He chuckled as he poured the contents of her glass into his. “I’m German. Does a bear shit in the woods?” He went to the fridge, pulled out a Kölsch pale ale, and handed it to her.
“So, are you going to tell me why you’re here, or are you going to make me guess?” He at last smiled at her, and it was like a dare.
Elise shook her head. “It’s a long story.” She covered her dodge with a sip of her ale.
“So you want me to guess,” he declared with sarcasm. He crossed his arms and studied her. “You had a fight with your mother.”
She frowned and pursed her lips. “Well, no . . . but, yeah, kinda.”
“So what else is new?”
“Well . . . I had a fight with Moira.”
“Really? This does surprise me. You two are best friends. And I think it would be hard to have a fight with Moira.”
“Oh. But not with me?” She shook her head. “Don’t answer that.” Elise took another swig of her beer and walked over to the brown leather sofa, plopping into the cushions. It was then that she noticed the mud streaking her boots. “Oh no, I didn’t take off my boots. I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice muffled by being bent over to remove her boots.
“Nothing I can’t sweep up. We’re in a barn. I’m sure this place has seen mud before.”
“Yeah, but there aren’t oriental rugs in the other part of the barn.” She set the boots together at the base of the couch, pulled her braid from her back, and watched him settle into the red upholstered chair across from her. He was a good-looking man, tall and lean. It occurred to her that this was the first time in all the years she’d studied under him that she’d ever seen him in a casual setting.
“So you had a fight with your mother and with Moira.”
“Let’s not leave out Angel.”
“Him too?” Karl muffled his laugh by bringing his glass to his lips. Then he asked, “Did you come here to fight with me? Perhaps you want a grand slam?”
She laughed. “Nah. I fight with you every day. Why would I come for that?”
They both laughed and took a drink. He smiled at her over the rim of his glass.
“What happened? Can I ask?”
Elise sobered quickly and looked at the bottle in her hand. “Karl,” she began in a dramatically philosophical tone, “I think I’m at the proverbial fork in the road.”
“Yeah? Where do the roads lead? And do you know which one you want to take?”
She chewed her lip, then nodded. “Yeah, actually . . . I think I do. One road leads to the Olympics.” She held out her hand to indicate that he’d be traveling that road with her. He nodded in agreement. “The other”—she flipped her hand palm-up and spoke succinctly—“the other is the road not taken. And I suspect taking it will make all the difference.”
Karl swirled the ice in his glass. His eyes sharpened with interest. He knew that they’d crossed the line from joking to a serious conversation.
“You’ll have to explain.”
Elise set down her bottle and brought her legs up to the sofa to sit cross-legged. She began unconsciously to stroke the long braid that lay over one shoulder. Karl noticed, however, and smiled at the familiar gesture she made whenever she felt anxious.
“Well,” she began, “after my fight with Moira, I left the main house to go back to the cottage. I just wanted to go to bed.” She hesitated. Should she tell him about her mother and Angel, she wondered—or was that too private? Her mother was Karl’s employer, after all. Loyalty won out. “I got into an argument with my mother.” She shrugged as though to say, as usual. “So I went out for a long drive.”
“You went out for a drive in this weather?” he asked with disbelief.
“It stopped raining,” she said in her defense, then laughed self-consciously. “I got lost,” she admitted. “Do you know how often the GPS goes out of service up here? And it’s so fucking dark. I thought I’d never find my way back. But somehow I did. Once I reached the gate, however, I realized I had nowhere to go.”
Karl’s face grew soft. “So you ended up knocking on my door.”
She shrugged. “A lost sheep,” she said with a wry grin. “Can I stay here tonight?”
“You are my student. You can crash anytime you want. My door is always open.”
She tilted her head and said, “You know I’m gay, right?”
“Ja, of course. So what?”
She smiled, liking him a lot more. “You know, it seems to me that part of the problem between us has been that we haven’t been having these kinds of conversations. Heart to heart. You’re my trainer. We spend more time with each other than with almost any other people. What took us so long?”
“We were in competition, I think.”
“Over Whirlwind’s heart.”
He nodded. “Ja. And your mother’s.”
“Ja,” she replied, drawing out the vowel and nodding with emphasis, mimicking his accent.
“I think this is why you fight with her so much. You are a little bit afraid of her. She tells you what to do, and you do it. But you have this look on your face when she gives you an order.” He made a face, tightening his lips while his eyes bulged.
“Stop.” She laughed. “I do not.”
“You do! She gives you your marching orders and you are the good soldier. March, march, march. I think one day I’m going to see you do the goose step.”
Elise slapped her hand to her forehead. “It’s that bad?”
“Do I have to tell you?”
The joke was on her, she realized, and she shook her head.
“I think, Elise, it’s time for you to march to your own drum.”
Her face fell and she reached out to pick up her bottle. She felt her heart begin to race again. At the heart of the problem was the fact that she needed to work harder at the task of clarifying her own separateness and independence from her mother. If she did so, she might be less angry and less fearful about voicing her own wants and needs. To be less afraid to stand separate and alone on her own two feet.
She lifted her bottle in a mock toast. “And that pretty much was exactly what Moira and I fought about.” She lowered her arm. “I didn’t realize it was so obvious.”
“Only to those of us who care.” His eyes shone with a new tenderness. “To the world, you are Elise Klug, the fabulous young dressage rider on a meteoric rise.”
“Like my mother.”
“Yes. And no.”
“You know she had her accident at about my age?” When Karl nodded, she went on, “She got pregnant with me soon after she was married. After I was born, she began competing again. My father gave her Razzmajazz to train. I don’t think he knew how good a horse he was. But it soon became obvious to everyone that those two had that intangible something special together that made them pure magic. She too had a meteoric rise, winning show after show. She catapulted toward the Olympics. It was only a few months before the Olympics during a trial when Razzmajazz took that jump and had his heart attack. He died right there on the spot.”
“And crushed her leg,” Karl finished for her. “This is a story every equestrian in Germany knows. The German team dedicated their gold medal to her.”