The Hidden Horses of New York: A Novel Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Books by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The

  Hidden Horses

  of

  New York

  Natalie Keller Reinert

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 Natalie Keller Reinert

  Cover Photos: iStock

  Cover Designer: How Bowers

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9781704304649

  Also by Natalie Keller Reinert

  The Show Barn Blues Series

  Show Barn Blues

  Horses in Wonderland

  The Alex & Alexander Series

  The Head and Not The Heart (A Novella)

  Other People’s Horses

  Claiming Christmas (A Novella)

  Turning for Home

  The Eventing Series

  Ambition

  Pride

  Courage

  Luck

  Forward

  Short Stories

  Horse-Famous: Stories

  Deck the Stalls: Horse Stories for the Holidays (Editor)

  Historical Romance

  Miss Spencer Rides Astride

  The Genuine Lady

  The Honorable Nobody

  Chapter One

  Jenny jiggled the lead-shank to distract the three-year-old colt tugging at the other end, and tried to ignore the phone buzzing in her back pocket. Her mother’s gaze, sharp and unforgiving, caught hers from across the saddling ring, and Jenny felt the force of her warning: don’t touch that phone while you’ve got hold of a horse. It was one of Andrea Wolfe’s most ferociously-enforced rules. Once, she had taken a rider’s phone right out of his hands and thrown it with the power and grace of a pitcher. The phone had landed in the cattail-choked drainage ditch running along the inside of Sugar Creek Farm’s training track and was never seen again.

  “Settle,” Jenny hissed at the colt, who rolled one wild eyeball at her and flared his nostrils, tossing his head towards her face. For an instant her vision was a blur of black skin, ringed inside with red. The colt’s sleek coat was graying out slowly, his neck and body spangled with white-ringed dapples and his mane a cloud of black. Jenny remembered when he’d been born, a fox-colored colt blinking owlishly through spectacles of pale hair, a dead giveaway that this pretty little chestnut would grow up to be a gray.

  Jenny jerked back to the present and gave the lead-shank in her hands a tug to remind him not to get so personal. The colt straightened out and they kept on walking in their tight circles, using every inch of the space they’d been allotted. The walking ring of Tampa Bay Downs was tight; the little crowd of spectators pressing in so closely that Jenny was sometimes afraid even the rail keeping them back from the horses was still not far enough away to protect them from a kick. As a rule, hot-blooded young Thoroughbreds were not malicious. But they were in a hurry to get moving, and indiscriminate with where their flying hooves ended up.

  Jenny’s phone was buzzing again, furiously rattling against the thin chest pocket on the flowing blue blouse she’d paired with her race-day khakis. She desperately wanted to answer it, wanted to see her friends’ silly faces and hear their stupid voices so much, and she was crazy to find out what had happened with their final presentation, if Professor Mulvaney thought their idea was any good or if they were just a bunch of idealistic kids (which Jenny did not think was a bad thing, not yet). They needed his buy-in if they were going to get anywhere. Lana’s father had been determined on that point. He wasn’t giving them a dime otherwise.

  The loudspeakers crackled as if they were clearing their metallic throats, and then the feed from the track’s resident commentator took over the sound of jingling metal and thudding hooves. He was standing near the paddock with his back to the horses, a small burly man in a three-piece suit that strained at the arms, wraparound sunglasses and gel-stiffened blonde hair competing with his swirling tribal neck tattoos for attention. Jenny always thought he looked like a cross between a professional skateboarder and Guy Fieri. He spoke, with a thick Long Island accent, about past performances and speed figures and jockey win percentages. When he got to Mr. November, he just said: “this one is the favorite for a reason, but if you want to beat him, try the three and the six,” and then continued on with the next horse.

  Jenny ran a hand along Mister’s hot neck. They weren’t going to beat him—not the three, not the six, not any of the other horses circling the paddock. His dark eye met hers, and suddenly Jenny forgot about her phone, and the conversation she was missing in New York right now. This happened before every race. Jenny would live entirely in the moment for the next fifteen minutes: the moment she handed Mister off to the outrider, the moment she caught him after his race, the moment she led him into the winner’s circle.

  Today was Mister’s day.

  She smiled at him, the sounds of the horseplayers dissipating around her.

  Then he ducked his chin backwards and tried to bite her, his eyes bright with mischief, and she was wrenched back to reality. “No,” she huffed. “You’re bad. Don’t do it again!”

