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“You have a sign saying you’ve got a racehorse for sale.”

“Racehorse?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, motioning to the road where the sign was.

“Oh that. That’s Katrina’s sign.”

I waited for an explanation but none seemed forthcoming. Thankfully, a young woman emerged from the house and walked toward us. She was a sturdy, no-nonsense kind of woman walking quickly on short powerful legs.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I was inquiring about the horse for sale,” I said.

“What about her?” The woman frowned at me. She wasn’t a great beauty to start with and the frown didn’t help. Her thick eyebrows pulled together making her face look like thunder. I was starting to regret having come here at all, but I had a feeling if I tried to back out now the first woman would get inventive with the pitchfork.

“I’m looking to buy some horses. Saw your sign.”

“Well, Clove is a bay mare. Eight years old. Fifty-two starts, five wins, and I can’t remember how many seconds and thirds.”

It didn’t sound like I’d stumbled onto Seabiscuit, but it did seem like the mare might be in my price range. I asked to have a look at her and was somewhat begrudgingly led behind the sheds where I saw a heartbreaking sight.

The mare was standing in a paddock so small she barely had room to turn around. There were flies all over her and she was underweight. She didn’t look up when we approached.

“That’s her,” the younger woman said. “My uncle Jimmy was running her at Tampa Bay Downs. He died and left her to me. I don’t have any purpose for a racehorse,” the woman said.

She opened the gate to the paddock and motioned for me to walk in. The mare finally looked up and that’s all it took. She had the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. I knew that even if she was dead lame I had to buy her and get her out of there. I negotiated a price with Katrina as the first woman stood by, still clutching that pitchfork. Goats roamed, occasionally stopping to stare and bleat a little. I made arrangements to pick Clove up once I’d borrowed a horse trailer. I promised myself I would do this by the next day, so as not to leave that poor horse living in those conditions.

Clove definitely wasn’t the best investment in the world, but she proved to be a lot more horse than I’d expected. She was completely out of shape and malnourished but she was sound. I took her to a cheap conditioning farm and left her there for a few weeks to get her ready to start seriously working. I went to visit her every day and was gratified to see her coming to life. After just a few visits she started recognizing me and would nicker when I approached her stall. Her eyes livened up as she put on weight and her coat started shining. When I finally brought her over to Gulfstream, she actually looked like a racehorse, had some muscle on her and had electricity in her body. I liked my other two horses just fine, but Clove was my favorite. And now, Lucinda was laughing at my mare—or at my blind faith in her. I suppose I couldn’t really blame the girl.

“That was a slow time for her?” Lucinda asked, referring to Clove’s dull workout, even though she knew damn well those fractions were terrible.

“A minute six would be slow for a carriage horse, no?”

Lucinda laughed, showing her small teeth. She was an attractive girl and she seemed to like me, maybe even be interested in me. I was stuck on someone else though. Ruby. I’d been a little stupid and, when the Bureau had sent me from New York down here to Florida, I hadn’t initiated an official “relationship talk” with Ruby. We’d been seeing each other for a few months but I was deathly afraid of trying to pin her down. She’d always struck me as being savage in the heart. Untamable. I knew she liked me, probably even loved me, but I hadn’t wanted to force her into any pronouncements she wasn’t ready to make. And now, I could hear in our increasingly strained phone calls that there was another guy. And I was stuck down here under endless blue skies. And so was Lucinda. We chatted on about Clove and about