LITMIR.BIZ

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had been fighting their ugly whispering fights, and Tamara hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she’d rather live in the stables than the big house.

      Once out in the cold air, Tamara decided maybe a shorter ride was a better ride. Muddy trails meant a slow pace and a nervous pony. Her ears burned with the cold and her nose dripped. She swiped at it with her sleeve and was glad Levi wasn’t around to see that unladylike maneuver. She and Kermit picked their way down the main path that led through a couple hundred acres of trees. Fall had stripped the leaves off the trees, but there was still something beautiful about the barren forest. Not barren at all despite appearances. Not barren, but only sleeping. She sensed the sap under the bark, and the wood drinking up all the water in the ground from the days and days of December rain they’d had. Even bare the trees seemed brutally alive to her. They were bursting to wake up and release the green in them, counting the seconds until spring when they could stretch and bloom and eat warm wet air like candy.

      Tamara found her favorite rock, a big chuck of limestone she liked to lie on in better weather, and used it to dismount. After tying Kermit to a tree trunk, she squished her way through ankle-deep mud and muck to the edge of the river. It was high today, higher than she remembered ever seeing it, and darker, too. Faster. It smelled different, a thick, pungent odor like dead fish and dirty metal. It made her nose wrinkle. As the water tripped over the rocks, it turned white like ocean waves. She’d inherited ocean fever from her father, not that he’d ever admitted that was where he went on his business trips. He’d never had to tell her, though. She’d found the sand in his shoes. When she told him to take her with him next time, he’d winked at her like that had been his plan all along.

      Instead, he’d shot himself in the head somewhere in South Carolina three years ago while on one of those business trips, and she still didn’t know which beach that sand had come from.

      “Come back, Daddy,” she said to the river. This river met up with the Ohio, which met up with the Mississippi, which met up with the ocean. And water could turn to vapor and rise up into the sky. There was nowhere water couldn’t go. If she gave the water her message, maybe it could find her father. “I miss you. You were supposed to take me to the beach, remember? You were supposed to take me with you.”

      She sent the same message once a week at least. So far no answer, but today maybe...maybe the river heard her. Maybe today the river would find Daddy.

      Tamara returned to Kermit, rubbed his chilled flanks, kissed his velvet nose before mounting up to finish her ride. Without Kermit and Levi, she might very well go haywire in her grandfather’s house. Girls at school envied her the brick palace she lived in, but they didn’t know about the fights. They didn’t know about Momma’s rules. They didn’t know about Daddy and the cloud his death had lowered around Arden House, shrouding it so that screams became whispers and whispers became silence. Her mother and grandfather were keeping secrets from her, secrets that set them to fighting nearly every day, even on her birthday.

      Even on her birthday.

      The rain had returned by the time she made it back to the stables, her hands cramped in her gloves and her cheeks chapped raw from the cold wind. She unsaddled Kermit and brushed him down, showering him with all the pets and scratches any horse in the world would want. She left to fetch a fresh bale of straw for bedding and found Levi waiting for her in Kermit’s stall when she returned. He’d turned the heater on in the stables and had taken his coat off. In his long-sleeved flannel shirt and jeans he looked more handsome than he had even an hour earlier. An hour from now he’d look even more handsome than he did right this minute. She wasn’t sure how he accomplished this feat, but she was quite happy to observe it in action.

      “Here.” Levi held out a small red box no bigger than a deck of cards.

      “What’s this?” she asked, taking the box from him.

      “Your birthday present.”

      Tamara’s eyes widened.

      “How did you know it was my birthday?”

      “You said so about ten million times today.”

      “You got this for me today? While I was riding?”

      “Well...no.”

      “Then you already knew it was my birthday. So you must have gotten it earlier. Unless you keep presents for me hidden around here all the time. You do, don’t you?”

      “George told me he bought you a Triumph Spitfire for your sweet sixteen. I don’t give a damn it’s your birthday. I just wanted to borrow your car.”

      “I’ll trade you the car for a kiss.”

      “Forget it. I’m keeping your present.”

      He reached for the box and Tamara yanked it away, nearly biting off her fingertips in her urgency to pull her gloves off her hands. They were shaking by the time she got the box lid open. One of the girls at school—Crissy, God help her with a name like that—said girls should always play it cool with guys, not act too eager. Well, Crissy had never been given a birthday present by the most handsome man in the entire world, and Tamara couldn’t play it cool if she were sitting in an igloo.

      From a bed of yesterday’s newspaper, Tamara pulled out a little gold horse on a little gold chain.

      “You like horses,” he said before she could say anything about it.

      “I like you,” she said.

      “An hour ago you were threatening to turn me into a spaghetti strainer.”

      “I only threaten to turn people into strainers if I like them. Is this a bracelet?” The chain was only a few inches long.

      “Necklace,” he said.

      “If you put this short chain around my neck, I’ll choke to death.”

      “Exactly.”

      She glared at him.

      “It’s an ankle bracelet, Rotten,” he said. “Unless you have really fat wrists, then it’s a regular old bracelet.”

      “I don’t have fat wrists.”

      “All I’m saying is if you did happen to have unusually fat wrists, it could be a bracelet.”

      “I weigh one hundred pounds, Levi.” She draped the ankle bracelet around her wrist to show how loose it fit on her.

      “One hundred pounds of wrist. I’m not saying it’s a normal place to carry extra weight, but it happens. Maybe you could do some wrist exercises or something...”

      Tamara kissed him.

      It wasn’t a cheek kiss this time. She wasn’t playing junior officer to his mon capitan. She kissed him like she meant it. Because she meant it. God Almighty, did she mean it.

      Levi gripped her by the upper arms and pushed her back gently, but still, it was a definite move to put distance between them.

      “Sorry,” she said, flushing slightly. “Got a little twitterpated there. You know, because I like horses.”

      “You know you can’t go around kissing guys like that.”

      “Like what?”

      “Like me. You can’t go around kissing guys like me.”

      “Why not?”

      “You’re sixteen, Tamara.”

      “I was fifteen yesterday.”

      “That’s the opposite thing of what you should say.”

      “What should I say?”

      “Maybe that you won’t kiss me on the mouth again. Or anywhere else. I think that would be a good start.”

      He crossed his arms over his chest.

      “But it’s my birthday.”

      “You don’t get to do everything you want to do just

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