“Honey, you lookingstunning.” The sparkle in those eyes said Mom meant it, too. “Doesn’t she, Izzy?”
“Yeah, stunning!” Izzy said with a bashful blush, hugging her grandma’s arm a little tighter for a moment. “Is Aunty Abbie going to marry Logan?”
That question again.
“I don’t know, sweetie,” the older woman said in answer. “Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
Luckily, Abbie’s long, curled hair was down and able to hide her reddening cheeks. She’d worn the ring, much against her better judgment. A part of her wanted to see whether Logan would notice. How he’d react. The other part of her simply tried it on and hadn’t been able to get it off.
“I can get some shortening from the kitchen.” Erin studied said finger and said, “Worked like a charm the last time that happened to me.”
But Abbie turned down the offer, a little hopeful part inside her wanting to believe the luck was really fate. Plus, fidgeting with a ring that didn’t want to slip off helped her distract herself from the fears tumbling in her stomach. Without the distraction, she might not be able to fight the urge to run far away from the arena.
Now she shoved her left hand in a back pocket of her shorts to avoid her mom noticing. She wasn’t ready for the string of questions that might follow, or worse, the interrogation she might get once her mom shared that detail with her dad.
After collecting some hot dogs—Izzy’s requested new favorite—they found their seats. Though the show hadn’t officially started, the clown called out to the crowd, asking where everyone was from.
“What’s he standing on?” Izzy asked.
“It’s called a shark cage.” Abbie pointed to the round contraption in the center of the ring. The top was a flat slab, the sides metal bars. “There’re people inside with cameras.” She tried to keep her voice even, but a memory of a bull charging right at a shark cage and nearly knocking it over flashed through her mind.
Her mom squeezed her shoulder. “You can do this, Abbs.”
Able to offer only a weak smile, she concentrated on steadying her breathing. It would be mortifying to have a meltdown before a single rider had taken the field. “Erin talk to you?”
“A little.”
“Do you think I’m making a mistake?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think, does it?” Her mom gave her a comforting smile. “But I did hear something a little alarming.”
“Oh?”
“Honey, youquit?”
“Maybe it was the wrong thing to do,” she said, “but it felt right. I can’t explain it.” She traced the wood grain of the table in front of her. “I wish Grandma were still here. She’d let me print the stories I wanted. At least let me try a couple to see if they were successful. Vince won’t even consider it.”
“He’s had a tough life, Abbs.”
She’d heard it before, and some of it was true. He’d lost his wife to an aggressive cancer five years ago. His only kid stopped talking to him almost completely after that and moved halfway across the world. The paper was all Vince had left of family. “I only wish he could see what he’s doing. I know the paper is important to him, but his pride gets in the way.”
“Yes, it does.”
“Do you think he’ll come around? Everyone else seems to think he will.”
“I think you know better.”
Sadly, she had feared that all along. She didn’t know what to do about her dream of someday running theStarlight Gazette. Vince liked to hold grudges, and he might very well hold one over her indefinitely. Sell the paper upon his retirement rather than keep it in the family as Grandma had wanted.
The main announcer asked everyone to stand for the playing of the national anthem.This is it. Any thoughts about running would need to be carried out or put to bed. If she had come alone, she definitely would’ve fled. But Izzy reached for her hand as a young woman sang a beautiful rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” and it kept Abbie rooted in place.
At the conclusion, the announcer made dramatic introductions of all the riders, giant pictures backlit by flames displayed on the big screens, along with the rider’s name, rank, and hometown.
It shouldn’t surprise her that some of the names she became familiar with throughout Logan’s career were among those introduced tonight. They were some of the best in the world, Logan among them. But he’d never compared himself to anyone else. It was something she admired.
“Out in the arena, none of that matters,” he told her once, in a canoe on Shimmering Lake, if she recalled right. Or maybe all the best memories rewrote themselves to be played out at their favorite moonlit lake. “In the arena, it’s only you and that bull.”
“What goes through your mind when that gate opens?” she’d asked him earlier today for her interview.
