The Summer We Lost Her Read online

  First thing in the morning they’d bundle into the car and drive to Matt’s old family cabin in Lake Placid. The thought of it—four and a half hours together in the car—was nothing short of heaven. Elise had popped into Target the night before to stock up on coloring books and markers, juice boxes, and a mini Rubik’s Cube for the road, and crammed it all into her carry-on bag. Matt and Elise would have chocolate croissants and steaming dark roast coffee from Amour-Propre, the little French bakery in Montclair.

  Her phone lit up. Matt calling. The sound of paper shuffling, then the deep growl of his voice. “I smell jet fuel and oversalted cashews.”

  She tucked her chin into the phone. “I smell the frustration of clients who don’t pay on time and mounting desperation to have your wife in your arms.”

  “Got me on both.”

  “We’re late to take off.” The pong of another call button. “Should happen any minute, though.”

  “Meet me inside the school, then. I’ll be the devastatingly sexy man, front-row center, who’s had way too many cold showers lately.”

  “Tell Lil’ G I can’t wait to squish her to bits.”

  “Aaand we’ll give the cheeseburgers and shakes a pass.”

  “You’re so not funny. Like, you shouldn’t even try.”

  “Love you madly, E.”

  In their early months of dating, he’d sent her roses on her birthday, ordering them over the phone. The florist had transcribed “I love you madly” as “I love you badly.” It had become a running joke. “Love you badly,” she said now before hanging up.

  Beside her, Laurel pulled out a library book, Orphan #8 by Kim van Alkemade, and settled in to read.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Sorenson?” A tap on her shoulder. The flight attendant who’d welcomed them while boarding, a young Indian woman with a silky ponytail, tidy tortoiseshell glasses, and plum-glossed lips. “We’ve just had a call in the cockpit. You’re wanted over on Equine Air. The pilots have had to delay takeoff for a horse that’s become upset.”

  No. No, no, no. Elise leaned forward. “My horse?”

  “He won’t load, according to the transport team.”

  “He has a companion animal, a donkey. He’ll follow Poppins.”

  “Apparently, the donkey’s been led on and off several times, but the horse won’t budge.”

  Indie had had a bad flight on a FedEx cargo plane when Ronnie brought him over from Germany as a four-year-old in the spring of 2005. Bad weather tossed the aircraft like a leaf for hours, and the gelding sharing Indie’s jet stall tried to make an unexpected break for it halfway across the Atlantic. The vet on board successfully sedated him, but not before Indie learned that travel is a menacing, six-headed beast to be avoided at any cost. It was nearly six months before he would willingly board a trailer in New Jersey, and he only did so with the help of a donkey Elise bought for $250 on their honeymoon in Greece that September after watching the overburdened jenny being forced to carry bulging tourists with bulging luggage up a six-hundred-foot cliff in the searing heat of Santorini.

  The lop-eared donkey had the look of a beloved teddy bear that had been through the wash too many times. The horse may have been twice her size, but the donkey immediately assumed the role of nanny, earning herself the name Poppins. She mollycoddled the gelding, protected him from rambunctious horses in the paddocks, and always allowed him the last mouthful of hay. Like a good governess, she taught Indie how to load by trotting up the ramp of the trailer and back. See how simple? You can do it!

  Clearly, a plane was a different experience.

  “They asked for your permission to take the horse to the cargo bay until alternative arrangements are made.”

  “The cargo bay . . . with the donkey?”

  “I don’t think so. The donkey would continue to Newark.”

  The amount of money Matt and Elise had spent to purchase such a talented horse was astronomical and, to them, the investment of a lifetime: $250,000. They’d used Matt’s inheritance from his parents, and then some, and later took on a sizable mortgage to buy the house in Montclair before Gracie came along. Indie was a coddled, sensitive horse trained to CDI—Concours de Dressage International—the level required for Olympic consideration. He had that magic combination of exquisite cadence and big, bouncy movements, without a flighty temperament. To leave him with airport ground crew in a clanging, banging, overheated cargo bay would be irresponsible and cruel. And dangerous. If he injured himself trying to escape, or, god forbid, colicked, the results could be fatal. Horses are herd animals. You don’t leave one alone in a strange place.

