Page 136 of Men in Shorts

He fetched a halter and a thirty-foot lunge line, then led Gretchen out to the riding ring. She tossed her head with glee at the feel of the brisk winter wind, pausing but a moment to pin her ears back at the sight of Elizabeth.

Once Andrew had Gretchen walking around him in a large, anticlockwise circle, his sister approached, her pale face barely visible between her russet woolen scarf and faux-mink hat (at least Andrew hoped it was faux). They rotated with the pony’s motions, like a binary star system with a single planet.

Andrew kept his focus on Gretchen, clucking and chirping to keep the pony’s pace at a brisk walk. There was so much he wanted to tell his sister, but didn’t know where to begin.

“Remember when we were kids,” Elizabeth said at last, “we’d go riding in the snow and give the old stable master a heart attack? What was his name?”

“Finn. And that must have been George you did that with. You and I were never kids together.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Andrew bit his lip. His sister was trying to form a bridge between them; it wasn’t solely her fault they were short of building materials. “I remember you teaching me to ride,” he said. “On your saintly chestnut gelding Aesop, may he rest in peace.”

“I remember picking you out of the dirt after you tumbled off. You always hopped right back on like nothing had happened. I used to wonder if you enjoyed falling, simply for the drama of it all.”

“I enjoyed it more after I discovered it annoyed you.”

“As I suspected.” She tucked a dark brown lock of hair back under her hat. “But you were still my favorite toy.”

Andrew’s arm twitched in surprise, jerking the lunge line. Gretchen thrashed her head, her thick mane an undulating silver curtain. “Trot!” he called out to distract the pony from his mistake. She obeyed, but only after a few seconds, as if to imply that speeding up was her idea.

A blast of wind hit just as the sun peeked through a gap in the clouds. Elizabeth wrapped her arms around her waist as she walked faster to avoid the lunge line. “I should have seen what Jeremy was doing,” she said. “How he was trying to control you. I should have looked out for you.”

This admission of imperfection—and odder still, the display of sibling concern—made Andrew uneasy. “I would’ve ignored any warning or advice.”

“That’s no excuse. I didn’t protect you because I preferred not to think of you at all. Whenever Jeremy discussed your future, I would change the subject, because the mere thought of my little brother…ugh. Don’t lie and say the feeling wasn’t mutual.”

“It was.” Andrew longed for his family’s usual emotional caginess. “And now?”

“Now, I-I want you to be all right.” Elizabeth fidgeted with her scarf. “I want to help make that happen.”

“Whooooa.” Andrew brought Gretchen to a halt, then staggered, dizzy from turning in a circle. As Elizabeth steadied him, he stepped back and switched the lunge line to his other hand, prompting Gretchen to turn and face the opposite direction. Then he clicked his tongue. “Walk!” Once the pony was in motion again, he said, “I appreciate your concern.”

“After what happened in London the other night…”

“Yes.” Andrew’s face grew hot. Nearly everyone he knew had reached out to him in the two days since his panic attack. It was embarrassing, but also a wakeup call. He clearly needed support from someone other than himself, his boyfriend, and a mysterious midfielder/“civil servant.”

“So you’re getting help?”

“My first therapy appointment is tomorrow. Colin kept insisting.” He glanced at his sister, waiting for her to call him a whinger, a weakling, a wee self-centered brat.

“Excellent.” Elizabeth tugged on the fingers of her gloves, looking as awkward as Andrew felt. “He seems good for you, astonishingly. And you’re probably the only one in our family not already in therapy.”

He nearly lost his grip on the lunge line. “Seriously?”

“Why are you surprised? This life would drive anyone mad.”

“Especially now I’ve broken your family.”

She sighed. “There you go again, making it about you.”

“Trot!” He shook the line to urge Gretchen to pick up the pace, since his lips had gone too dry to make encouraging noises. “I know Jeremy’s crime is his responsibility, but it doesn’t change the fact that if it weren’t for me and my big gaping mouth, your husband would be a free man.”

“But he wouldn’t be agoodman.” She hurried to keep ahead of the rotating line. “That’s something you and I need to face. How did we fall for Jeremy’s promises? Why did we think a political operative could be trusted with our hearts?”

“We thought he was on our side,” Andrew said. “People like him make good allies.”

“Until they don’t.”

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