Thief of Happy Endings Read online

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  First published in the United States of America by Viking,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 by Kristen Chandler

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE.

  Ebook ISBN 9780425290491

  Jacket design by Jim Hoover

  Version_1

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Before

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  About the Author

  For Dylan, who got back on

  &

  For Quinn, who finds horses

  “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop the story.”

  —ORSON WELLES

  Before

  I WAS TOO stupid to be scared back then.

  It just felt like the ground had a heartbeat. My grandfather was next to me, snoring like a bagpipe. We were in his big, smelly tent out on the edge of his place. My heartbeat sped up to the pounding I felt coming up from the earth until I jumped up out of my sleeping bag. Everything was going too fast to lie down. I don’t know why I didn’t wake up my grandfather. Maybe because my grandfather, indulgent as he was, was not the sort of man I wanted to startle out of a dead sleep.

  I ran out into the cold morning with my tender city-girl feet. All I saw was dirt and sage and the sun sending its first blond streaks across the pale Wyoming sky. But damn I felt them. Pound pound pound. And even in the wind, I heard the trilling and snorting of something big.

  I raced over rocks and thorns to the cliff edge my grandpa threatened me to stay clear of. I ran right to the very precipice and felt the sway of the valley beneath me reaching at my stomach when I got too close. I held my arms out for balance and reeled back. And there they were.

  Hundreds of mustangs, all running, all together. Through the swirl of dust they raised I could see their heads and tails and legs flying all in unison, one big graceful creature, moving over the ground like the god of freedom, so hard and fast and fearless I wondered how they didn’t trample one another to bloody pieces. But they didn’t. They ran like the wicked wind itself, going who knows where and what for.

  And then I felt my grandfather’s bony hand clamp on my shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but when I looked up his face was soft, like it never was, soft like he was happy and sad all at the same time, and he let go and we stood there looking at all those horses running together for about one more second before they evaporated over a hill and left nothing but a cloud of dust and a permanent stamp on my little pink brain.

  It would have been easy for those horses to come a different way, come up on the hill and run me down like August thistle. But that never occurred to me. I thought that stampede was the best thing I’d ever seen. Because I was young and happy and not afraid.

  I thought just because something was wild, it was free. And because I loved something, it wouldn’t hurt me.

  Chapter One

  IT’S A LONG drive to Wyoming.

  I stare out the window at dirt, sagebrush, and an endless blue sky. It’s as dry and empty as a clay bowl, but the sky is so bright it’s nearly blinding. I put my head in my arm and lean against the car door. Then I check the lock. It’s fine. I put my head down again.

  I’ve been trying to sleep since we left Denver so I won’t have to talk or think, but I can’t. Mom doesn’t want to talk either. That leaves plenty of time to consider the reasons I shouldn’t be going to Wyoming. First, I’m afraid of horses. I didn’t used to be. But then, I didn’t used to be afraid of a lot of things. Second, I haven’t exactly been lighting the world on fire lately. As in, I sort of stopped getting out of bed for the last three weeks of school. Third, even as a five-foot-one slug, I’ve been the stabilizing influence for my sibs during this “difficult time,” which is the super crappy way Mom and Dad refer to taking their perfectly storybook marriage and putting it in the garbage disposal.

  I look at the pink mountains in the distance. Our family wagon drives fearlessly on. I’m glad that something in my life is fearless.

  I say, “The mountains don’t seem to be getting any closer.”

  “Oh, they’re coming,” Mom says.

  Mom’s dark waves of hair are pulled up tight onto her head. She doesn’t look much like the girl in the framed photograph I found stuffed in the living room drawer a week ago. In it, my parents are standing arm in arm with the ocean twinkling behind them. Dad’s thick hair hangs to his shoulders. Mom’s smile is easy and wide. The way she holds herself is billowy and graceful as fabric. Across the bottom of the picture, in Dad’s messy handwriting, are the words I always knew you were the one.

  It’s probably the sap
piest thing Dad has ever written. And my favorite.

  Before we left this morning, Dad showed up to pick up the sibs. The twins and Wyatt wandered out to the driveway in their pajamas. Jessie Jane and Oakley stood there shoving their matted mops out of their faces. Oakley started crying, which is typical, and Jessie Jane punched her in the arm to get her to stop, even more typical. Then Wyatt grabbed me like I was going off to war. “Why is everyone leaving?”

