I Run a Hedge Fund in Manhattan and Keep Horses in the Hamptons. My Riding Instructor’s Ex-Husband Thought Money Could Take Her Son

My name is Alexander Kane. I’m 50, and I run a hedge fund in Manhattan that manages eleven billion dollars.

That sentence usually makes people either very interested in me or very uncomfortable. I’ve learned to stop saying it.

Five years ago, I bought a horse farm in Bridgehampton, out on Long Island. Forty acres, an old shingled barn, a riding arena, and pastures that run down toward the dunes.

I bought it because my doctor told me my blood pressure was going to kill me before I turned 55.

“Find something that isn’t a screen,” he said.

I’d never ridden a horse in my life.

The farm came with a riding instructor. Josie Flynn. She was 39, a former competitive show jumper, strawberry-blond hair always in a messy bun, a laugh you could hear across the whole barn.

She had a seven-year-old son named Theo who spent every afternoon in the hayloft reading comic books.

On my first lesson, she put me on a fat old pony named Butterball. I fell off twice.

“You’re very stiff,” she said, helping me up out of the sand. “Do you work in an office?”

“Something like that.”

“You should quit. It’s ruining your posture.”

She had no idea who I was. She’d never Googled me. She didn’t read the business pages. To her, I was just “Alex,” the new owner who couldn’t ride and brought Theo bagels on Saturdays.

For five years, that was the best part of my life.

Last spring, I found her crying in the tack room.

She was holding a letter from a law firm I knew very well. The most expensive family law firm in Manhattan.

Her ex-husband was suing for full custody of Theo.