  Not to mention, a stall on Equine Air ran $5,000. Matt and Elise didn’t have anywhere near that kind of cash to pay for another flight, whenever that would be. This wasn’t exactly American Airlines. The only reason Indie was traveling with thirteen other dressage horses, hunter jumpers, and polo ponies—and one hee-hawing au pair—was that Ronnie had sold Wunderkind, the now retired Dutch Warmblood he’d won a bronze medal with at the 2012 games in London, to a wealthy beginner looking for a schoolmaster, leaving an empty stall on the plane.

  “Is it possible I could run over there and get back in time?” Elise asked the flight attendant.

  “Do you have checked luggage?”

  She’d hauled her luggage onto the horse trailer earlier. Had she checked her bags onto the flight, it might have bought her some time—at least long enough for the baggage to be removed by ground crew if Elise didn’t make it back. In a post-9/11 world, airlines were rightly squeamish about bags left behind by passengers who deplane. “No.”

  “Then the pilot can’t wait. I recommend you remain in your seat. The horse will be stowed securely. It’s very safe—”

  Stowed. Like a set of golf clubs.

  “I realize it’s not ideal.” The flight attendant frowned in understanding and looked up toward the galley, where one of her colleagues was gesturing for her to hurry. She stepped back. “But the staff in the cargo area are terrific with animals. Arrangements for another flight will be made for the horse. And you can be in direct contact with the staff when we land.”

  The thought of her daughter stepping out onto that stage, looking out to see an empty seat beside her father, turquoise crutches hidden behind the curtain until she had no choice but to pull them out. . . . Elise couldn’t breathe from the agony. It was what had kept her going these last three weeks—playing that moment of Gracie coming onstage through her mind on a never-ending loop. She’d planned (to hell with what the other parents thought) to stand up and cheer. Blow two-handed kisses to Gracie from the audience and embarrass her funny, freckled, ribbit-voiced girl with the enormity of her love.

  And Matt. Sweet, patient, kind, long-suffering-in-so-much-silence Matt.

  But she couldn’t take such a chance with Indie. She couldn’t risk the animal’s life by leaving him behind like a vintage Studebaker awaiting shipment to a faraway collector.

  There was no other choice. Elise unbuckled, forced her body out of the seat. After wishing Laurel a beautiful, smooth trip, Elise gathered her bags from the overhead bin, followed the flight attendant up the aisle, and stepped off the plane that would have taken her to the only place in the world she wanted to be.

  — CHAPTER 2 —

  New Jersey

  Matt prickled with impatience to get out of the suburbs and up to the lake, groaning and striking his palm against the steering wheel of his old cream BMW when traffic on the Watchung overpass came to another exasperating halt, red taillights blurred by the rain. Six thirty on a Friday night was, of course, a terrible time to head north. A four-and-a-half-hour road trip could turn into six hours, bumper-to-bumper. They’d meant to set out Saturday morning, all three of them. A family. Then Elise didn’t turn up for the play. And when Matt and Gracie returned to the house, they saw four of Gracie’s classmates file up the neighbor girl’s front steps for a sleepover Gracie wasn’t invited to but was able to observe through the kitchen window. The car had al
ready been packed for the morning. What else was a father to do but insist they pile in and hit the road then and there?

  “Dad,” Gracie asked from the backseat. “What’s a motherless ’tard?”

  Matt Sorenson spun around to look at her. Funducational—Summerhill Prep School’s after-school care program, which Gracie called Stunneducational—had been canceled that afternoon, so Matt had left work early to bring his daughter home and get her ready, then drop her off for dress rehearsal looking reasonably well-cared-for.

  Now, after drama feigned and real, after a pre–road trip spin through McDonald’s drive-through for a burger, she had ketchup on her cheek, her hair was a knotted mess, she wore a tiara tipped on an angle that looked more drunken than darling, and I MAY BE WRONG BUT I DOUBT IT was markered along her forearm in fine-tipped purple. From the moment Matt had found her backstage after the final curtain, her expression had been that of a recently exiled royal: exalted and misanthropic, wearied and replete.

