She winced automatically, then remembered. “The spring ball. That’s in May, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the first Saturday.”
That was the day when spring came to Kentucky, she thought.
The same day every year.
Derby day.
True Betrayals
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Only this was the Derby. Workouts were no longer a private affair. Even as exercise boys roused
themselves from bed, reporters were setting up equipment. Television, newspapers, magazines all wanted features; all wanted that definitive interview, that perfect picture.
Kelsey knew what hers would have been.
The soft dawn, that most magical time for horse and horseman, with mist rising, blurring color, muffled sound. And the signature twin spires of the track spearing up through it. Tubs of hot water added steam.
Birds sang their morning song.
Spring had come to Louisville, but there was still a vague chill at this hour, bracing, exciting. It touched off more white steam from the flanks and shoulders of horses returning from a gallop. Pampered and pushed, they slipped through the mists as magically as any Pegasus rising from hooves to wings.
But they were athletes. It was easy to forget that these half-ton creatures balanced on breadstick legs had been born to run.
Of the thousands of Thoroughbreds foaled every year, only a few, a special few, would ever walk
through the morning fog at this track, on this week. Only one would stand on Saturday with a blooming blanket of red roses over its glistening back.
Grooms carried the tubs and the wrappings, moving through the thinning swirl among the horses while the sun streamed softly, burning away the dawn, turning dew to diamonds. A cat meowed, boot heels crunched. And then the sound of hooves on dirt, eerily disembodied at first, then growing, swelling as the grayish mists parted like water, a colt swimming through them.
That was her picture, the memory Kelsey would take with her, quiet and comforting amid all the colors and the pageantry.
True Betrayals
