40. Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty
ELLA
Supper clears at eight and the evening opens up in front of me.
Ben’s run Naomi’s borrowed chairs back to the fire hall, an hour’s errand, and he texted from the road: cabin at nine, the talk, I’m all yours, bringing nothing but ears. So I have one hour, a rehearsed speech going stale in my chest, and a porch full of dusk to lose my nerve on.
The cicadas are filling the dark with their sawing chatter. The mountains have gone to silhouettes, one lamp burning down at the venue where he’ll pass on his way home. I sit on the top step and run the speech once more.
My heartbeat is so loud I don’t hear Beth until she’s folding herself down onto the step beside me, smelling of horse and arena dust, two root beers hanging from one hand.
She looks at me for a long moment in the porch light.
“Okay,” she says, and hands me a bottle.
“You’ve been walking around like a woman with a stone in her boot.
Cassie thinks you’re pregnant. Rose thinks you’re broke.
Faith thinks you’re dying, but Faith always thinks somebody’s dying.
” She cracks her own bottle on the step rail, an old trick of Daddy’s. “I think it’s none of those. So…”
“Beth.”
“I’ve got an hour and a horse cooling. Spit it out, or I’ll start guessing.”
And maybe it’s the dusk, or the root beer, or the painful days waiting to spill my secret. But it comes up out of me right there and then, start to finish.
“I smelled the sunscreen first,” I say. “Coconut. Before I understood one thing I was looking at, I smelled somebody’s beach vacation. Then it was Carla. It was the best man. Fucking on the honeymoon bed.”
Beth doesn’t move. Doesn’t gasp, doesn’t swear. She listens the way she rides, still in the middle, everything moving underneath.
I tell her the rest.
“And then he stayed,” I finish. The bottle’s warm in my hands, untouched.
“He stayed, Beth. He rebuilt the barn. He planted flowers. Somewhere in all of it, I went and fell in love with him. Now every single day, the lie is one day older, and it’s eating me up.
It’s under everything. The venue, the town, us.
He told his brother he found where he belongs.
He belongs to a place that I let ambush him. ”
The cicadas get louder.
Down in the yard, Dolly lifts her head off her paws. Ears up, pointed at the dark past the woodpile. One slow sweep of her tail, uncertain.
“Duke,” I say absently. “He noses the gate at night.”
Beth doesn’t look at the yard. She looks at me, and my sister has our grandmother’s directness the way some people have her nose.
“Question,” she says. “Do you love him? Not in a summer fling way, in a rest of your life way?”
“Yes.” It comes out before I can stop it. “God, yes.”
“Then here’s what I know, and I’m only saying it once, so take notes.
” She sets her bottle down and turns to face me square, elbows on knees.
“What you did in June was wrong. I’m not going to pat your hand and tell you it wasn’t.
You had three days, and you spent them hoping somebody else would be brave.
That’s the crime. Not malice. Hoping.” She lets that sit exactly one second.
“And I’d probably have done something just as stupid.
So. It was wrong, and it was human. It is also fixable, but it stops being fixable the first minute he hears it from anywhere that isn’t your mouth. ”
“I know.”
“Do you? Because you’ve had all summer, El.
” Gentle, and merciless, both at once, the way only a sister gets to be.
“You think you’ve been protecting him. You’ve been protecting this.
” She gestures at the dusk, the valley, the one lamp burning at the venue.
“The best summer anybody on this ranch ever had. And I get it. But a cinch you don’t check because the ride’s going good is still loose, and it doesn’t care how good the ride’s going.
” She stands, collects both bottles, done.
“Tell him tonight. Every word you just gave me, in that order. Especially the parts that make you look worst.” She touches the top of my head once, rough, like knocking wood.
“He loves you. Anyone can see it. Give him the chance to do it with all the facts.”
“Beth.” She’s two steps down when I say it, and it comes out wobbly. “The jacket.”
She stops. Doesn’t turn around.
“It’s Sam’s,” she says. “Nobody’s asked me one direct question about him, which I appreciate. I don’t know what the jacket means yet…” A beat. “He watches my runs like they matter. Both clocks. Mine and his.”
“Beth Lockhart.”
“That’s all you get.” But she’s smiling, I can hear it. “See. Truth’s not so hard. Ten seconds and it’s done.”
“Yours didn’t have a wrecked wedding in it.”
“Give it time. I’m still young.”
Dolly’s up now. Standing, facing the woodpile, tail low, doing her silent read of something. Then whatever it is resolves, her tail drops, and she lies back down with her chin on her paws, watchful.
“Tonight,” Beth says, and goes to see to her horse.
I sit with the last of the root beer, letting the speech settle, and my phone buzzes against the step.
Carla.
The first message I’ve had from her since June.
Is Ben still at Blue Ridge?
I read it four times, and my body goes cold in the warm dark. She’s circling back. That’s what this is. She wrecked him and left him to me, and now something in her life has come loose and she wants to know if he’s still where she dropped him.
I type why. Delete it. Type don’t you dare. Delete that too.
In the end, I don’t reply. I don’t call Beth back to the porch to show her. I don’t walk down the hill early to warn him. I put the phone face down on the step, one more quiet decision in a summer built out of them.
Tonight he hears it from me first. Whatever she wants, she can want it after that.
Nine o’clock comes, and I walk down the hill with my heart pounding. The cabin’s dark. The truck’s gone from its spot. I stand in the empty yard where the light should be.
My phone buzzes.
Something came up. Handling it. Don’t wait up.
I stare at it. Three dots appear. Stop. Appear again.
Tomorrow.
The word I’ve been hiding behind, handed back to me across the dark. Down the valley road, a pair of taillights crests the rise and drops out of sight, headed away.
Fuck.