Page 2 of The Lookback

“That’s the wrong lead again, Emery,” Steve says, already sounding a bit winded himself. “Why do you girls think that she keeps getting the wrong lead on a horse who knows them?”

“It’s because she’s letting his shoulder collapse,” Izzy says. “That’s also why her turns are so wide they almost crash into the rest of us.”

Emery looks ready to cry.

Steve’s talking to her rather sternly now, which is probably for the best, and he’s stopped riding, which means he thinks something major is wrong. Either that, or he senses an upcoming meltdown. “Izzy, keep your eyes forward. If you don’t look where you’re going, you’ll wind up way off when it matters. You can’t look at the ground and hope to find your destination.”

Emery starts moving again, and she looks fine to me. At least her turns are sharper.

“That’s still the wrong lead. That’s what? Thirteen times, now?” Steve sounds a little annoyed. “That horse knows his leads cold, Em.”

And now she’s bawling. Loudly.

Thankfully, it’s not my circus and not my monkeys. I turn to walk off when Steve’s reddish horse decides to bite the back of Whitney’s dark brown one, and Whitney’s horse bolts—without her on its back.

Abigail exhales. “Here.”

Before I know how to say no, she’s thrusting her drooling, gummy-mouthed baby at me and ducking between the rails of the fence. “Whitney, are you alright?”

As if he’s figured out that Whitney’s fine and an amateur now has him, baby Nate scowls at me. Then, predictably, his entire face turns bright red and he starts to howl. “Ma-ma!” He’s reaching and twisting for Abigail like someone gave him water after midnight. Or was the no-no food after midnight and water poured directly on him?

Either way, I’m literally holding a gremlin straight out in front of me, and I strongly consider just setting him down on the ground. If it wasn’t quite so muddy between me and the edge of the arena, I might do it. I’ve seen him sitting up on his own in the family room. He’d be up to the task.

But Abigail’s still talking to Whitney, who’s now standing and brushing off her pants.

“I’m sorry,” Steve’s saying. “I’ve never seen Danke bite before so I wasn’t expecting it.”

“It’s fine.” Whitney nods. “I can get back on.”

Unfortunately, in spite of her reassurance, it takes them several more minutes to calm the dumb brown horse down enough for Whitney to swing back on—which you could not pay me enough to do—and my shoulders are well and truly sore by the time Abigail finally starts back toward me. My ears are also quite sick of the screaming.

“Here.” She’s not quite through the gate yet, but I hold the little nightmare out and bounce him a little so he knows she’s coming.

Abigail stops short of the rails and smirks. “I’m sorry, but do my eyes deceive me? Or is the great Helen Fisher distressed about having to hold a baby for three minutes?”

“Was it only three minutes? I’m not sure I’ve heard that much crying in my entire life.”

Abigail’s laughing as she swings through the fence and takes little Nate back. Being demon spawn, he immediately collapses against her chest and sighs, like I was somehow abusing him. “It would help if you held him more like an acquisition agreement and less like a sack of moldy potatoes.”

Hesmellsmore like the potatoes, but I’m feeling generous, so I don’t point that out. “It must be less stressful taking care of a child once you get used to doing it.”

Abigail shrugs. “Not really, but you get used to the stress, like someone with a chronic ulcer becomes accustomed to the burning feeling.”

“Like you know anything at all about ulcers.” Marrying a doctor has expanded her analogy repertoire, at least.

“I probably know as much as you do about children.” She’s still smirking as she walks with me into the house. “You’re around someone who has one, at least.”

It’s a good thing she comes with me, because the contracts are not in the cabinet I thought she was talking about. There are very few people in the world whose company I enjoy, and Abigail is one of them, but spending time with her is way less fun when she’s shackled to a drool factory who poops his pants on the regular.

“Steve’s off tomorrow,” she says. “I can meet you to go over the documents on that seed deal first thing.”

That seed deal.

It’s such a typically Abigail way to refer to a multi-million dollar deal that I’m smiling as I leave. That seed deal, as she calls it, is the newest hostile takeover that I’ve been scouting, and I’m more excited about it than I have been about anything in a while.

Vitality Plus, a relatively new agricultural startup company I’ve been looking into, was backed by Gonzago, which is one of the largest global food engineering and production companies in the world. Lately, it has come under increasingly uncomfortable fire for some of its reverse engineering practices, and it’s taken a beating in both the media and to its bottom line.

It’s been bad enough that it cut a few of its pet projects loose, and now they’re all floundering. I love to look for baby ducks whose mother has lost track of them, and this certainly qualifies. Without consistent revenue to fund its growth through new research, Vitality Plus had to make an IPO that didn’t go well, just to stay in operation. In spite of its early shove into maturity, it has consistently turned a profit. It’s in a reasonably good position, but thanks to a few ongoing management blunders, it’s worth less than half what it could be worth, and if its pending tech breaks through?

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