6. Bonnie
BONNIE
On Wednesday, Gage tells me I need to apologize to Tawny before dinner.
I am putting the blue dress over my head when he says it. The fabric catches on my shoulder, and I have to ask him to wait until I can see him.
He stands in the bedroom doorway, already dressed. His shirt is charcoal, the one that makes the silver in his buckle look brighter. Tawny chose it for the campaign photographs. He told me that at breakfast as though it were useful information.
“For what?” I ask.
“For saying she’s trying to break up our marriage.”
“Did you ask her about what she said?”
“We talked.”
“When?”
“Monday afternoon.”
After he drove me home. While I was upstairs, looking at the holes where my name had been.
“And she said I misunderstood.”
“She said you were angry and she couldn’t get a word out without you twisting it.”
I reach behind me for the zipper. I can get it halfway. Gage comes forward to help, and I move away.
“She said I was good for you when you had nothing. That you need a different kind of wife now. She told me you call her when the appearances are over, and she repeated something I told you in bed.”
“She meant the partnership.”
“That’s what she told you.”
He holds out his hand for the zipper tab. I turn sideways and finish it myself, slowly enough that the effort makes my arm ache.
“I told you what she said before she’d had time to explain it away.”
“And I know her. I spend time with her.”
I look at him.
“That was the part I was worried about.”
He looks past me. “She doesn’t deserve to be treated like some woman hanging around for my money.”
“She brought up your money. I told you what she said about it. Why are you defending her from me?”
“You’ve made it clear enough what you think.”
I sit on the bed. The dress still fits if I leave the belt off. I had planned to enjoy that small mercy. Now I want to take it off and stay in this room until he leaves.
I have spent the morning helping a client whose horse will not stand tied at the trailer. She listened, tried what I suggested, and called afterward to tell me it worked. For an hour I was somebody who could say a thing and be believed.
“I’m not apologizing,” I tell him.
“Then at least don’t make tonight another scene.”
He leaves before I can answer. I am angry enough to want him back in the doorway so I can finish, and tired enough to be grateful he has gone. I hate having both feelings about my husband.
I go because these are people I worked with before Tawny stood beside my husband. I go because I want to hear what he has promised them.
The hotel ballroom is full when we arrive. Gage finds our table near the front. Tawny’s father rises to shake his hand, and Tawny lifts a place card from the chair beside hers.
“I saved you this one.”
My name is across the table, between Dewey and a man I have never met.
“Can we switch?” I ask Gage.
“Byers needs to talk to me.”
Mr. Byers is already sitting down. Tawny puts Gage’s card back beside her own.
I take my place. Dewey asks whether I want water. The stranger asks whether this is our first baby before he asks what I do.
“I train horses.”
“Good to keep it in the family.” He looks at Gage while he says it.
I pull my napkin across my lap and tell him about the client I helped this morning. He listens for long enough to ask a sensible question. I am answering when Mr. Byers goes to the stage.
Byers Western paid for the new arena lighting and helped arrange the invitationals Gage has wanted to build for years.
Gage could fund the events himself. What Byers brings is an audience, established dates, and people who return his calls.
My husband wants those people to take him seriously.
He wants the Crown title too. We have watched old finals in bed until I fell asleep against him.
Mr. Byers talks about families and the future of the sport. Then he introduces his daughter.
Gage gets up to pull Tawny’s chair back. Her hand rests briefly on his sleeve before she goes to the microphone.
She is good at this. She mentions names, makes people laugh, remembers a man’s grandson. When she turns toward our table, she has the room.
“Gage and I have been planning past the summer,” she says. “This is a partnership we want people to grow with. You’ll see us together through the championship next spring, and we’re already talking about the season after.”
I put my fork down.
“Bonnie’s given so much to Redfern,” Tawny continues. “She deserves to give her little girl her whole attention now. Gage’s ambitions need that same commitment. I’m glad I can give him mine, through the winter clinics, through the championship, and beyond. This is a future we can build together.”
She smiles at me. Heads turn.
“I’m not giving up my public work,” I say.
The man beside me has begun to clap. He stops, uncertain.
Gage looks straight at me. He heard.
“I’m taking time after the birth,” I say, louder. “Gage and I agreed I’d be back beside him for the winter circuit clinic. I’m still teaching my own clients.”
Tawny holds the microphone against her chest. It leaves a small, expectant silence for Gage to fill.
He rises just enough that the table can see him.
“Bonnie will always have a place at Redfern,” he says. “But Tawny and I have committed to these dates. We’re making sure Bonnie doesn’t have to worry about the public side while she’s a mother.”
Applause starts at the next table. He lifts his glass toward Tawny. She raises the microphone again.
“Exactly. That’s what family does.”
Gage sits down. I watch him straighten his napkin before I can speak.
“You said you’d hold Mercy at the gate for my first appearance back,” I tell him. “Our winter clinic.”
“Bonnie, keep your voice down.”
“You wrote it on the calendar. You knew I intended to be there when you promised it to her.”
“We’ve had to make decisions.”
“With her.”
“With people who are prepared to commit.”
The man beside me looks into his water glass. Dewey reaches for his phone and leaves it facedown.
I want him to take it back. Even now, with everybody watching, I want him to stand up and say he forgot what we had agreed. I could survive looking foolish for that.
He turns toward the stage. Tawny begins naming the spring dates.
My own clients are still mine; neither of them can take those appointments away.
But the winter clinic I planned with Gage, the first time we would stand together after our daughter was born, now belongs to him and Tawny.
He has just told the room she is the one prepared to commit.
We chose to have this baby together. I did not know I was agreeing to give her my place.
I get up.
“Where are you going?” Gage asks.
“Home.”
“They’re nearly finished.”
“I’ve heard enough.”
He comes around the table. I think he has finally understood. Then he stops beside my chair and bends close.
“You could have talked to me afterward.”
“I talked to you before.”
Someone at the stage calls his name. Tawny’s father wants him in the photograph.
“Give me five minutes,” he says.
“Come with me now.”
He looks at the stage. I watch the decision happen.
“This is important.”
I pick up my bag. A hotel employee steps forward and asks if I would like somewhere cooler. I tell her yes, because accepting help from a stranger is easier than asking him again.
She takes me to a small room off the lobby and brings water. I sit beneath the air-conditioning vent. Through the open door I can hear applause.
After a while I ask her to call a car.
I send Gage a message before I leave.
I’m going home. I’ve arranged a ride.
He calls while I am in the car. I let it ring. Through the window I watch a woman pushing a stroller while her companion adjusts a bag slipping from his shoulder. She stops and waits for him.
At home, I take off the blue dress and leave it over the bed. Cleo answers when I call.
“If I needed to come for a while, could Mercy come too?”
“The end stall’s empty. The cottage still needs paint in the kitchen, but the plumbing works.”
I sit on the bed in my underwear.
“I wouldn’t be much help right away.”
“I’m offering a place to stay. We can talk about work when you’re here.”
“I don’t know if I’m coming.”
“All right.”
I tell her about the speech. I repeat what he said about commitment. Saying it aloud makes me get up and walk to the window.
“I thought having his baby was something we’d chosen together.”
“It was.”
“He’s treating it as though I quit.”
She lets me stay silent for a while. Then she asks whether I have eaten, and I start crying because I cannot remember what was on my plate.
Gage comes home after eleven. He stops in the bedroom doorway.
“Byers asked if you were ill.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That you needed rest.”
He waits for me to thank him for protecting me. I turn off the lamp.