IAN
The Rapa das bestas happens annually the first weekend of July. During my visit earlier this summer, I had just been granted access to the curro floor packed with wild Galician horses when I first saw her. This was my second of three ten-minute slots that allow a photographer who signed a disclaimer into the center of the Rapa’s commotion. I was stressed, worried, and exhausted, my head on Aimee, a long distance from the mind-set I should have been in while surrounded by thousands of pounds of horseflesh.
I’d been up since dawn trying not to read into—but doing so anyhow—my call with Aimee the previous night, along with the several conversations we’d had since I arrived in Spain nine days prior. She said she was fine whenever I asked, but her voice implied that she was anything but OK. We’d been married long enough. I knew when my wife was out of sorts. She couldn’t hide the tears in her voice. I offered to come home. She insisted I stay. I’d been talking about the Rapa for years. I’d been planning this excursion for months. We’d talk when I got home. She disconnected the call and I tossed and turned through the night only to drag myself to mass the following morning with the villagers, many of them knights, local men on horseback who’d be rounding up the horses, and aloitadores, the horse handlers, who’d been up most of the night themselves, celebrating. The church smelled of incense and booze, a nauseating combination that left me feeling faint. They prayed to San Lorenzo that those participating in the Rapa survived injury-free. I should have taken that as my warning.
After the service, I hiked with the villagers and tourists into the hills, following the paths the knights had taken to round up the herds. What surprised me the most about the event was how calmly and methodically the entire process unfolded. It wasn’t rowdy. The horses weren’t agitated. They obediently moved down the hill and into the village where they were penned in a large, open field until their time to be herded into the curro.
The second surprise was not how many horses they crammed into the small arena, which was about two hundred at a time, but why. Without room to move, the risk of injury to the horses drastically diminished. That wasn’t the case with the aloitadores. They suffered broken noses, toes, and cracked ribs from wrestling the beasts to stillness. One by one they worked in teams of three to trim manes and tails, deworm, and inject a microchip should the horse not have one. They sacrificed their own safety for their love of the beasts that roamed the green hills surrounding Sabucedo. It’s how they managed the herd, how they kept them healthy and wild. An ancient ritual that has evolved with the times and is nothing short of spectacular. I couldn’t believe I stood in the middle of it all.
The packed curro smelled of manure and horse sweat. Barbecue smoke thick with the scent of burning meat filled the arena. I snapped picture after picture, following the aloitadores around the floor. I kept one eye on them and the other on the horses near me, ready to jump out of the way should they rear up or kick. The back of my neck dripped with sweat from the blistering sun and my clammy hands rapidly worked the controls on my camera. While the horses were relatively calm, their panic was all too evident in their eyes. And it was getting to me. Flashes of my mom’s own panic that I’d captured in my photos kept clouding my vision.
Chest tight, I took a momentary breather, looking away so as not to get further sucked into the emotional turmoil my lens captured shot after shot. I knew all too well the types of shadows that lurked in a subject’s eyes and shooting the Rapa was affecting me in a way I hadn’t anticipated, reminding me of why I’d initially taken the path of landscape photography.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, lifted my gaze to the stands, and saw my mom. Dizziness washed over me and time stalled. She turned her face toward me, unseeing, and the anguish tightening her expression, the tears that drenched her cheeks, smacked me hard in the chest. I stumbled back only to realize it wasn’t my mom, but Reese. What was she doing there?
I lifted my camera, zoomed in, pressed the shutter button, and an aloitador shouted in my face. “¡Cuidado!”
A stallion reared up beside me, his flank knocking my shoulder hard. I fell back into another horse, my camera swinging around my neck. Regaining my balance, my heart pounding wildly, I looked back up into the stands. Reese was gone.
Later, in my hotel room as I iced my shoulder, I reasoned she’d never been there in the first place. That I’d imagined her because I’d been caught up in the energy of the arena and my mom had been on my mind. The image was too blurry on the camera’s viewer screen to confirm if the woman was, in fact, Reese.
