In Chapter One of The Regift Horse, we meet Evie as she's working at her friend Posey's Thoroughbred horse farm. When a cryptic message stirs her from her usual routine, Evie gets her first inkling that her life might be about to turn in a new direction.
THE REGIFT HORSE
I always take a break around three thirty. I’ll bring the horses back in at four, and I’m done feeding and out the door by five, so this is a nice time to pause, drink a Coke, and flick through my phone apps, looking for something interesting to distract me from my own life. Since my own competition dreams were squashed by a double-whammy of anhidrosis—that’s when a horse stops sweating—and a ligament injury that refuses to heal, I’ve been living vicariously through the Instagram accounts of people the eventing gods have favored.
Maybe it’s not the healthiest hobby, but I enjoy flicking through their full-color lives, guessing at their woes, reminding myself that underneath the bespoke breeches and jackets, a heart that has been broken is still beating. To be equestrian is to be battered, inside and out. I might have recalibrated my hopes and dreams, but I won’t give up the lifestyle.
That’s my usual routine, the Instagram scroll.
Today, for some reason, I check my email.
And to my surprise, there’s an actual email waiting in my inbox. Like, not just emails about saddle pads on sale or timeshare weekends for ninety-nine dollars, but an actual email from a real human. I thought these things were extinct.
“What’s up, cousin Madison?” I mutter, tapping the email. I can feel a frown across my forehead. Madison and her Aunt Rachel are my only family in Florida, but I haven’t seen either of them in several years. They live in Sarasota, over on the Gulf coast. And while Madison showed ponies when she was a kid, she hadn’t been what you’d call a horse girl in her entire adult life. She’s one of those people that did it as a hobby. I’ve never understood those people.
Her email is short.
Short and surprising.
"I know you never come to our holiday parties, but I think you’ll want to be at this one. My aunt met a guy named Malcolm Horsham at some charity thing not too long ago—"
My eyebrows are at the top of my head. Malcolm Horsham, the handsome eventing terror of Ocala? Looks like a pirate and treats his staff like one, too? Talk about worlds colliding. There’s virtually no reason my aunt would run into an eventing star like Malcolm. Just dumb, strange chance.
"She’s been really secretive ever since, but I’ve seen some emails and I think she might have bought a horse."
Unbelievable. Why don’t I have “maybe I’ll buy a horse” money? Why doesn’t my mom?
Yes, I can walk out to the side of the road, put my hands to my mouth, and holler, “Hello Ocala, I have room for a horse!” and fifteen trailers will appear, some with actual, sound, show prospects in the back. But I know Aunt Rachel isn’t picking up an ex-racehorse after a meeting with a big name like Malcolm.
Rachel does things big. Big house, big car, big boat. She’s the opposite of her sister—my mom does things small. Small house, small car. No boat, obviously.
"If she thinks I’m getting on some psycho event horse, she’s out of her mind," Madison writes. "But if you show up, unexpected, who knows?"
Unexpected, hah. I haven’t been invited to the holiday parties since the first year I was in Florida. I’m not festive, what can I say?
Also, I don’t like Aunt Rachel. I hated family trips to Florida when I was a kid, seeing how much Madison had, the way Aunt Rachel threw money around…and going back to our tiny house in Maryland afterwards, wondering why she didn’t throw any of that money at us.
I look at the email again.
"Who knows?" Madison wrote.
What is she suggesting here?
I chew on my tongue for a minute, wondering if she really thinks there’s a chance here.
Madison was generous, unlike her mother. She gave me rides on her pony. She always kept cast-off breeches and boots for me, hiding them from her mother and the box for Goodwill.
What’s the worst that could happen?
"I’ll be there," I type back to Madison.
* * *
Standing outside the same candy-pink house, a solid seventeen years later, and I swear I can still feel the disdain emanating from the walls. I’m early for the party; I don’t want to be in Sarasota all night, and it’s a long drive back to Ocala. Madison lets me in. She’s wearing a plush lavender robe, and smells freshly showered.
“Evie, you look exactly the same.”
“I hope not,” I say dubiously, stepping into the house’s two-story foyer. “I was eighteen the last time I was here, and I still had braces.”
“Yeah, you had those for a long time.”
“Don’t remind me.” I glance at myself in the gold-framed mirror above the foyer console table. I do not look eighteen any more, thank goodness, and my teeth still look pretty great. If I cut my silly hair, I might even look, dare I say it, hot.
“Well, come have a glass of wine before you deal with my mom,” Madison says, slipping off down the shiny tile hallway ahead of me. “She’s upstairs getting primped.”
The kitchen is a dazzle of late-day sunshine, light reflecting off the canal behind the house and pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows. I wince and wish for sunglasses, but Madison doesn’t seem to notice it. She takes a bottle of white wine from the wine fridge beneath a marble-topped counter and pours into two waiting glasses. “I’m impressed you came, honestly,” she says. “I know our family was never your cup of tea.”
“You were fine,” I assure her. “At least, until you quit riding.”
Madison snorts. “I knew you’d say that. I have a design store online now, you know. I sell bespoke dresses and blouses.”
“Very fancy, and thanks for the wine.” I take a gulp. “Mmm, taste the oak. Or whatever.”
“Heathen.” Madison leans against the counter and smiles at me. “You know, I really think this could work out.”
“You weren’t clear about what this is supposed to be, though.”
“It’s exactly what you think it is. I found the paperwork. Wrapped up in a pretty box with a bow on top. I was right. She bought me a horse.”
“But why?” I can’t help an edge of anger in my voice.
“Easy, killer. I’ll tell you why. Every so often, my mom meets a rich, eligible man and decides I should spend time in his presence, so that he naturally falls in love with me. I know, I know, it’s very wicked stepmother of her. But that makes you Cinderella, so stop making that face.”
“How am I Cindere—oh.” I realize what she’s implying.
“Yes. I am going upstairs to turn down her thoughtful Christmas present. She is going to insist I take it. And then I am going to inform her that my long-lost cousin is here, and I am going to regift that horse to her at the party, in front of everyone, and there’s nothing she can do about it.”
I put down my wine glass quickly, because my hands are shaking. “You don’t mean it.”
“Oh, I mean it,” Madison replies, and I see the determined set of her jaw. Her mother’s daughter, I think. And I have no choice but to believe her.
