2. Bonnie
BONNIE
The fan above Mercy’s stall rattles whenever it turns to the left. I stand beneath it with a paper cup of water, listening for Gage’s boots.
Beryl Tewksbury is holding my mare while I loosen the girth. She arrived for the open division this morning with two students and her own opinion of the entire production. At sixty-three, she has stopped pretending to like people merely because they buy expensive horses.
She does not ask me what happened. She was at the rail.
“Sit down,” she says. “I can take a saddle off.”
“I know you can.”
“Then let me.”
I sit on the low tack box. My jeans have left a red line beneath my stomach. Twenty-seven weeks and five days, and I am still surprised by the amount of room I need to exist in a chair.
Beryl passes the saddle to one of her students. The girl carries it toward their stalls without making conversation. I am grateful for that kindness and ashamed of being grateful. I have worked around these people for years. Yesterday I would have asked about her run.
“Did you know?” I ask.
Beryl shakes her head.
“I thought maybe they told everyone except me.”
“They didn’t tell me.”
I drink the water. It tastes of the paper cup and the orange slices somebody has dropped into the dispenser. My stomach has been empty too long for orange water.
Gage arrives with Tawny and Dewey Bozeman, the manager who handles his bookings and business calendar. Dewey is carrying two phones, one of them ringing. He silences it when he sees me.
Two years after we married, Gage inherited the Redfern land and mineral holdings.
His net worth passed a billion dollars, and a private office in Dallas took over the leases and investments.
He still came home with horsehair on his shirt.
The horses were the part he wanted to run himself, and I liked that about him.
Dewey is still talking as they turn into the aisle. “The response is already better than the entire spring campaign.”
He stops when he sees Beryl.
Tawny has taken off my jacket. She carries it folded over her arm, silver fringe trailing down to her thigh. I stand.
“You could’ve called me,” I tell Gage.
“I should have.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because we were about to lose the slot, and I knew Mercy could do it.”
“I knew she could do it too.” I have to swallow before I can continue. “That didn’t make her available.”
Tawny shifts the jacket to her other arm. “I wouldn’t have asked if my mare hadn’t needed the rest. You’d have made the same decision about her.”
“I’d have scratched you.”
Dewey makes a quiet sound of disagreement.
Gage says, “That’s a harsh way to put it.”
“It’s what I’d have done.”
“We had cameras, a sponsor audience and a promised appearance. You know what those people have put into the season.”
“I know what I’ve put into that horse.”
“Nobody’s questioning that.”
“Who chose Tawny as queen?” I ask.
“I did. Her father wanted someone who could handle the appearances as well as ride.”
Mr. Byers owns Byers Western, the clothing company putting its money and audiences behind Gage’s invitationals. His daughter gets the queen’s title by appointment. My husband was offered a choice, and he chose Tawny.
“You didn’t think to mention that?”
“She’s a good rider. She knows the sponsors. She’s willing to do the whole season.”
“So was I, until we agreed how to work around the baby.”
He looks at my stomach before he looks back at my face. “Things have changed.”
Tawny steps nearer. “Bonnie, I said in the interview that your foundation work made the ride possible.”
“Did you tell them you were wearing my jacket?”
“They asked about the brand.”
“And you told them it was a Redfern original.”
“It is.”
I reach for it. She catches a trailing strip of fringe before it brushes the floor, drawing the whole jacket closer to herself.
“Wardrobe needs to photograph it for the credit,” she says.
Gage looks at her, then at me. “They’ve got somebody waiting in the trailer. Let her finish that.”
Beryl sets the bridle on its hook with a clatter. Nobody looks at her.
“You said the jacket would come back tonight,” I tell him.
“It will.”
“Give it to me now, then.”
“Can we please stop doing this in the barn aisle?” Gage snaps. He looks past me toward the next stall before he looks at the jacket.
A groom has come out of the next stall. He pretends to be looking for a bucket. I know him well enough to know he has a daughter starting college in August. I cannot remember her name. All I can think about is my husband asking me to stop while Tawny holds my clothes against her chest.