  Mister pushed hard against the bit in his mouth, grinding his teeth. The movement tugged at her joints, made her wince as she pulled back. He was so ready, so painfully ready. Why wasn’t it time to mount up yet? She looked to the center of the ring. Her mother was there, talking to the jockey, a slim-hipped young man who was having a very good year. It had been easy to convince him to ride Mister in the colt’s first big stakes challenge. Everyone knew the colt was peaking. No one knew it better than Jenny. Because while the line for owner was always filled in with “Sugar Creek Farm,” Mr. November’s real owner had always been Jenny Wolfe. He was the last good thing she’d done before she’d gone away to school, and the one good thing she’d returned for, over and over again. Bred by Jenny, foaled by Jenny, halter-broke by Jenny, started under saddle by Jenny. She’d done it all over winter holidays, spring breaks, summer vacations, and long weekends. She’d hurried home from a cold, snowy New York to a warm March evening when his birth seemed imminent, despite her mother’s tired reminders that there was no telling when the mare might actually foal. And early that morning, a
s a storm blew through the open rafters overhead, her colt had been born.

  The new foal had blinked at her from his damp bed of straw and then promptly bit her, all gums and tiny milk teeth closed tight on her hand, and Jenny had laughed and told him, “you’re the one, you’re my Mister November,” and he’d been Mister every day since then.

  Jenny’s mother had disapproved of naming a wobbling newborn colt for a race three and a half years (and a solid mountain of luck) away. “There are thirty-six foals due on this farm alone, thousands all around Ocala, and you’re pinning all of your Breeders’ Cup hopes on this one?”

  But Mister was Jenny’s hope, not the farm’s hope or her mother’s hope. And she thought Mr. November was a fine name for a colt she planned to point at the world racing championships, held in November each year. “Plus he looks like a Mister,” Jenny added. “With those little spectacles of his.”

  “Those will be gone in two months,” her mother snorted, but she left it alone after that.

  Three years ago, Jenny thought, her hand still on the taut muscles running along Mister’s arching neck. Three years ago, he’d stood no higher than her waist. And now he was this big beast, this monstrous colt with muscles toned into the airstream lines of an Art Deco locomotive, coat spangled with white stars like the iron-gray sky the morning before a hurricane, taut skin and flowing raven mane and dark, intelligent eyes that landed on Jenny the moment she entered his field of vision and never left her until she was gone again, back to wherever Jenny went when she left Mister behind.

  “Riders up!” the ring steward called, raising his clipboard in the air like a ceremonial flag. As if released from taut strings, the jockeys and trainers dispersed in every direction, flowing toward their mounts in a wave of bright pageantry.

  In her pocket, Jenny’s phone buzzed three times—then stopped again. They were learning, she thought, tugging Mister in a circle for the jockey.

  Mister was not the sort of horse who stood still for mounting, despite Jenny’s best efforts to teach him good manners. She’d come home last summer and ridden him each morning, teaching him to be a racehorse on the white-fenced oval back home in Ocala. It hadn’t been enough. Jenny’s mother had snorted that a body could hardly expect some rude New Yorker to teach manners to a two-year-old colt, and Jenny had protested even while inside she felt a glow of pride at being called a New Yorker. There was something about belonging in the city that was beginning to call to her by then, a realization that the alien streets and endless traffic and soaring towers were somehow as richly intoxicating as the green hills and ancient oaks and molasses-scented feed rooms of Ocala, and she had already begun to wonder if she was going to stay on after school was over.

  Now, she was just waiting for the chance.

  Her phone was still and silent, but she felt it rumbling against her hip, a phantom vibration with every step. Her whole life was waiting to begin, and she’d find out what came next in minutes… if she could just get Mister out to the race course without bloodshed.

  She kept walking the colt, slowing his stride infinitesimally (infinitesimally was all Mister would tolerate) as her mother held out her palms alongside the colt, waiting to help Manny spring into the saddle. Mister, watching him with a sideways ear, tensed his muscles, his steps shifting into a hopping-skipping jig, his hindquarters weaving sideways as he hit Jenny’s unforgiving hands on the leather and chain binding them together and he ran out of room for all of the energy flowing through him. He held back for a moment, and Manny put his hands on the saddle, his knee into Andrea’s hands, and jumped onto the colt’s back.

  “Watch him in the gate,” Jenny’s mother spat out, falling back from Mister’s swinging haunches before he let a hind hoof fly, heedless of what might be in his way. “Don’t let him twist and carry on or he’ll miss the break.” It had been Mister’s undoing in all but his last start this year. It was the reason he was still in Florida in May, when everyone had expected him to go to Kentucky. He just hadn’t had the brain to go with his speed yet.

  Jenny thought his brain had finally caught up.

  “I got this, Miss Andrea,” Manny said, his voice confident. Jenny glanced up at him and he grinned back at her.

  “I’m glad you’re riding him,” Jenny told him.

  “Yeah, me too.” Manny laughed and adjusted his stirrups. Mister was still trotting in slow motion, but the jockey wasn’t bothered. The only thing that would have gotten his attention was if the horse reared or bucked. Spine flat? All systems go. “I like this boy. He got a lot of spirit, but he not stupid.”

