“Then he’ll be running in our name, Dad. Running in our silks. I want them to be black, all black, except for a white diamond on the shirt, the same diamond the colt has in the center of his forehead. You won’t have to do anything, Dad. Just sign the registration papers, which I’m getting tomorrow … just register the colt in your name. Will you do it?”

His father was silent a long time, his lined face strained and his eyes somber again. Finally he stood up, walked to the window, and looked out. Then he turned and Alec knew his reply before he uttered a word.

“I’m sorry, Alec, but I can’t do it. You say that I’d only have to register the colt in my name and that’s all there would be to it. You know better, and I do, too. One thing will lead to another … it always has.”

Alec watched him without saying anything. He was talking like a father again, and the intimacy and mutual interest Alec had thought they shared for a little while had gone.

“There will be complications all along the way,” his father was saying. “There couldn’t help but be. The training and racing of a horse is no different from any other business. And I have too much on my mind now, Alec. Too much work at the office.” He paused again before going on. “Then there’s your mother. It’ll be enough that you’re mixed up in this without my being in it, too. No, Alec,” he concluded, “I can’t possibly do it. I’m certain that you and Henry can figure out some other way.”

Alec said nothing when his father had finished. He only raised his eyes when the older man sat down beside him again, as though reluctant to leave.

“You’ll try to understand, won’t you, Alec?”

“Yes, Dad. I understand,” Alec replied slowly and with effort.

“You’re the horseman of the family.” His father grinned sheepishly. “I’m surely not. Wouldn’t know how to act as the owner of a race horse.”

“But you wouldn’t …” Alec began, only to be interrupted again by his father.

“I know I truly wouldn’t own the horse, Alec. He’d always be yours. Still, it would worry me,” he said, rising to his feet.

Alec watched his father walk toward the door. He didn’t want to argue with him or attempt to talk him into it. No, he didn’t want it that way. His dad would have to go into it of his own volition or not at all. He saw his father stop as he came abreast of the textbooks on top of Alec’s desk.

“Everything set for school?” his father asked.