“What I have are resources. As you kindly pointed out, that’s why you brought me on. That’s why that smart, ambitious husband of yours found me, courted me, won my favor. So I could pull out my checkbook and make sure that racehorse of ours keeps running.”
“My daughter’s not your goddamned horse. She’s not anyone’s horse.”
Gwen smiled, leaning back farther, resting her hand on the banquette behind her.
“But none of it works without a Devon,” she said. “A Devon lifts up the gym, raises everyone’s game. Gives all those parents the delusion that they too could produce a Devon.”
A hot gust blew from the swinging kitchen doors but Katie felt herself shiver.
“She’s not ‘a Devon.’ She’s my Devon. And she’s not there to serve anyone else’s fantasies.”
Gwen lifted an eyebrow, blond and precise.
“And this isn’t a problem to solve, like a failing coach, bad equipment,” Katie said. “A boy died. A boy we all knew.”
Gwen sighed, her eyes returning to the ketchup-slicked dish bin beside them
“A boy died, yes. A pretty boy who made us all feel prettier.” She paused a moment, then looked back at Katie. Looked at her like she’d look at Lacey, and Lacey would tighten her braids. “And, from what Ron Wrigley tells me, the police stop investigating these hit-and-run cases in a few days. I mean, a few paint chips, what do they mean?”
They locked eyes for a moment. A moment that seemed to crackle and buzz between them. What they both knew and neither would say.
Finally, Gwen opened that perfectly painted mouth of hers. “You haven’t asked me, but I really don’t know what happened to poor Ryan Beck that night. It’s not my business. All I know is it was my daughter’s birthday.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Lacey was so glad Devon came to the party. It meant a lot.”
“Gwen—”
“It’s a shame she had to leave before we even got to the presents. Though Devon’s gift was very nice. Lacey wears those glitter bracelets constantly, even if they make her wrists itch.”
“Devon doesn’t enjoy parties,” Katie said, the words coming automatically, not liking the feeling, the sound, the prickly edge of this. “She never stays for long.”
“She got a call right before she left. She sounded very anxious on the phone. But she promised she’d find a way. That’s what she said. I guess she did. Find a way.”
The bad feeling, it was growing.
“You just follow my daughter around, do you? That’s all any of you do. Do you think Devon has time for your little-girl parties?”
Hearing herself, her tone, the thickness of everything, Katie felt queasy.
“I saw her through the front window. Charging down the lawn like it was the vault runway,” Gwen continued. “I called after her. It didn’t seem safe, at night. But she’s very fast, as you know. Lacey should sprint with half her power.”
A loud crash from the kitchen, the sounds of bottles rolling, breaking.
“Luckily, you don’t live very far. She was moving with great purpose. As if she had someplace she needed to be. I was the only one who saw her.” She paused, looking at Katie. “But no one will ever hear it from me.”
“There’s nothing to hear,” Katie said, but in her head she was picturing it all. Her daughter dashing through the night, those soundless sneakers, all stealth and speed.
Gwen nodded as if she could hear Katie’s thoughts.
“Katie, don’t mistake me. I know my horse in this race,” she said. “We all do.”
“My daughter,” Katie repeated, “is not a fucking horse.”
“What I’m saying is don’t worry, Katie. I’m taking care of it. That’s what I’m here for.”
“To protect your investment.”
“Isn’t that what parents do?” Gwen said, smiling. “When we’re young, we don’t know what we want. We’re blobs. We need shaping.”
“She’s shaping herself,” Katie said. No one ever understood.
Gwen shook her head. “They think they want things. Tits, sexy boyfriends, McGriddles every weekend. But they don’t really know what these things mean. That’s why we’ve got to want things for them, Katie. The right things.”
“I’m not like you,” Katie said. “I’m nothing like you.”
Gwen just smiled.
“It’s funny. Teddy always says girl gymnasts are like horses, high-strung,” she said. “I was never a gymnast, couldn’t even do a cartwheel. But horses. Well, I rode horses from the time I was five. Every day for years.”
“And here you are, still trying to ride horses.”
“My dad loved them,” Gwen said, not seeming to have heard. “He used to take me to the stables every day. My whole world was saddles, hay, bridles, and bits. Chantilly—that was my first horse, a ravishing OTTB mare.”
As she spoke, her face turned younger, softer.
“When I got her, she was lame on the right. Dad showed me how to use a rasp on her. File the flaring, nip the crack. After that, she never put a foot wrong. I rode her all the way to the jubilee. My dad was so nervous he bit the tip of his tongue clean off when I won.”
She looked at Katie, shaking herself from the reverie, or trying to.