  They gave up their circle, and started toward the gap in the track fencing. The outriders were waiting on their track ponies, the retired racehorses and bored quarter horses watching the younger horses’ antics without interest. Track ponies had seen everything before, twice over. Jenny slid the chain free of Mister’s halter, and began to unbuckle the strap behind his ears, preparing to turn the colt over to the outriders. Manny wouldn’t be asked to control Mister alone until the bell rang and the gates sprang open.

  A darkly tanned woman with a long bleached ponytail flowing from the back of her helmet leaned down from her rangy horse’s back, and, just as Jenny slipped his halter free, the outrider slid a slim leather strap through the ring of Mister’s bit.

  She timed it perfectly; Mister was never free for a moment.

  “Let’s go, old man,” the outrider told her mount, and the horse broke into a shuffling jog while Mister hopped alongside like a big gray bunny, shaking his head furiously against the outrider’s taut hold on his bridle. As he sprang away, a gob of white foam slopped from his bit and onto Jenny’s shoulder. She brushed the saliva away without looking at the damage done to her blouse, wiping her hands on her race-day khakis, which had seen much worse. For one long, frozen moment she just watched Mister cavorting at the end of the leather thong. He flipped his head, propped his shoulders, blew loudly through his nostrils. No one paid him any mind. The outrider was ignoring him, the pony horse was ignoring him, even Manny, perched above his withers, was ignoring him. Refusing to acknowledge his foolishness was the only way to deal with Mister’s mischief-loving heart; the moment you got on his case about something, the colt escalated things to a scale that quickly got dangerous for everyone.

  Jenny thought about how much she loved him, and how much she had missed him while she’d been in New York, and how much more she would miss him if she went back for good.

  Then her phone buzzed again, breaking the spell, and she pulled it out of her pocket just as her mother came hustling up. “Let’s go, girl. You’re standing in the track like a crazy person,” Andrea commanded. “They’re trying to put a race on, if you haven’t noticed.”

  She hit the green button on her phone’s screen, her heart between her boots, suddenly afraid of whatever news was waiting. Yay or nay, go or no go, it was all going to be a disaster for half of her.

  “JENNY!” the people in her phone shrieked in a chorus, and her heart rebounded like a balloon freed of its string, soaring up into the endless blue of the Florida sky.

  “GUYS!” she yelled back. “HOW DID IT GO?”

  Jenny’s mother shook her head and hustled away, pushing through the crowd. She was heading for the spot near the winner’s circle where she always watched races. Jenny hung back in the walking ring as the remaining horses danced past her, bound for their own outriders, and held up her phone to get a good view of her friends.

  Aidan crowded Lana for optimal screen time, his broad smile taking over Jenny’s entire display. She couldn’t help but let her grin slip into something deeper, a more all-encompassing smile that probably put her heart on her sleeve for a few revealing seconds. She wondered how her hair looked, if her dark waves were hanging lifelessly thanks to the humid May evening. She imagined just how red her cheeks were, how sweaty her upper lip must be. Aidan looked cool and collected, his walnut-brown hair falling in its habitual wave across his forehead. Lana, pushing her way int
o the frame, was as flawlessly made-up as ever, and Jenny shrank from the comparison Aidan must be making between the two of them.

  Then she caught herself, pushed the thoughts away, and and produced a toothy, friendly grin. “Stop shoving Lana, Aidan! Haven’t you ever heard of chivalry?”

  “It’s called being a gentleman, learn about it,” Lana screeched, pushing him back, and as Aidan tumbled off his bar stool she could see they were at Fargo, a dive bar on the Lower East Side where they’d been celebrating good grades and good days for the past few years. Jenny waved at the bartender, an aging hipster boasting a glorious lumberjack beard, but he couldn’t see her. “JENNY,” Lana roared, swiping back white-blonde hair from her face, where it was always falling with orchestrated abandon, “HE LOVED IT. HE LOVED IT!”

  The bartender spoke up without lifting his gaze from his lemon slicing. “Yo, stop yelling, Lana, there’s no one here but you guys. Let me enjoy some peace and quiet before the evening hits.”

  “Sorry, Mike,” Lana whispered, and she crossed her eyes at Jenny, making a gag-me face. Lana thought Mike was secretly in love with her. Lana thought every man was secretly in love with her, and most women, too. “Professor Mulvaney said the entire plan was a fantastic idea. He said it made him think differently about horse racing! And he never even thinks about horses period!”

  Aidan pushed his face back into view. “If we can get through to people who aren’t even interested, think about the actual equestrian community. This is really it. We’re going to build bridges. We’re going to connect people like never before. This is going to change everything.”

  Jenny took a deep breath, feeling a rush of excitement tingle from her nose to her toes. This was it, then. One step closer to going back to New York. They were going to get to work, just as they’d planned. Now all they needed was Lana’s father to finance them.