  I rubbed his fuzzy summer crew cut. “Hey, I’ll bring you back some magic rocks.”

  He’s seven, so he played it cool. “Rocks aren’t magic.”

  When Dad hugged me, he said, “Do you really want to do this, Cassidy? You can change your mind.” His voice was terse. His dark Irish eyes bored a gut-size hole in what was left of my resolve. “That’s a woman’s prerogative, you know.”

  Mom said, “I’ve paid her deposit, Peter. Get in the car, Cassidy.”

  I hate it when they do this. I’m not choosing between them. But they make it that way. Like about anything. Like about everything.

  “I’ll be home in a few weeks.”

  He sighed and rubbed his professorly stubble. “I’ll have my book done when you get back. You can be my first reader.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  He smiled in that tight way that feels like he’s frowning. “Dammit, Cass, just look at you. All this black shiny hair and a face like a china doll. You stay away from all those cowboys. They’re nothing but trouble.” He hugs my head to his chest and then lets me go.

  Because every cowboy in Wyoming is looking for a pale, short girl who’s afraid to get on a horse. But Dad doesn’t need to worry. I’m on a drama-free diet this summer, thank you very much. It’s not just cowboys that are trouble.

  * * *

  I look out the window again. For reals, the mountains are not any closer. We pass a scenic oil rig sticking its fangs in the ground. And then another. A tumbleweed blows across the road and gets stuck under the wagon. Mom doesn’t seem to notice. She looks as stressed out as I am.

  “I brought some apples if you get hungry,” she says.

  “I’m not,” I say.

  A big red semi passes us going the other direction. The draft shakes the wagon. The fumes make me carsick. I sit forward and keep my eyes on the road.

  It’s weird to take this drive after not seeing it in so long. We used to go this way to get to my grandparents’ place outside of Cody. That drive is even longer. The road just goes on and on, winding up through the dust for-friggin’-ever until you finally hit trees, and then like one bathroom stop later you’re into mountains so fierce you can’t even see the tops of them from inside your car. The landscape in Wyoming doesn’t mess around.

  When I was little I could barely hold still I was so into going to see my grandparents. My head would be all tingly when we started early, early in the morning, and Dad would buy a big box of doughnuts that he put in the backseat with me and the twins. I thought of the ranch like my own private amusement park. And I was the star of the show. Until I got bucked off into the fence and sort of brought the house down.

  I didn’t die, obviously. Just got a concussion and a scar on the back of my head where my hair didn’t grow back. But Dad was pissed about the whole thing, Mom had Wyatt a few months later, and then my grandparents died before any of that got sorted out.

  “You feeling okay this morning?” asks Mom.

  I shrug my shoulders and smile. But truthfully, I don’t know how I feel. Scared, I guess. I let Mom con me into this trip by showing me old pictures of myself at Grandpa’s ranch. Happy. Stupid. Riding bareback. Riding double with Mom. Standing up on the backs of horses. I looked so all-out audacious. So much cooler than I am now. Somehow I fell for my own advertisement.

  Mom tries to pretend she isn’t checking her cell phone every five seconds to see if Dad is taking care of the kids. The twins will be okay, but Wyatt is so hyper he wears out our dog, Kidd. I can’t think about Wyatt or I’ll jump out of the car and go after him.

  “What did Mr. Coulter do for Grandpa again?”

  Mom doesn’t talk much about Grandpa and Grandma. Neither of my parents talk about their parents. Dad doesn’t get along with his folks. But I think the opposite is true for Mom. She misses her parents too much. I miss them, too. Once in a while, she’ll tell a story about growing up on a ranch with no television and one bathroom. Or about how tough Grandpa was or how sweet Grandma was. But she almost always ends up with her voice cracking. And Mom hates to cry like a cat hates to swim. She made an exception to talk me into doing this.

  Mom says, “Coulter worked for Daddy as a foreman. But I think he stuck around because he liked your grandmother’s cooking. It was awfully nice of him to squeeze you in and let you do the work scholarship.”

  “I just have to do extra cleaning every day?”

  “Exactly. So pretty much like home. And it will save me a bundle.”

  She rotates her head to look at me. “Did you notice I put your grandpa’s hat in the back there? It’s probably still too big, but it’ll keep the sun off.”