Guess I hadn’t imagined her, after all.
My eyes narrow on Reese. She smiles. “How’ve you been, Ian?”
“Why are you here?”
Her gaze shifts away and returns. “Same reason as you. National Geographic sent me.”
“You don’t like covering wildlife.”
“I’d hardly call semiferal horses wildlife. They aren’t lions, tigers, or bears.”
“Oh my,” I sarcastically add.
She mocks a laugh. “You’re funny. I don’t like animals penned. Surely you remember.”
“That’s right. You let the cat I adopted for you go free. Same day, while I was at work so I couldn’t talk you out of it, as you told me.”
“I was allergic.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask,” she huffed.
“It got hit by a car.”
“That was an accident. I’d never had a cat. I didn’t know he’d run straight for the road. You know how bad I felt.” Remorse flashes across her face.
“It was going to be euthanized. I was trying to save it.”
“Well, you should have asked me before you brought it home. Not everyone needs saving. Or fixing,” she adds.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Are we really doing this?” She spins her index finger in the air. Around and around we’d always go, when we stopped, we’d never know.
“No, we’re not.”
Not this time. I could point out she should have asked me to return the cat to the shelter or find him another home, but that’s an old ride of an argument, and it’s not a vehicle I’m getting back on.
I squint at my phone. Still no e-mail from Al. “I haven’t heard from my editor yet that we’ve been assigned to work together.”
“What? You won’t talk to me about the story until then?”
I slip the phone back into my pocket. “Aren’t you supposed to be in Yosemite?”
She looks taken aback. “How do you know about that?”
“Mutual acquaintance.” She stares at me, waiting for me to share who, and I resolve to act more pleasant, to be more amicable. We’re stuck with each other for the next few days. I might as well do my part to not make it a living hell. “Erik Ridley. He’s a friend of mine. Good guy. Go easy on him.” The corner of my mouth lifts.
“I’m not that much of a bitch in the field.” Her tone is teasing. “I’ve heard great things about his work. That assignment’s been pushed back two weeks so I can do this one with you.”
Something about the way she said that has me pausing as I pick up my bags. I don’t know what to make of it and I decide not to read into it. I’m too exhausted.
“Have dinner with me. We have a lot of catching up to do.”
I shoulder my camera bag. “I need to shower and call my editor.” And my wife.
“You heard Oliver. There’s no room service. The only dinner around is in the dining room. And since I remember that you research your photo assignments until your eyes bleed, I bet you already know there isn’t another restaurant for miles. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Please”—she presses her hands together as though in prayer—“let’s have a nice meal, catch up, and hash out our plan of attack for the next few days. I’ll be on my best behavior.”
She smiles, brilliantly big, and I feel the punch of it in my gut. At one time that smile got her anything from me. French perfume, a beach cruiser bike she rode everywhere. Deliriously long, sweaty nights of incredible sex. A ginger cat. But not anymore. Right now that grin makes my stomach cramp. Or maybe I’m just hungry.
I glance at my watch. “Get us a table. I’ll meet you in twenty.”
I leave through the front entrance and walk across the lawn. Rooms are scattered about the property in two-story cottages, each housing four suites. My room is on the ground floor with a patio facing the forest. It’s decorated in drab colors and the linens appear worn and tired, but the bed is comfortable. For the next few days that’s all I need.
I sit on the edge of the bed and call Aimee, unlacing my sneakers while the phone rings. Her voice mail answers, and trying not to feel disappointed I’m not talking with her directly, I leave a message. I’m at the inn. I miss her. God, I miss you, baby. More than I can remember feeling on my other trips. It’s probably because of the way I left. I tell her I love her and ask her to call when she’s free.
