"Meaning..."

"He knows I have a seven-year-old son."

"And...?"

Leah shrugged. "I'll get around to telling him when the time is right. I simply haven't seen the necessity of bringing up Val's disability yet. Our relationship hasn't advanced to that point. It's really none of his business."

"I think you'd better make make it his business just so you know whether or not you want to waste any more time on him," Shamika pointed out with an agitated shake of her head. "We've been down that road before, girlfriend. Don't you be setting yourself up again to get hurt." She checked her watch, then glanced out the window toward the highway. "Bus will be coming soon. You need me to pick up anything while I'm in town?" it his business just so you know whether or not you want to waste any more time on him," Shamika pointed out with an agitated shake of her head. "We've been down that road before, girlfriend. Don't you be setting yourself up again to get hurt." She checked her watch, then glanced out the window toward the highway. "Bus will be coming soon. You need me to pick up anything while I'm in town?"

"Yes. Hostess cupcakes. Chocolate. I feel a craving coming on."

"Honey, I'll buy you a whole box full if it means you'll put some food in your stomach." Shamika turned for the door. "I'm turning the phone ringer off. Stay in bed. Sleep. We'll be home around six."

"Give Val a kiss for me!" she called. "Hundreds of 'em! And tell him I love him desperately and that as soon as this d.a.m.n fever is gone we'll snuggle."

"Yep."

The back screen door slammed. A moment later the van drove past the house and skidded to a stop at the end of the driveway. Shamika jumped out and stood by the highway, hands on her hips, her gaze fixed on the yellow bus rounding the nearest bend in the road. Sitting up in bed, Leah watched the bus crawl like some lumbersome tortoise along the shoulder, its inhabitants' animated faces peering out at Shamika as the bus stopped and the door opened with a whoosh that released the sounds of laughter and garbled noises that were meant to be words. The driver jumped out, even as the back door of the bus opened and a ramp automatically slid from the bus's belly to form a platform, onto which Sandra Howard, the school's occupational therapist, rolled Val in his wheelchair. As the ramp slowly lowered toward the ground, Sandra, smiling brightly, lifted Val's arm and waved his hand at Shamika. Val rewarded Shamika with a brilliant smile.

Leah lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.

At long last, she slept. It was not the drifting-through-dreamland-like-a-feather-on-air sort of sleep, although she often dreamed of soaring weightlessly through c.u.mulus clouds while s.p.a.ce and time rushed by soundlessly below her. Nor was it the frantic, confusing streak through a jumbled subconscious splashed by strange images that would leave her scratching her head and pondering over their meaning as if they were alien hieroglyphics. This dream was gut-wrenchingly real. Fact, not fiction. No cryptic meanings. Just stark as black print on white paper.

She chose a place in the very back of the lecture hall, Room 338, hoping to avoid Professor Carlisle's attention. Since the beginning of her freshman year in vet school, he had taken great pleasure in zeroing in on her any time he conjured up a question he was certain would stump even the most seasoned D.V.M.

She'd surmised the first day of cla.s.s that Professor Carlisle, like most good old boys at vet schools, did not much care for women in veterinary medicine-at least, not large-animal medicine. He felt that women were far too emotional to make life-and-death decisions concerning animals-especially horses. After displaying a poster of Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, he proceeded to explain that anyone who had ever cried over the movie had no place in veterinary medicine. Likewise with Black Beauty.

This cla.s.s was not Fairy Tales 101.

Leah glanced at her watch. Carlisle was late getting to cla.s.s. Good. She would close her eyes for a few minutes and try her best to will away the spikes of dull pain prodding at her pregnant belly. Indigestion, no doubt. Too much Mexican food at lunch-hopefully. Or perhaps it was simply stress causing her to feel as if she were in labor.

At six months along she simply would not entertain the idea that the increasing discomfort was due to anything other than the fact that she and Richard had argued again.

Fights over their cornflakes each morning had become as commonplace as her frequent trips to the bathroom. Richard wanted her to drop out of school and devote her time and energy into being a wife and mother-annoyingly chauvinistic considering this was the nineties, especially in light of the fact that they had mutually decided before they married that she would continue with her studies and build a vet practice in the Dallas area after graduation. Only then would they consider children.

