They called raucously, near-terror, for the Queen—for it couldn’t be, it couldn’t.
But it was.
When they hit the line, it came down to their bobbing heads.
It looked like Matador got it, and it sounded that way, too—for a hush blew over the crowd.
She looked at him.
She held him, single-handed.
Her freckles nearly exploded.
He won.
She thought it but didn’t speak, and it was lucky she didn’t, too, because it was the greatest run they’d ever seen, or been part of in the stands, and there was a poetry, they knew, to the thought of it.
So close, so close, then gone.
The photo somehow proved it:
Queen of Hearts won by her nostrils.
* * *
—
“Her nostrils, her fucking nostrils!” called Petey afterwards, in the confines of the stalls—but this time McAndrew was smiling.
When he saw Carey so hurt and dejected, he came over and took a look at her. Almost an examination. She thought he might check her feet.
“And what the hell happened to you? The horse is still alive, isn’t he?”
“He should have won.”
“Should’ve nothing—it was something we’ve never seen, a run like that,” and now he made her look at him, in the hard blue eyes of a scarecrow. “That, and you’ll get that Group One for him one day, okay?”
The beginnings of a kind of happiness.
“Okay, Mr. McAndrew.”
* * *
—
From there, Carey Novac, the girl from Gallery Road, would start her apprenticeship in earnest. She started on January 1.
She’d be essentially working round the clock now.
There was no time for anything, or anyone else.
She’d be riding now, more trackwork and into barrier trials, and start begging, internally, for races. From the outset she was told by McAndrew:
“If you pester me, you’ll never get anything.”
She would gladly put her head down, keep her mouth shut, and do the work.
* * *