It felt good to forget. Forget Halloween, though it had been fun in its own way. Forget the Mean Girls, the Trio of Doom, the snotty Lady Margaret, Snail Head. Forget the imperious young Elizabeth and the treacherous Princess Mary, whom history would come to call Bloody Mary. Forget that Edward was going to die so young. For ahead of her a new, higher jump loomed. This was what she must focus on. First she had to look ahead and pick out a tree, anything to center her attention on. As the jump neared, she must squeeze with her legs to keep Ivy going. Then she must begin stride counting and know when she was three strides away from the jump—that would be the takeoff mark. At the same time, she must relax the reins so Ivy could stretch out her neck. Keep her heels down. Lower leg straight, with her knee in line with the ball of her foot. There was the thrilling sensation when she could feel Ivy gathering her muscles for the jump and then the magical moment when Ivy’s hooves left the ground and they sailed. Yes, sailed into the air, sailed toward the sky. Together, just the two of them, Ivy and Rose, and finally Ivy’s gentle yield to gravity. And together they would land as softly as a ballerina completing a grand jeté.

Rose was only halfway through her lesson when she suddenly saw Jamie heading to the ring. He signaled Peter, who began walking toward the fence. She saw Peter look at her with a worried expression.

“Rose, can you bring Ivy to the center?” What was going on? She still had another thirty or forty minutes left.

He came up to her. “Rose, we just got a call. I’m afraid your grandmother isn’t well. She’s been taken to the hospital, and she wants to see you.”

“Is . . . is . . . is she going to die?” She remembered what Calvin had told her about the “little episodes” when her grandmother would faint and had to go to the hospital.

“Oh, Rose, I’m sorry, I don’t know anything about that, her condition. She just wants to see you. Needs to see you. I think that was the message. Calvin is on his way to pick you up.”

“Okay.”

It wasn’t a long trip to St. Vincent Hospital. But Rose kept going over Peter’s words in her head—wants to see you . . . needs to see you. Want and need, what was the difference? There was a difference. Of that Rose was certain. If her gran was really dying, did she need to tell her something? Some secret about her own mom?

Chapter 27

A Confession

Gran’s eyes were closed when Rose entered the room. She had oxygen tubes poking into her nostrils.

“I think we have a visitor, Mrs. Ashley.”

Gran opened her eyes. “We?” she croaked. “What do you mean ‘we’? Me. I have the visitor.”