  The hat in my closet. I didn’t notice. I look in the backseat and see the black felt thing perched on the seat. It has a small pheasant feather in a black band. I always thought it looked like a bad guy’s hat. I told Mom I didn’t want it in my room because it smelled like cigarettes, but truthfully it just made me feel funny. That’s why I shoved it in the closet. “You want me to wear that?”

  She sighs and passes an ancient farm truck. “Think of it as a talisman.”

  “Aren’t talismans supposed to do stuff? Like make you invisible?”

  Mom’s smart about Englishy things, like talismans. She was an English major until she met Dad and switched to accounting. “A talisman is supposed to bring you good luck, is all.”

  “Why did he leave it to me in the first place? It’s way too big.”

  “Who knows?” says Mom. “Maybe just to remember him by.”

  “Or to haunt me. He was mad about me giving up horses, wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t think he was mad at you a day in his life. Your grandfather loved you very much. He’d be proud of you for doing this.”

  I turn and look at the hat again, sitting alone on the seat. “I’m just saying, maybe it’s not exactly good luck.”

  “It’s gotten you this far,” she says.

  We drive for a long way without talking. Everything turns flat and barren. Like nothing grows out here but the dirt and rocks I promised to bring Wyatt. And nothing looks very magical. I turn on the radio to slow down the churning in my stomach but only get static and a Christian station. I wonder if I packed enough clothes.

  Then, in the middle of all the silence, Mom asks, “You don’t remember the accident at all?”

  “Just what you’ve told me. That the horse bolted, I split my head open on the fence and got twenty stitches.”

  “Thirty. But don’t let it worry you. The past is the past, right?” She smiles and pushes my shoulder with her fingertips.

  I look back at the hat following me in the backseat. “Right,” I say.

  * * *

  We watch the dirt turn to grass, then the grass to hills, then the hills to mountains. Just like I remember it, both sides of the road become vertical angles, and then we turn and we’re winding on a gravel road. I feel hard pressure on the car. I check the lock on the door again.

  “It’s the wind,” says Mom. “That’s what they make the most of in Wyoming.”

  When I think I can’t sit still one more minute, the mountains part and we come to a four-way stop with a thin green sign that says POINT OF NO RETURN YOUTH RANCH, with a small white arrow pointing left. I’ve seen parking stalls with bigger signs.

  When Mom showed me the website for this place, I thought she was kidding. “What kind of name is that for a summer camp? Is it like a co
rrectional facility?”

  She said, “It’s a leadership camp. Where you train mustangs and learn leader-y things.”

  “Leadership—with horses.” I made a gagging sound. “Isn’t that code for ‘Messed-up rich kids, apply now’? Last time I checked I was only one of those.”

  “Like I told you. The man that owns the place, Tim Coulter, is an old family friend. He said we could work out the tuition. He also said that they get all kinds at this place, including kids with reasons for being away from home for the summer. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “So I’ll be doing manual labor with banished, potentially deranged rich kids at a ranch with wild horses. I feel better already.”

  She pouted at me and pointed at the screen full of smiling teenagers chopping wood and sitting on perfectly behaved equine specimens. Okay, the kids in the pictures did look like they were having fun, I’m sure because they were told they wouldn’t get rations otherwise. And the mountains looked sort of breathtaking. But it was one line on the website schmoozefest that got me: “Whatever your personal mountains are, they’ll look smaller after you’ve lived in ours.” I thought that was good manipulative writing. I can appreciate that.

  I mean, I guess I get the “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” bit. But I still don’t see how horses, which can actually kill you, can really make racing thoughts and stomach cramps go away.

  Mom turns left and keeps her eyes on the road. “You need to get away from the mess to get better, Cass. I know it’s going to be hard, but I want you to try to tough it out until the end of summer. Sometimes you just have to ride things out.”

  I count ten telephone poles before I say what I’m thinking. “Are you and Dad trying to ride things out?”

  Mom tightens her grip on the steering wheel. “Don’t worry about that right now, Cassidy. This summer your job is to ride horses and worry about yourself. I’d love to do something like this. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

  In front of us the canyon splits open to a primeval-looking mountain range jutting up into a crayon-blue sky. Even though it’s June there’s still snow on the peaks. On the other side of the road, the wind bends wild grass to the ground. Out of nowhere, a hawk dive-bombs the car.