5. Bonnie
BONNIE
Aloose stitch catches on my thumbnail while I am inspecting the jacket.
I have laid the jacket on the bed in the spare room. The morning sun falls across the blue facing inside the collar. I stitched BONNIE there in silver-colored floss after the qualifier, still wearing the wristband from the arena. Gage kept lifting the collar to see how many letters I had finished.
Now the little holes are empty.
Someone has picked the stitches out carefully enough to leave the fabric intact. A short tail of floss remains at the end of the E. I pull it free and lay it on my palm.
I didn’t look inside the jacket on Friday. I folded it against my stomach and carried it out. I wanted it back too much to examine what they had done while it was gone.
Gage calls from downstairs that he is leaving for the sponsor’s fitting session. I have already told the groom not to load Mercy.
“Wait.”
I fold the jacket over my arm and go down. He sees what I am carrying and checks his watch.
“I need to be there by ten.”
“Then let’s go.”
“You don’t need to come.”
I show him the lining.
He touches the empty strip. “Who did that?”
“I intend to ask.”
He puts his keys in his pocket. “I can handle it.”
“You gave her my horse. You told her to keep wearing my jacket after I asked for it back. I’m coming with you.”
He looks away from the jacket. I wish he would argue, give me one thing I had misunderstood so I could stop believing this about him. Instead he opens the truck door for me, and we drive into Amarillo without discussing the fitting.
Byers Western has taken a temporary suite beside the arena to fit samples for next spring’s collection. Clothing racks line the walls, and a woman is steaming a shirt near an open case of boots. Tawny stands on a small platform while another woman checks the length of a trouser leg.
“I thought we were meeting at the pen after,” Tawny says to Gage. She looks at me. “You came too.”
“Bonnie has a question,” he says.
I put the jacket on the table between us, lining up.
“Who took my name out?”
The woman with the steamer switches it off. Tawny steps down from the platform.
“That was part of the wardrobe preparation.”
“You asked for it?”
“The name could’ve shown if the collar turned over.”
“It’s my name.”
“It was wardrobe preparation.”
“You understood it was mine while somebody was cutting it out.”
The fitter gathers her pins and moves toward the far rack. Tawny follows her for a step, then comes back to the table.
“They needed one identity on camera,” she says. “Mine.”
I look at Gage. He is standing beside the door with his keys in his hand.
“Do you hear her?”
“Yes.”
“Say something.”
He comes to the table. “It should have been discussed.”
Tawny lifts the edge of the collar. “We can put it back.”
“You can leave it alone,” I say.
Gage reaches for my arm. “We’ll get somebody good to repair it. Or have a new one made. You’ve been talking about changing the sleeves for years.”
I pull away before his hand closes.
“I liked the sleeves.”
“You said the fringe caught on everything.”
“I complained about a jacket I owned. That didn’t mean I wanted you to give it away.”
“Nobody gave it away.”
“My name is gone.”
He looks toward the open door. Two men from the production crew have stopped in the corridor.
“Keep your voice down.”
I am so angry I cannot answer at first. Someone has cut my name out of my jacket, and he is worried that people will hear me object. I want those men in the corridor to hear every word. Then I hate that they are watching, that I have to ask my own husband for this in front of strangers.
“You heard what she did. Why am I the one you’re correcting?”
I try to fold the jacket. The lining slips beneath the outer fabric, and I leave it open between us. He can look at the holes.
“I made this for the night I qualified,” I say. “You took a picture of me sleeping in it on the way home.”
“I remember.”
“Then why is replacing it the first thing you offer?”
He looks at the empty facing. His mouth opens. He is going to answer the question.
His phone rings. Dewey’s name is on the screen.
“I have to take this. The pen booking’s wrong.”
“Gage.”
“Two minutes.”
He steps into the corridor, pulling the door almost closed behind him. The fitter has gone into the adjoining room. Tawny and I stand on opposite sides of the jacket.
“You could have said no,” I tell her.
“So could he.”
I lift my eyes from the collar.
She smooths the sleeve of her new shirt. “You’re asking me to refuse things your husband keeps offering me. He asked me to stand beside him.”
“For a campaign.”
“He calls me when it’s over too.”