But no sooner had they adjusted to the news of her unexpected pregnancy than he began his campaign. He made more than enough money to provide for his family. A child needed the security of knowing he was the most important component of a happy family, and that meant the mother's undivided attention, not to mention loyalty.

With no warning, at exactly the same moment that Professor Carlisle entered the cla.s.sroom, her water broke. Jumping from her chair, she stood helplessly as fluid ran as if from a faucet out of her pants legs. There were snickers around her-peers believing her problem nothing more serious than a weak bladder. Then the pain-excruciating. Mind-bending. She screamed and doubled over...

Valentino Starr weighed one pound three ounces. The doctors gave him a one in one hundred chance of surviving the first forty-eight hours. The nurses put him, naked, in what looked like a plastic coffin, his red, sparrowlike body practically lost amid the tubes and monitors that bleeped his condition every few seconds.

Still hooked to IVs, her lower body feeling as if someone had raked out her insides with a dull spoon, Leah, surrounded by stone-faced nurses and cautious specialists, sat in a chair beside the incubator, counting the seconds between her son's heartbeats and singing him lullabies. She ached to hold him, but they would not allow it. Not yet. His lungs were far from being developed. His bones were brittle as dry reeds. And his skin-what there was of it-was as transparent as a moth's wing. She could see every vein in his tiny body. He looked like a road map of red and blue highways.

Because she had given birth by C-section, the staff would not allow Leah to remain out of bed for more than fifteen minutes. They wheeled her back to her room while Richard walked silent and sullen at her side. He blamed her for this horrible fiasco. Had she dropped out of school like he had wanted her to, this probably would not have happened.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! her angry obstetrician argued. Leah's problem could be summed up easily: an incompetent cervix, a condition where the mouth of the cervix opens prematurely under the weight of the baby. Next pregnancy, should there be a next pregnancy, they would know to perform a cerclage procedure by clamping the cervix closed very early in the pregnancy, thereby eliminating the chance of this unfortunate occurrence happening a second time.

The hospital smells a.s.saulting her every numb sense and her uterus knotting like a fist, Leah looked into her husband's eyes and knew there would never be a next time-not for them.

FOUR.

The answering machine clicked on at seven-fifteen, waking Leah with a jolt. She listened to her own voice invite the caller to leave a message, then waited for the caller's response. Nothing. The machine cut off with an echoing finality before it reset itself for the next message.

She rolled in bed, aware that her fever had broken. Her pillow felt wet, her pajamas clammy. Lying in the semidark of encroaching twilight, she focused on the silence and wondered why Shamika and Val were running so late returning from his speech therapy. The answering machine came on again. Tossing back the covers, Leah slid from the bed and ran barefoot down the hall into the living room, where the illuminated Caller ID glowed in the shadows. WHITEHORSE FARM. Her heart skipped and for what felt like an eternity she stared at the answering machine as if it had turned into a crystal ball. Her recorded voice droned out its monotonous regret for not having been here to take the call, but- She grabbed up the receiver and hit the Stop b.u.t.ton on the machine. Taking a deep breath, she finally managed a thready h.e.l.lo.

"Doc Starr?"

Leah sank onto the sofa and curled her legs up under her. "h.e.l.lo, Roy."

"Sorry to disturb you, but I was wondering if we can go ahead and draw blood on that colt? Soon as we can get him blood-typed with the registry, the sooner we can get his papers."

"You have a buyer already?"

"Looks that way. Won't know for sure until next week."

"If you'll drop the blood-typing kit off, I'll do it first thing in the morning."

"You feeling okay?"

"Better. Why do you ask?"

"Johnny says you was seeming a little under the weather today."

"I guess I was a bit out of sorts."

Roy chuckled.

Sinking deeper into the sofa cushions, she twisted the phone cord around her fingers. "Sorry I'm late on the rent again, Roy. You're being very patient."

"Don't worry about it. It ain't as if we're starvin' over here."

"How does Johnny feel about me leasing this place?"

