready, you pushed him into a race he wasn’t ready to run. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, you made sure he would fail by heaping your impossibly high expectations on top of an already impossible situation. What in the world did you expect to happen?”

His father stood. “I expected him to rise to the occasion.” His gaze nailed Keith. “Unfortunately, there are so few on this planet who know the meaning of that phrase.”

They were face-to-face, stare-to-stare, steel will-to-steel will.

“
So everyone who can’t stand up to what you think they should be able to do is expendable then?” Ache and anger met in Keith’s gut. “Wow. There’s a great life philosophy.”

Impatience corkscrewed across his father’s face. “Look, I can’t be wasting money on some stupid horse that will never make it back to the track. I want a winner—not some crippled, money-sucking loser.”

The understanding that his father wasn’t only talking about the horse drifted through him. Keith backed up and folded his arms. “Wow. It must be nice to be so perfect you can sit up here in your mansion and make such sweeping judgments about the whole world. That one deserves to live, that one doesn’t. You are the most arrogant, selfish, egotistical jerk I’ve ever had the misfortune of meeting.”

“
Keith Warren Ayer, I am your father, and I deserve some respect.”

His hatred drained down the sinkhole of capitulation. It was pointless to fight. “Respect has to be earned, Dad, and from where I’m standing, you have never done a single thing to earn my respect.”

Despite Keith’s surrender, his father looked like a mad dog ready to attack. “Are you kidding me? You have had everything you’ve ever wanted. Nice cars, more than a roof over your head, servants at your beck and call…”

Keith laughed. “And I’m supposed to be impressed with that? Gee, Dad, you aim mighty low in the providing for arena.” He had kept the feelings of never being good enough to warrant his father’s attention from ever finding the air his whole life. For the first twelve years, his mother had filled in for the absence of his father; after she was gone, the staff had tried to fill in for both. But the reality was, there was a hole in him that had never been filled because his father was always too busy. Work and other things always came first.

He had thought it was just him. Now he saw with perfect clarity that nothing other than the image he portrayed to the world was at all important to his father. If it looked good on the outside, it was worth it. If it didn’t, it was expendable.

“
You’re unbelievable, you know that, Dad? If someone’s not perfect enough for you, you think they are worthless. Well, you know what? I’m tired of trying to be perfect. I’m not perfect. I never have been. We both know that. So, I give up. I do. That’s it. You can have your mansion and your horses. Run them all into the ground if you want. See what I care. I’m out of here.”

He turned for the door with a shake of his head.

“
Now you listen to me. I did my best,” his father said. “I wanted to give you everything I could even though I knew it would never be enough to make up for her being gone.”

The words ran over Keith’s heart, and he stopped at the door.

“
She always made up for how bad I was with you. But I did want what was best for you—even if I didn’t know how to do that.”

Keith turned slowly. He needed to know even though it would change nothing. “What happened, the night she died?”

“
That was a long time ago.” His father sat slowly. “It was an accident. A stupid thing that just happened. I wish I could go back and change so many things, but the past is the past. I can’t do anything about it now.”

“
Why did she go on that trip?” Keith asked, not being able to stop the question. It had been running in the background of every moment of his life for 17 years.

His father shook his head slowly. “The same reason we do everything—because she was supposed to.”

“
But what was it? It couldn’t have been a meeting. She didn’t work. Did she go to see family… what?”

“
No, your mother didn’t have family in Midland.” His father shook his head, first slowly, then more vehemently. “It was just some dumb thing that happened. Okay? It’s over, Keith. She’s gone. It’s time to move on.” His gaze fell to the papers as he started writing on the top one again.

Why was it so easy for everyone else to just go on with life and so impossible for him? He put his hand on the knob but stopped. He looked back over at his father, already buried in work again. “Do you miss her?”

With a look that yanked Keith’s heart to the surface, his father looked up. “Every day of my life.”

“
So I guess you’re going to the wedding,” Greg said Monday night as Maggie sat in the night-darkened kitchen.

“
I’m sure I’ll have to take Pete and Izzy.” Maggie held her head up from the table with only her fingers twined in her hair. It had been days since she’d seen Keith. Days, in fact, since she’d seen the outside of the house. They were already busy getting the backyard ready for the wedding, and that meant no one was allowed out there for any reason.

Two days before, workers had moved the back fence and more grass was planted and being watered even now. It was no place for little feet, so they had stayed inside and as much as possible out of view.

Mrs. Ayer was in a state, and save for dinner, Mr. Ayer made few appearances. When he was around, he didn’t talk. When he wasn’t around, there was a tension that permeated everything. Patty Ann had gone so far as to ask if it was necessary to have Peter’s karate lesson in the courtyard outside the kitchen, and when it was determined there was simply no other place, karate lessons were cancelled until further notice.

Gardeners such that Maggie had never seen had also shown up shortly after the grass. They were planting more flowers than God had created and vast teams of workers were busy even now scrubbing the walls of the mansion until every crevice was clean.

“
You don’t get off even for the wedding?” Greg asked in horror. “Maggie, it’s been weeks since you’ve had a day off. I don’t know how you do it.”

You remember what happens when you do take a day off,
she thought but didn’t say. “I guess you’re going.”

“
Of course. I’m best man.”

Lovely. “Oh? Who’re you walking with?”

“
Did you have to ask? Tracy, the Monster of honor.”

More good news. “I wish I could get out of it, but Pete and Izzy are the ring bearer and flower girl. Which reminds me, we have a fitting for Izzy Thursday. Ugh. I wish this was over already.”

“
You and me both. I guess you’ve got your dress and everything already. The invites say black tie only. Thankfully Keith sprung for my tux, or that’d be another $500 bucks to spend on top of the gift.”

Keith
. The name knifed through her. “I hadn’t really thought about a dress.”

“
Well, you’d better think about it, or they may send you to the dungeon.” He laughed. “You know how they can be.”

Yes, she did.

“
Well, you know,” Greg said slowly. “I’ve been thinking. If you’re there and I’m there, maybe we could be there together.”

Would this nightmare never end? “I don’t know, Greg. I’ll have to be taking care of the kids, and you’ll be dealing with the best man stuff…”

He sighed. “Well, will you at least save me a dance?”

She smiled sadly. “You got it.”

“
If I wanted to look up an old accident report, how would I go about doing that?” Keith asked Dallas as they sat at breakfast Tuesday morning. All night he had replayed the fight with his dad and one word kept sticking.
Midland
.

Why hadn’t he asked? Why hadn’t that word jarred his memory into gear when he could have asked? But no. As usual he hadn’t really thought about it until long after it was too late to ask.

“
An accident report about what?” Dallas asked. Her cornsilk hair was pulled back from her face, revealing her perfectly chiseled nose and jawbone. She was beautiful even if not Keith’s kind of beautiful.

He shrugged. “Greg and I were talking the other day, and he was asking about something. I was just going to look into it.”

“
Oh, well. If it was publicized at the time, you might be able to dig in a newspaper’s archives, or do a search for the date and the location. It’d be like looking for a pin in a gutter, but you could try.” She got up and took her plate to the kitchen. “Tracy and some of the girls are taking me out tomorrow night. Just so you know. I’ll probably stay in Houston with her if that’s all right.”

“
Oh, yeah.” His mind was already back in Midland. “That’s fine.”

Tuesday Maggie went to Patty Ann’s office while Inez watched the kids. She knocked. “Excuse me. I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to ask a question.”

“
Make it quick. The governor’s office will be calling with the itinerary any minute now.”