I can hear him in the corridor, asking Dewey who booked the smaller pen. The ordinary sound of his voice makes this worse. He’s so close.
“What do you want, Tawny?”
She looks toward the door, then back at me. “Him. A man who wants the same life I do.”
“He has a wife.”
“I know. I hear plenty about her.”
She glances toward the corridor again. I know what she sees. Gage is handsome even when he is tired and annoyed, and she has found ways to keep him smiling at her.
“You were good for him when he had nothing,” she says. “You could sew a jacket at the kitchen table and go from one little show to the next. That was your life together. I understand why you miss it.”
“We were happy.”
“And now he has money, a name people want on their events, a chance to do something bigger. He needs a wife who wants that life with him. You keep asking him to go backward.”
I look down at the jacket. He stayed up with me the night before the qualifier, turning the sleeves while I stitched. I have loved that memory for years. She has found a way to make it evidence that I no longer suit him.
“The money didn’t make him a different husband.”
“Maybe you’re the only person still insisting he’s the same man.”
“You don’t know what he was like then.”
“I know what he wants now. Look at him, Bonnie. Any woman at these events would want him. You have him, and all you do is tell him no.”
I put my palm against the table. “You know nothing about my marriage.”
“I know you’re afraid of becoming a visitor in your own life.”
For a moment I cannot feel the table at all.
I said those words in bed, with my head on his shoulder. I have never said them to Cleo or Beryl. I was afraid that having our baby would cost me the work I loved and the place I had beside him. He held me while I said it.
I feel foolish for having been comforted. That hurts almost as much as hearing her repeat me.
Tawny watches me recognize them.
“You’re about to have a baby,” she says. “You don’t have to keep doing the parts you can’t manage. I’m good at being beside him. He likes having me there.”
“Are you telling me you want my husband?”
Her mouth curves, barely. “I’m telling you he has a choice.”
The door opens. Gage comes back with his phone in his hand.
“Tawny says I was good for you when you had nothing,” I tell him. “That now you have money, you need a wife who wants your new life. I asked what she wanted, and she said you.”
He stops with his hand still on the door.
“She also knows what I told you when I was frightened in bed.”
He looks at her.
“I didn’t say it like that.” Tawny steps back from the table. “We were talking about the opportunities you have now. I said we work well together. Bonnie asked what I wanted, and she turned it into this.”
“You said he needed a wife who wanted this life.”
Gage’s eyes move to me.
“I told you I was afraid of becoming a visitor in my own life,” I say to Gage. “In our bed. You told Tawny, and she just used it to explain why she belongs beside you.”
He puts the phone in his pocket. “I was trying to explain why you were upset.”
“She used it to tell me she could take my place.”
“I said I could help,” Tawny says. “You keep making that ugly.”
The fitter has returned to the doorway. Gage sees her and lowers his voice.
“We are not doing this here.”
“Then where?”
“At home.”
“Tell her now that our marriage isn’t hers to discuss.”
“She’s telling you she meant the work,” he says. “I’ve heard enough accusations for one morning.”
Tawny’s shoulders drop as though he has taken a weight off them. I look at that small, relieved movement and know she is going to remember it.
He heard me. There is no kinder version where I failed to explain. He knows she said I was good enough when he was poor, and he is letting her call it a conversation about work.
I stare at him until he looks at the jacket again. I cannot make him want to defend me.
I gather the jacket without folding it. One strip of fringe is caught beneath a box. Tawny reaches to lift it, and I pull the box aside myself.
“I’m going home,” I say.
Gage picks up his keys. “I’ll take you.”
“You have a saddle test to arrange.”
“I’d rather finish this conversation somewhere private.”
Tawny looks toward the pen windows. “The groom should be here with Mercy by now.”
“He isn’t coming,” I tell her.
Gage turns. “You went ahead and canceled him?”
“Last night. After I told you I would. He was bringing her in the small trailer. She’s in her paddock at home.”
Tawny looks at Gage, waiting for him to change that. I gather my jacket before I have to hear whether he’ll try.
In the truck, he sits with the keys against his knee.
“Do you understand what you accused her of?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“She’s done everything I’ve asked.”
“I know.”
He starts the engine. I hold the empty collar facing against my stomach all the way home.