  The life of a stage actress.

  He’d been trying, without much luck, to settle his outrage. Elise had been on the plane. On the plane. Who, after having been away so much of the year, when headed home for their only child’s first stage performance, all buckled up on a flight set to take off in minutes—no high winds or ranting passenger or malfunctioning electrical system to justify a big delay—gets off the flight?

  The text came in when he’d still been at the office. Actually, typing his out-of-office reply, as they’d be in Lake Placid for two weeks. The reason? They had to sell the cabin his grandfather built in 1947. The reason for that?

  Dressage.

  Not that he was bitter. He’d married Elise knowing full well she was special and that theirs would not be a regular life.

  Still. Having to tell Gracie her mother couldn’t make the play had been devastating. Matt almost couldn’t bear her disappointment. That he would be there was no consolation. He was the parent she could count on. He was the don’t-forget-your-lunch guy. The dispenser of the daily vitamin. The remover of grape juice stains. It made him dispensable, because that’s how kids think. Harkens way back to Romeo and Juliet. You want most what you can’t have. And, too many days of the year, Gracie couldn’t have her mother.

  Matt would have done anything to get Elise to the school in time. He’d have missed the play himself. Flown to Greenville and set up a sleeping bag right there in the cargo bay. He’d have sung lullabies, fed the horse carrots he’d julienned to prevent choking, pressed his lips to the gelding’s hairy forehead to check for fever. He was good at this stuff. It had been such a perfect day until then, could he not make this one simple thing happen? Surely a father’s will, this father’s will, had that much force.

  “Where did you hear that?” he asked his daughter.

  “Hear what?”

  “That ‘motherless . . .’ I’m not going to repeat it.”

  Gracie picked up the remains of her burger from the seat beside her and used it to point out the drizzled window. “Look.”

  A van had squeezed up onto the shoulder beside them. The hopeful female driver waved and pointed at the freeway, as if her need to get moving was greater than his. She mouthed, “Please.”

  No way—he’d fought hard to get this close to the freeway proper. He had only three car-lengths to go. At this point, Matt felt his on-ramp position defined him. He adjusted the mirror to look into the backseat. “You didn’t answer me.”

  “From Petra. During intermission.”

  “Who was she talking about?”

  “Duh.” Her gray eyes still had a Gerber baby–like purity.

  “Petra. She’s the understudy?”

  An emphatic nod.

  “Yeah . . . the understudy is always jealous of the lead. Everyone knows that.”

  “She knew my lines so good.”

  “ ‘Well.’ It’s ‘so well.’ ”

  Gracie’s feet thumped against the seat Elise should have been sitting in. “You didn’t make me practice.”

  Matt raked his fingers through once-black curls that were now more a tarnished silver. Pewter, at best. “I did so make you practice.”

  A deep sigh. “You needed to yell it.”

  * * *

  THE MARRIAGE WAS nearing its breaking point. There, he’d said it. Or at least thought it. All this living apart, Matt playing single father most of every winter . . . he understood Elise’s goals. He wasn’t a Neanderthal. Her passion for horses, for riding, for her sport, was the sexiest thing about her. The look on her face when atop Indie, even just to school him in Ronnie’s arena, was almost indescribable. Fire and water. Earth and air. Absolute peace and furious determination. From the start, Elise had been one of those people who make you feel like reaching farther. Like anything was possible. She wasn’t like anyone. She wasn’t normal.

  Trouble was, after—what?—ten, twelve years of living this way, normal wasn’t looking like such a bad gig. Was it so wrong at fifty to think it might be time to reevaluate? He’d been flipping through Sports Illustrated that week on the train and had stopped on a story about a gymnast from Uzbekistan who, at forty, was shooting for Rio in 2016. Think about it—the average age of a gymnast on the U.S. team in 2012 was sixteen. Nadia Comaneci won a handful of golds at fourteen, retired at nineteen. This forty-year-old wasn’t just considered unusual to shoot for Rio, she was being touted as a miracle.

