Page 25 of My Trojan Horse Majesty

Which means I need to see how quickly I can transfer ownership, so I’m clacking away and then poking around on the Jockey Club website. It looks like, with expedited processing. . .I’m peering at the screen, trying to figure out what I might be able to do, when an email notification pops up for Tim’s outlook.

I glance at it, barely paying attention until I notice my own name. The subject line says Izzy’s Recommendation. And it’s from Doctor Hartfield. She’s the vet I’ve been working with almost five days a week for two years, now. My fingers are trembling a little as I click on the email. It’s not to me, but it’saboutme.

I think I’m entitled to read it.

I can’t think of a single reason she’d need to email Tim about me. When the email opens, I can barely breathe.

Tim:

I still can’t fathom what circumstance precipitated your request, and I hate that I honored it. Izzy Brooks has been nothing but a phenomenal vet tech, and her help has been absolutely pivotal on several cases. She always goes above and beyond. She cares about what’s best for the horse, and she approaches clients with care and consideration. I feel that people like her, who truly love the animals, are the very best candidates for vet school.

No one I’ve met would make a finer veterinarian than Isabel Brooks.

I’m ashamed that I wrote her such an ugly letter when she asked me to recommend her. All I can say is that I trusted you and your judgment. Now, knowing that you’ve stolen from all of us, knowing what kind of debt you’ve gotten yourself into thanks to your personal proclivities, I’m sickened. How could I have been such a bad judge of character? How could I have let you convince me that I was helping the world by keeping her out of vet school? I didn’t agree when you told me she had bad judgment but I thought her boyfriend—of all people—would know. I thought, based on what you said, that she must be an alcoholic or something, and you just didn’t want to say it explicitly.

There’s nothing I can do now. My recommendation was already submitted, and I’m sure the vet schools are making their decisions even now. But I hope, for her sake, that USU has more discernment than I had. And I hope you know that I won’t be helping you out ever again. I hope Mark, Greg, and Julie roast your carcass on a spit before this is all said and done.

Becca

Holy guacamole.

I stare at the screen in disbelief. Could she have lost her mind? Could she. . .Tim couldn’t possibly have asked her to give me a bad recommendation, right? It can’t be his fault I wasn’t accepted.

It can’t.

He’s my boyfriend.

He’s been helping me for years.

But why would she send that email if he hadn’t done as she said? She sent it tohim, not to me. It’s. . .

It occurs to me then that the title of the message is ‘Re: Recommendation.’ She was replying to something Tim sent. My stomach flips as I click on the expand button to read his original email. I force myself to focus on the words from my boyfriend himself.

Rebecca,

We’ve been colleagues a very long time. I hope you’ll understand that my message comes from a good place, both for you and for Izzy. I know she asked you to write her a recommendation letter. I’m counting on you to help me out with something very important.

She’s not ready to be a vet. She may never be ready. She has some personal things that would make it impossible for her to even attend school, much less excel, and I’m worried that if she gets in. . .it will be catastrophic all around. Trust me on that. The best place for Isabel Brooks right now is precisely where she already is.

I’m more grateful than you know to have people I can trust around me, people I know will help both me and Izzy navigate these difficult circumstances in a way that will keep her safe and happy.

Tim

His signature block reminds me, with all the initials and letters behind it, how qualified he is to make a determination about my fitness to be a vet. Even if Becca’s mad at him for all the things his partners did to frame him, no one should be better at gauging my potential success as a vet than Tim.

It hurts, reading that he thinks it would be ‘bad all around’ for me to follow my dream. Did he just think I was an idiot the whole time I talked about it? When I doodled little signs that said Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Tim Heaston, was he laughing? Is that why he marked out the second doctor and just leftMrs.?

But then Becca’s words come back to me.

No one I’ve met would make a finer veterinarian than Isabel Brooks.

Who’s right?

I suddenlyneedto know why Tim thinks I’d be a bad vet. I know he’ll be furious the sale fell through—that I don’t have his bail yet—and I know it’s going to be awful facing him about that, but I’m too upset about the email. I have to know why he sent it to Becca.

Without even seeing him yet, I can guess how he’ll react when I ask.

“Are you kidding, Izzy? I’m injail, and you storm in here, not to see me and support me, not with bail money to get me out so I can defend myself, but to yell at me? To ask me aboutyourinadequacies? Well, I don’t have time to deal with your stuff right now. I’m up to my eyeballs inmystuff. And mine is a way bigger deal. Mine is my whole career—you don’t even have a career.”

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