I strip, shower, and shave, then check my phone. That blasted e-mail from Al finally arrived. He apologized for the delay. He’d been waiting to hear back from the features editor. Reese Thorne has been assigned. She was on assignment in London and should be able to join me in Spain immediately. Al included links to her three most recently published articles. One of them appeared in last month’s National Geographic Traveler, a piece about the world’s best hikes for the regular person.
After dressing quickly in jeans and a navy-blue henley, I meet Reese in the dining room. She’s ordered a bottle of wine and appetizers, a plate of local cheeses and meats. A waitress appears as I sit and starts pouring me a glass. I hold up my hand to stop her. With the room’s low lighting, the candlelit table, and the googly-eyed couple at the table next to us, sharing a bottle with my ex doesn’t sit right.
“I’ll have a beer, Alex,” I say, spotting her name tag. I crane my neck to look at what’s on tap at the bar. “A San Miguel.”
“Sí, señor.”
Reese points at her glass for Alex to top off her wine. Alex complies, launching into her pitch about dinner. They have no menu, serving only what the chef elects to cook. Tonight is caldo gallego, a Galician bean and vegetable soup, and oven-roasted chicken. She’ll get my beer and give us time to finish up the appetizer before she brings out the soup.
Reese waves her fingers at me when Alex leaves. “Give it up. How do you know Erik?”
“We met several years back at a conference. He’s trying his hand at landscape photography while giving me tips in photojournalism. We’ve been mentoring each other.”
Alex arrives with my beer. I thank her and take a deep drink.
Reese sips her wine, watching me over the glass rim. “I have to admit, when you mentioned Yosemite, I thought you’d been keeping tabs on me.”
“Your name has come up a time or two over the years.” But I never went out of my way to look her up. I usually heard about her work from another photographer or when I came across her byline in a magazine. Otherwise, I had no idea what she’s been up to personally.
“I’ve been following you. I mean, your career.”
This is surprising considering the way she left. No warning, no explanation, no let’s try working on us. I’d come home early from an assignment in the Loire Valley. A winery wanted professional photographs of their vineyard for their marketing campaign. I arrived at our flat to find her friend Braden waiting outside in his convertible Fiat. “Sorry, man,” he said when I asked why he was there.
“For what?”
Braden held up his hands. “Go talk to Reese.”
I craned my neck, looking at our windows two floors above. The panes were open to let in the evening breeze. A shadow passed behind the gauze curtain.
Reese.
I took the stairs to our flat two at a time with my heart racing and stopped in the doorway of our shoe box–size bedroom. “What are you doing?”
Her back to me, Reese shrieked, spinning around. The pile of clothes she held flew from her arms. I’d spooked her.
She pressed a hand to her chest and gasped. “Ian, what are you doing here?”
I saw the open suitcases on the bed behind her. She followed my gaze. “I wanted to be gone before you came home.”
My bags dropped on the floor with a loud thump. “Gone? Where?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ll stay with Braden for a while. You can send my stuff there in case I forgot something.”
I moved into the room, thoughts jumbling in my head until they lined up and the picture cleared. She wasn’t leaving for a weekend getaway, or an assignment out of town. She was leaving me.
I gripped the wrought-iron bedpost. We’d found the bed frame in a secondhand store. Reese immediately fell in love with the scrolled design. We purchased it on the spot.
All the hours we spent cleaning the iron of rust and dirt. All the hours we spent entwined on the mattress. Those hours meant nothing without Reese lying beside me. Those hours meant nothing without her here.
“Why?” I rasped.
“I can’t be with you anymore,” she said, her voice shaking.
“I love you.”
“I don’t. Not anymore.”
I reached for her and she dodged my hand, going to the other side of the bed. “You don’t just fall out of love, Reese. What happened? Where did I go wrong?”
“You . . .”
“I what?”
She shook her head. “Never mind. I need space. That’s all.”
She needed space. My grip tightened on the footboard, my knuckles white. I swallowed, fighting the painful memories those words induced. “For how long?”
She looked down at the bed. “Permanently.” She zipped her bag.
