Free Horse Shy by Bonnie Bryant Page B

that the mystery was a cover-up, and she was as determined as Stevie to uncover it. The problem was that right then their curiosity had only earned them the right to clean bridles. They were stuck.
    “Have you girls talked to Carole?” Mrs. Reg asked, breaking the silence.
    “Yeah, we went to visit her on Saturday. She’s going to quit riding, you know?” Lisa said.
    “So my son told me,” Mrs. Reg said. “She really loved that horse, didn’t she?”
    Stevie nodded. “He was a beauty,” she said, thinking of how magnificent Cobalt had been. She could see him soaring over jumps with Carole in the saddle. She felt a lump in her throat. She set her jaw firmly. She didn’t want to cry. She began rubbing the bridle harder to keep her mind off Cobalt.
    “There’ll never be another horse like that for Carole,” Lisa told Mrs. Reg. “And if she can’t have a horse like that, she doesn’t want any horse at all. I think I can understand that.” Lisa thought she
could
understand the perfect relationship Carole and Cobalt had enjoyed. She hated to think about it, but she knew it must really hurt to lose someone you loved so much.
    “Nonsense!” Mrs. Reg said firmly, startling both of the girls.
    “She’s serious!” Stevie said, defending her friend.
    “Sure she is, but she’s also wrong,” Mrs. Reg told them. “And she’ll realize it one of these days.”
    “Oh, no!” Lisa said. “She’s made up her mind.”
    “You know, if I could tell you how many fine riders decide at one time or another that they’re never going to ride again—well, it would be a long list. But I’ll say this: Carole has got horses in her blood. She’ll be back. I don’t know when, but she’ll be back. Count on it.”
    “You really think so?” Stevie asked.
    “Of course I do,” Mrs. Reg said. “But I hate to see her waste so much time right now. Say, I’ve got an idea—”
    And when she told them, Stevie and Lisa had to agree with her that it might just work. At least, they’d give it a try.

“H I , C AROLE , IT ’ S me,” Stevie said into the phone on Wednesday night. “How’ve you been?” Stevie and Carole went to different schools. Usually they saw each other at riding class. Now that Carole wasn’t going to classes, they weren’t seeing each other at all.
    “I’m okay,” Carole said dully. Stevie thought she sounded anything but okay.
    “We missed you at class this week,” Stevie told her. “They were good classes, too. Max had us all working on paces and strides. Lisa’s doing really well. I think she may be able to talk him into letting her start jumping classes in the fall. He said he’d never seen such a natural rider—since you, I mean.”
    “Lisa can have the honors now,” Carole said.
    Stevie was disappointed. She’d wanted to goad Carole into returning to Pine Hollow, but it obviouslywasn’t going to work. She decided to try Mrs. Reg’s suggestion.
    “Mrs. Reg said she was going to call you.”
    “I hope she doesn’t want to try to convince me to come back,” Carole said.
    “Oh, no. She said she understands that. But she told me you’d promised to help her in the tack room. It was something about the trip—” Stevie paused, hoping Carole herself would remember.
    “All those extra bits and stirrup leathers!” Carole said. “We just bunched them up and put them in bags when we left on the MTO. I promised her I’d sort them out and put them away when we got back—but can’t she do that herself?”
    Stevie knew she had to be very careful now. Of course Mrs. Reg could do it herself, but Carole wasn’t to know that. “I’m sure she can. Don’t worry about it. She’ll do it when the pain goes away.”
    “Pain?” Carole asked. Her voice was filled with concern.
    “She said her arthritis was hurting her. All this humidity, you know? She’ll get better when it cools down.”
Perfect
, Stevie told herself.
You’re doing it perfectly
. After all, it wouldn’t cool down for