“You brought everybody,” I say.
Dewey touches Gage’s sleeve. “We do need to get through the remaining photographs.”
Gage ignores him. “Bonnie, I’m asking you to be reasonable. Tawny’s done nothing except take the ride I gave her.”
“And the jacket.”
“I didn’t know about the jacket until she was mounted.”
“You knew before the gate opened.”
He doesn’t answer quickly enough.
My fingers have crushed the rim of the cup, and a little water has run over my wrist. Beryl takes it from me without comment.
“You knew,” I say.
“She was ready to go. I wasn’t going to pull her down in front of the crew over a piece of clothing.”
I sit again because my legs have begun to ache and I will not give him a fall to worry about instead of this conversation.
He crouches in front of me. “You need to eat.”
“I need you to listen.”
“I am listening.”
“Mercy is not going on another sponsored ride with Tawny. You ask me before you promise her to anyone. And I want my jacket.”
“You’ll have it tonight.”
I look past him to Tawny. “That’s mine. You knew it was mine when you put it on.”
Tawny’s cheeks color. “I’m trying to help your husband.”
“He’s heard me say no. So have you.”
Gage stands. “Enough.”
For one relieved second, I think he means Tawny. He has heard her tell me she is helping my husband while she stands here holding something I have asked her to return. Enough. At last.
Then he looks directly at me.
“Stop embarrassing her.”
The groom leaves with his empty bucket.
He thinks I am hurting her. I have been waiting for him to see what she is doing to me, and he has been waiting for me to stop.
I want to ask him whether he has forgotten whose husband he is. I cannot bear to ask that in front of her.
Beryl comes between us with the mare’s lead rope.
“I’ve got Bonnie,” she tells him. “You can go.”
Gage remains beside the tack box for another moment. I look at his belt buckle because I cannot bear to watch him decide.
When he leaves, Tawny goes with him.
Cleo answers on the third ring. “If you tell me you’re working, I’m hanging up.”
I am outside the barn on a folding chair Beryl has found. The sandwich she bought me is open on my knee. I have eaten the cheese and left the bread.
“I’m sitting down.”
“Good. I’ve been meaning to call. My son put a stone in the washing machine, and I’ve spent two days trying to find where the noise is coming from.”
“Is the stone clean?”
She laughs. I used to hear that laugh across the narrow room we shared at our first training job, before either of us was married. She is in Colorado now, trying to start riding again while running a small boarding place and raising a three-year-old.
“How’s the baby?” she asks.
“Busy.”
“And you?”
I lift the top piece of bread, then put it down. “I had a bad night.”
She waits. I can hear her son talking about a red cup in the background.
“Gage let Tawny Byers ride Mercy. In my silver jacket.”
“The one from Lubbock?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
“That I was embarrassing her.”
I have to put the phone against my knee. Across the yard, a young woman is brushing dust off her jeans before someone takes her picture. She keeps laughing and starting over.
“Bon?” Cleo says when I lift the phone again.
“I made it because we couldn’t afford the one I wanted. Six nights with the pieces all over the kitchen. He used to tell people about that jacket before he’d tell them my time.”
“I remember.”
“Tonight he called it a piece of clothing.”
The sandwich slides against my leg. I catch it, put it back on the paper, and pick a bit of gravel off the bread.
“And Mercy?” Cleo asks.
“She’s mine. She’s always been mine. I paid for her with lessons when she was too green for anybody else to want her. He knows what I’m planning with her.”
In February we worked out the first winter circuit clinic I would do with Gage after the birth, then a joint appearance before the Crown final next spring. I would keep teaching my own clients around maternity leave. He wrote our shared dates on the kitchen calendar himself.
I tell Cleo that part too.
“Have you changed your mind?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then he doesn’t get to change it for you.”
I look at the sandwich and start crying. I am crying harder over her saying that than I did over anything in the barn.