"He ain't said. I guess if he cared he would have told me so by now. Besides, he's too busy tryin' to run the government." Silence, then, "Sorry. Guess I shouldn't have brought up that that subject." subject."

"It's okay. Really. Confrontation between Johnny and my father isn't exactly news, is it?"

"Glad you don't take it personal. Hey, I got another call comin' in. I'll drop this kit by your place first thing in the mornin'."

The phone went dead and Leah gently replaced the receiver onto the cradle. A clock on the wall ticked. Through the closed windows the distant traffic sounded like the hum of insects as the Caller ID continued to shimmer WHITEHORSE FARM into the dark.

For that instant before grabbing up the phone, she had believed the caller to be Johnny Whitehorse.

But why would he be calling, especially after she had verbally blasted him earlier that day? After she had once vowed to love him forever, to spend her life rejoicing in his spirit and body and children-then, with none of the emotion ripping apart her insides, declared to his wounded eyes that their relationship had been a mistake from the beginning. Their lives were a universe apart. A forever relationship simply would not work-not between them.

Why had her heart tripped at the thought of speaking with him again? She had long since buried her feelings for Johnny in a deep grave of denial. She could not possibly love a man who would intentionally strike out at her father so maliciously. Her father had been right about Johnny. He was a hothead. A troublemaker. A user. His only aim in romancing her had been driven by a nasty need to avenge his father.

Why had apologies over her behavior earlier in the day bombarded her brain like neurotransmitters gone amok?

But most frustrating: Why was she disappointed that the caller had turned out to be Roy Moon, and not Johnny? Why, in those seconds as she raised the receiver to her ear, had antic.i.p.ation flooded her with a rush of adrenaline that now, in its tide of withdrawal, left her feeling nauseated and irritable ... not to mention stupid?

The back door opened and Shamika's voice rang out. "Home at last. I got to have a wee-wee and then we are going to chow down on Spaghetti-O's. Is that cool?"

"Cool," came the childish, slightly slurred response, making Leah smile.

She moved to the kitchen where her son sat in his wheelchair, smiling over the prospect of eating Spaghetti-O's for supper. His blue eyes brightened when he saw her. His head wobbled and he struggled to sit up straight. One hand opened and closed in his way of saying, "I want you. Come hug me."

To hold Val now was probably foolish; his immune system was not the greatest. A simple cold could sometimes put him to bed for a week. Leah reminded herself of that as she crossed the kitchen, went down on her knees, and unbuckled the straps and braces that kept him anch.o.r.ed to the back of his chair.

His smile widened and laughter bubbled like spring water through his lips. "Mama hold me?" he asked.

"Yes, Mama is going to hold you," she replied.

"Mama hold Val tight?"

"So tight you're going to squeak."

Wrapping her arms around her son, Leah lifted him out of the chair. She swayed unsteadily, his weight, at sixty pounds, more than half of her own. He rested his head on her shoulder, his lips near her ear as she gripped him fiercely, her eyes closed to allow the swell of feeling in her chest to radiate through her body.

"Mama love?" he asked softly.

"Oh yes. Mama loves." She smiled. "Mama loves you more than life."

Shamika regarded them from the door. "I knew you couldn't stand it for much longer."

"The fever is broken. I'm feeling much better."

"Good. Maybe you'll join us for some Spaghetti-O's."

"I'm not feeling that that good." good."

Laughing, Shamika searched through the pantry and exited with a family-sized can. As Shamika rummaged through the cupboard for a saucepan, Leah kissed her son's warm head, enjoying the smell of sunshine that had been absorbed by his skin; then she studied his clothes, which were linted by animal hair.

"Why were you late?" she asked Shamika.

"Got caught by Estelle Wright, and you know what that that means. She's got to tell everybody everything that's happened since the last time we saw her." means. She's got to tell everybody everything that's happened since the last time we saw her."

Leah turned Val's hands over and studied his palms, stained by oily dirt-the sort that coats a person's skin when stroking a sweating horse.

"You've taken him to Rockaway Ranch again, Shamika. If you're going to do something behind my back, you might consider cleaning him up afterward. At least you won't get caught lying."

