Excerpt: Empire Farms

There was no getting out of Thanksgiving dinner with his Grandma. She had the whole family over—including cousins he barely knew and relatives he only saw once a year. The food was always spectacular, at least. Max suspected that was the only reason she managed to get everyone to attend year after year. Because aside from the gorging, the only thing the day seemed intended for was bragging. Each family unit tried to prove their children or spouses had done more over the past year than anyone else. There were awards for most money, biggest houses, and highest publicity.

And in a family with two neurosurgeons, a molecular biologist, and a Hollywood talent agent, the competition got stiff indeed. Max’s biggest bragging rights had been his acceptance into Boston College and its honors program. Dropping out to groom horses seemed more like a failure to most of his family.

Oh, Max had expected the snide remarks from some of them. “Just wait until the money runs out and he has to get a real job,” his aunt Nancy had said to his father. “He’ll go back to school then.”

“Horses? Isn’t that a girl’s sport?”

Max tried mentioning how Carson Hunt went to the Olympics back in ’84. No dice. It just wasn’t the sort of accomplishment that could be quantified or measured. And no one without his passion could understand why he’d possibly want to throw away an education for what amounted to, basically, an internship. Not when they couldn’t recognize the sport as a viable profession.

No, Max had braced himself for the sea of smug superiority from his distant relatives. What had hurt more was the total lack of protest from his father. His mom had smiled and said that everyone needed to follow their dreams, and Max’s had led him down a different path, but not a bad one. She’d backed up his appraisal of Carson Hunt as a good man. But his father just sat there, condoning the snide remarks, staring mutely at his green beans.

“Couldn’t you have said something?” Max had asked. He’d followed his father outside when he went to take a cigarette break. They stood together on the back porch, staring out a dark forest highlighted in white from an early snowfall.

Scott Ivanov blinked. “About what?”

“Maybe that you were proud. Maybe that this was an exclusive opportunity, that not just anyone could get it. That an Olympian offered me a job, and that doesn’t just happen everyday. Anything like that would’ve been swell.”

His father had sighed, his breath a silver cloud in the cold November air. “Not now, Max.”

“Because you’re not proud.”

“Max…”

“Admit it.”

His father rubbed his hands together, smushing his cigarette butt on the cedar railing and tossing it into a snow-filled flower pot. “I just think you’re a bit premature in dropping out, Max. There will be plenty of jobs after you graduate—”

“Not like this.” Max crossed his arms and took a semi-conscious step to the left to prevent his father from going back through the sliders to rejoin the party.

Scott didn’t seem too keen on leaving, anyway. He met Max’s eyes with patience and unwavering calm. “You don’t know that. You rushed to accept this job without even considering it.”

Max shook his head. “No, not true. I considered it. I considered that an opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime. People work for decades to get into a barn like this.”

“So you’ve said.” His father’s voice still held no anger in it. Max wondered if he’d imagined this conversation before, if he’d rehearsed it. “But, Max…what happens if you fall off? What happens when you get injured? What if you can’t ride anymore? Then what do you do? You won’t have a degree—”

“If I’m so severely injured I can’t ride, I think I have bigger problems than not having a degree.” Max scowled and crossed his arms.

His father sighed, scratching the bristles of his clipped beard. He regarded Max with a mixture of helplessness and sorrow. “What do you want me to say, kiddo?”

“The truth. Tell me what you really think.” It hurt Max to say it. The words ripped their way up his throat, leaving a trail of scars as they tore themselves free. He had to know…even if he didn’t like the answer he got.

Scott blinked and looked out to the forest behind the house. The wind drew moans from the trees, and Max didn’t know if they were from pleasure or pain. His father spoke, but didn’t meet his eyes. “I think you’re making a mistake. I think horses will always be there for you, but the longer you put off college, the harder it’ll be to go back until, finally, you just don’t go back at all.”

Max sagged against the sliders. He felt punctured and deflated, all the righteous indignation let out from him like the air of a balloon. Sure, he’d suspected. But the sting of hearing it allow flayed something deeper in him than his skin. Without saying a word, he tugged open the door and stepped back inside the party.

The sudden warmth and noise blew him back a step. His father moved forward. “Max…”

But Max ignored him, he stepped back into the light and faux-cheer of the festivities. His relatives continued with their snide, passive aggressive comments. But at least they didn’t bother to hide their feelings. And with his soul torn open from his own father’s words, the sting of the salt they threw at him just couldn’t measure up.