For the longest time, I hadn’t forgotten that sound, the way the zipper pierced my ears. A sound of finality. Nor did I forget the silence in our flat after she closed the door behind her, or how lonely I’d felt. That feeling of being unloved and unwanted? I’d been around that block before and it didn’t hurt any less.
“Your work is phenomenal.” Reese’s voice breaks through the playback of memories. “I can’t tell you how pleased I was to hear we’d be collaborating. After all these years.”
Something about what she said earlier in the lobby has me frowning. I rest my forearms on the table. “How did you get this assignment?”
Alex brings over our soup. I lean back, out of her way.
“Smells delicious.” Reese grabs her spoon. “The assignment came down to me and another writer, Martin Nieves. He’s a seasoned contributor to the magazine.”
I nod my thanks to Alex and pick up my own spoon. “I’ve heard of him,” I say to Reese. “I only know of one article you published with National Geographic. Why did they select you?”
Her spoon hovers above her bowl. “You don’t think I’m qualified.”
“I didn’t say that. You’re more than qualified. Al sent me links to a couple of your articles, including a recent one on hiking. I read them while I was back in my room.”
“You just read them?”
I blink, frowning. “Yeah, is that a problem?”
Reese finishes her wine and watches the couple next to us. Her index finger listlessly traces the base of her wineglass.
“Is something the matter?” I ask.
She aims a dejected smile in my direction. “I know it sounds stupid, but I guess I’d hoped you were lying.”
“About what?”
“That you weren’t following my career.”
I park my elbows on the table and clasp my hands. “They’re good. The ones I read.”
“Thanks. Two reasons I’m here.” She holds up her index finger. “I was already in London so it was easier for me to get here at a moment’s notice. And two.” She adds her middle finger to the count. “I was at the Rapa this summer. Nieves wasn’t.”
“You were in the stands.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
She slowly lowers her fingers and looks at me in shock. “You saw me? Why didn’t you come talk to me?”
I press my mouth into a flat line.
She looks down at the table and wipes a spot of soup from the edge of her bowl. “I think I understand why you didn’t. For what it’s worth—”
“I wasn’t sure it was you,” I interrupt before she takes us back fourteen years. “I was on the curro floor surrounded by horses when I saw you. You were gone by the time I returned to the stands.”
“I had to leave.” She doesn’t elaborate and I don’t prod her further. Alex removes our bowls and returns with the main course. We start eating, Reese seeming lost in her own thoughts. I’m about to ask her what time she’d like to get started tomorrow—I understand the herds aren’t always easy to find so we may need the entire day—when she asks, “How long have you been married?”
I look up from my plate. “You’ve been following more than my career.”
“You’re wearing a wedding ring.” I glance at the tarnished gold band and she admits, “But yes, I have. What’s she like?”
My body warms, thinking about Aimee. “She’s the most exceptional woman I know,” I say, cutting off a bite of chicken.
“She’s a lucky woman.” Reese watches me while I chew. The chicken is succulent and spicy, but it doesn’t compare to Aimee’s cooking.
Reese purses her lips and I sense she wants to ask me a question. I raise a brow.
She leans forward. “The journalist in me needs to know. Your mother. Did you ever find her?”
I shake my head. “No.” But I would soon, as early as next week.
“Are you still looking for her?”
I take another bite of chicken and chew, meeting her eyes.
“You are.” She whispers the answer for me. I look at my plate and pick at the vegetables. “Does she look like her?”
“Who?”
“Your wife. Does she look like Sarah?”
I put down my utensils. They clatter on the plate. “We need to get an early start tomorrow. I’ll meet you in the lobby at eight.” I push back my chair.
Reese reaches across the table. “I didn’t mean . . . My stupid mouth. Some things don’t change. I still have that bad habit of blurting out questions without thinking. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
I flag the waitress. Alex rushes over.
“Please charge the meals to my room.”
“Ian . . . wait.”
I stand. “Get some sleep, Reese. We have a long day tomorrow.”