  As the train pulled into Penn Station and people stuffed iPads into briefcases, tucked newspapers beneath elbows, moved crisply to the doors, Matt didn’t budge. Was it terrible to be jealous of this Oksana Chusovitina’s lucky bastard of a husband because his wife would be washed up after Rio?

  At this point, it didn’t look like Elise was ever going to get there. Her scores had zigzagged this year, and for what? A seriously disappointed daughter and the K2-size mountain of debt that comes from any of the horse sports. Bonus: every year the horse aged beyond his early teens, he dropped in value. Matt thought about the cost of a gymnastics leotard, even throwing in a hair ribbon. Hell, make it a hair ribbon woven from platinum and rose gold threads, delicately braided and tasseled with diamonds and the sperm of one of those Tibetan mastiffs they inject with lion’s blood in China. It still didn’t come close to the expense of buying, then supporting a decade of boarding, feeding, and training a fancy horse from Germany.

  Tonight was the last straw—wait, strike that. Straw is for those horses that don’t cost as much as a down payment on a Manhattan condo. It was the last fluffy cedar shaving.

  One of their neighbors in Montclair, Jason Hyndeman, a hedge fund manager with, Gracie once joyfully pointed out, the junkiest-looking actual hedge on the block, had offered this advice to Matt on the sidewalk: “Follow the Three Fs of investment. Never buy anything that flies, floats, or fucks.”

  Elise’s horse might as well have wings and a rudder.

  In his rearview mirror, Matt saw that Gracie had dozens of tiny stuffed animals pushed down into the seat crack so only their heads were showing. “What’s with all the animals?”

  “I’m bringing them with me. To teach them things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like they have to behave. Each one will get a hug, but only if they wait. Because there’s a rule.”

  “What rule?”

  “They could get stepped on by me because they’re so small. Or they could get hugged. They just have to wait and see.”

  Jesus. Another reason they had to normalize life. Elise’s absence was starting to wear on Gracie as much as it was on him.

  The woman in the van waved frantically, encroaching on Matt’s lane now. Her hair was coiled atop her head, and with her long neck and drapey sweater, she looked like a ballerina fresh from the barre. He could feel his resolve waning. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t proud of it, but he’d never been able to resist an even remotely attractive woman.

  There was a permanent sense of inferiority bestowed upon a male who had to grow into his looks. Mat
t had been born with an odd face: chin too small for pale, wide-set eyes and arched brows that winged outward at the apex. It gave him a look that was vaguely evil, or Vulcan. His classmates would describe him as likeable enough, but unpredictable. As if he might flick a match into the school Dumpster or drown a cat at any minute. With eyes like that, you kept your distance.

  It didn’t help any that his grandfather—who raised him after his parents died—had been born handsome and assumed Matt attracted girls as effortlessly as he had. Nate, who’d divided their time between a Manhattan apartment when school was in and the cabin Matt was about to unload when it wasn’t, had gotten it into his head that his grandson was a ladies’ man.

  “Whatever you do, don’t get her pregnant,” Nate would say with a wink, whether Matt was headed out to fill a tin can with worms in the Adirondacks or pop down to the lobby to check for mail in the city. In his grade school years, the joke had mystified Matt. But later, once the urges of puberty hit and an aggressive growth spurt left his body gangly and his face gaunt, Nate’s words shone an embarrassing spotlight on Matt’s reality: he was failing at what mattered most—the possibility of one day having sex. And there was little certainty things would ever change.

  Miraculously, when his bones stopped aching from long winter nights spent growing, Matt began to put on weight. His body muscled up. His face filled out. He still looked faintly dangerous, but in a way that was less indictable and more, as the Lake Placid girl who took his virginity would breathlessly whisper, “intoxicating.” The females at Stuyvesant had long since written him off—in high school, you remain who you’ve always been—but girls at parties, girls up at the lake, girls at Tower Records began to take notice. Matt’s social life changed in what seemed like an instant.

  Still, that kind of insecurity, coupled with the very real worry that you might remain a virgin forever, never quite leaves a man.

  Matt slowed to allow the ballerina in the van to slip in front of him.

  Gracie’s foot bounced against the back of the passenger seat. “Petra said her mother wouldn’t have missed the play for anything in the world.”