Shamika carefully placed the pan on the countertop before facing Leah. Her shoulders set, she regarded the anger on Leah's features before replying. "Yes, I took him to Rockaway Ranch, to the riding therapy cla.s.s Equest puts on there every other week."

"I won't have him on a horse. How many times must I repeat myself?"

"The riding is highly beneficial. It's wonderful therapy. Just feel his legs. His entire body, for that matter. Feel how loose he is. When he's up on that horse he's using muscles that I can't possibly work when exercising him. And besides that, he adores riding. It builds his confidence and allows him to experience just a little of normality that he wouldn't experience otherwise."

"And what happens if he falls off? You, of all people, an occupational therapist, should realize the dangers of getting thrown from a horse."

"The horses that are used in this program are very special. And besides that, the children are buckled into the saddle and they are attended every second. The instructors' hands never leave the children for a moment."

"No." Shaking her head, Leah turned away and started for the bedroom.

Following, Shamika said, "Leah, be reasonable."

"No. A thousand times no. If something happened to Val-"

"Nothing will happen. Please, don't deny him his only opportunity to know a little of the freedom that you and I take for granted."

Leah kicked the bedroom door closed between herself and Shamika. She carried Val to the bed, pulled off his shoes, and tucked him under the covers. Still smiling, he gazed up at her, eyes dancing, cheeks awash with color.

"Mama love?"

She nodded and brushed the hair back from his forehead.

"Mika love?"

"Shamika loves you very much."

"Val love horse."

"I know, my darling." She sighed. "I know."

Greg Hunnicutt, president of the Sierra Blanca Downs racetrack, rang her the next morning as she was on her knees removing the st.i.tches from the cantankerous donkey's leg. He wondered if they could move up their job interview to that afternoon. Apparently another vet had just turned in his notice at the track, which meant there were two openings for D.V.M.'s, which, Leah surmised, largely improved her chances of landing one of the positions.

At two forty-five she pulled Shamika's van into the Downs parking lot. She checked her face in the rearview mirror. Makeup minimum, just enough to partially conceal the purple bruise over her eyebrow. A light touch of mascara to her lashes. A kiss of blush to her cheeks. Lip gloss, no color. Hair French braided. Clean jeans. Starched white blouse that b.u.t.toned at the throat-annoying, but necessary when she was walking into a world that functioned strictly on testosterone.

Her papers were in order, tucked neatly into her briefcase. She'd spent the last hour retyping her resume. There were letters of recommendation from her former employer-Dr. John Casey, of Pilot Point, Texas-and from previous satisfied clients. Her most prized reference, however, was the one written by Professor Carlisle. He'd presented it to her the day of her graduation, declaring that anyone who could fight her way through vet school despite the awful obstacles that had been thrown in her way obviously had a calling.

At three in the afternoon the parking lot was mostly empty. The horse owners and trainers parked in lots beyond the offices, near the barns. Soon, however, the influx of traffic would begin. By five o'clock, bettors would drift in to take their places along the rails, stubs in hand as they waited for their pick to come racing over the finish line, hopefully winning them enough to put down on the next race. By the end of the night there would be so many losing stubs littering the ground that one would think the sky had blanketed the ground in snow.

Immersed in an animated phone conversation, Hunnicutt smiled broadly at Leah and waved her in, pointed to an empty chair before his desk, and proceeded to tell the caller that no way in h.e.l.l was he going to allow a trainer renowned for drugging horses and blackmailing jockeys to run on his track ... but it was nice talking to him anyway. No hard feelings. Sure, sure, they were still friends. No problem along that line. His best to the missus. Good luck in California.

Still smiling, Hunnicutt hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. His teeth looked like yellowed piano keys, his nose red as a Christmas bulb. "Trainers, G.o.d love 'em. They shoot up a horse and get caught and we're supposed to look the other way. Can you imagine how long the state would let us stay in business if we allowed shootin' up a horse? 'Bout that long." He snapped his fingers and rocked back and forth in his chair. "Glad you could make it on such short notice."