Page 80 of The Secret
“Oh my God!” I gasp. “Should we …?”
“My heart’s in my chest every time I watch ’er,” he says. “But she’s been on the back of a horse since she was a baby. She’ll be okay.”
I turn to him, laughing. “Seriously? I can’t believe she’s only four! Did you teach her?”
“Yeah, I did. Wonderful it was putting ’er on a horse. A natural talent just like her ma. Beautiful woman she was.” He smiles.
“I haven’t talked to Dan much about her mom,” I murmur. And now I’m curious. One of his dad’s women, he said. How could we have missed out on that little detail?
“There’s always been bad blood between Dan and his dad. But Samuel—that’s the old Mr. Falinsburg—driving Linda away was the icing on the cake,” Nathaniel says.
“Linda?”
“Benny’s mom.”
I can only hope that the shock isn’t showing in my face. Ice drips down my spine. Benny isLinda’sdaughter? Jed’s Linda?Holy crap.
“Linda lived on the farm over there for years.” He waves his hand toward the hill behind the house. “She used to come over regularly to ride, ’er family didn’t keep horses, see? She was a good horsewoman—used to travel all over to ride; And the old man liked her, ’e paid for all the trips, and she took his horses. He went to see her jump sometimes: I think he liked the glamour of it.” He leans forward and lowers his voice. “I think she was after his money.”
Their dad had money? My God, Nathanial’s a total gossip.
He sucks on his teeth. “… Terrible business losing your mom. I heard Samuel chucked her out.” He eyes me sidewise, like he’s hoping I might confirm or deny this.He thinks I know anything?“Too fond of his fists Samuel was. Benny still had Dan, though. Made all the difference in the world.”
Dan’s dad sounds like such an asshole. “Yes, and Jed too, I guess.”
Nathanial chuckles. “Jed had a bit of a thing for Linda I have to say. He’s a charmer like the old man, but ’e was never going to get a look in with Dan around.”
What?Nathanial is looking out across the field. A smile splits his face as Benny wheels the pony through the long grass. The heat shimmers off the brown fur of my horse’s ears in front of me as he flicks flies off them, and I swallow, head swimming. What is he saying? That Linda and Dan …
“He’s been a great dad to ’er. Came back from that fancy university of his for all the appointments when Linda was expectin’.”
He came back … Why would he do that? … A greatdad? Now it’s my turn to look at the side of Nathanial’s weathered face. My mind plays over the soft look on Dan’s face when he held Benny in his arms and my heart skitters.
“That’s good.” I swallow.
I’m confused. Really confused. Dan had a thing with Linda? Is Nathanial saying he’s herrealdad?Jesus Christ.
Nathanial lets out a long whistle, and the pony pricks his ears and turns, racing back toward us. He chuckles. “It’s my special signal. All the horses know it.”
* * *
My heart thumps as I stand panicked and hot in the dust motes swirling through the late-morning air. Dan is whistling in the distance in the kitchen as he preps some food for our picnic. The old lounge furnishings gleam in the warm sun, faded brown fabrics on the chairs blending into the dark wood floor and a rug with long stripes where it’s been bleached of color. Jed’s desk in the window is piled high with papers, and his comments about money drift through my head. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were struggling, and my heart aches for them. I wander over to the desk and skim over the piles of invoices and lists of feed and spreadsheets, and as I peer closer, some have eye-watering sums on them. One bad season and it must be so easy for the bottom line to be negative in a business like this. I sink down into the chair at the desk, stomach warming: It’s a huge credit to the pair of them that they’re managing to keep it going at all.
‘E was never going to get a look in with Dan around. Fuck. I pull out the central drawer. I don’t even know what I’m looking for, but goddamn it, I need some answers. The drawer is stuffed with pencils, erasers, and a stapler piled on top of several notebooks. Another side drawer is full of brown cardboard folders with “FEED,” “LIVESTOCK,” and “MORTGAGE,” written on the top right corner in a red felt-tip pen. They have a mortgage on the farm? I open it up, but it’s some other property in Cape Town—another family house? How much debt are they in? Dan did say he’d explain all this to me sometime.
In the next drawer down, there’s more folders. One for Benny contains papers to do with her school, and two horse-riding certificates. At the bottom of the pile, a pink folder has the word “DOCUMENTS,” scrawled over it, and I flick it open. Two passports tumble onto the floor, and I bend down and open them, finding a picture of Dan and one of Jed, both staring back at me looking ridiculously young and cute. My heart flutters in my chest as I take in Dan’s casual grin and blond curls: He looks so like the man I met at Adebe and Gloria’s house.
There’s divorce papers for Samuel and Elizabeth Falinsburg.Wow.Dan didn’t tell me they were divorced, just that she’d died. The next set of papers are clipped together, and it’s a clutch of birth certificates: A old one with elaborate script I can hardly read, then Dan’s, Jed’s, and the last one is newer, folded over. Maybe it’s Benny’s? I unfold it with shaking hands and examine the ink of the registrar giving the date and place of birth. The name of the mother is Linda De Bruyn, and I can’t believe the name of the father that’s written in the registrar’s slanted handwriting:
Dan Falinsburg.
The paper flutters as my hand shakes, and I stare down a document on my lap, swallowing. Someone has blown a missile straight through the place where my heart used to be.
Dan?
Danis Benny’s father?
Nathanial wasright?
