19. Bonnie
BONNIE
Two weeks after Gage first met Cricket, he brings the green coat in a paper bag.
“The coat you asked Beryl about,” he tells me. “I knew which drawer.”
I take it out and laugh because Cricket could fit inside it twice. I bought it in March, when I understood baby sizes mostly as hopeful numbers.
“I forgot how big it was.”
“You said she could wear it in the fall.”
“She might need a very long fall.”
He laughs with me. We are on the cottage porch, and for a minute the bag between us is an ordinary thing a husband has brought home. Cricket is asleep in her bassinet inside the open door. I can see her from my chair.
Gage has been here since yesterday. We agreed he would come every other week when the circuit schedule allowed, with calls between visits.
He stays in town. Yesterday he held Cricket while I showered.
I stayed under the water until I had washed my hair twice because nobody needed me for those few minutes.
Today I am tired in a way sleep has not quite reached.
My body is healing, but sitting too long still hurts.
I have eaten half my meals standing up because the baby wakes when I put her down.
Cleo keeps bringing food I can manage with one hand.
I keep trying to return the dishes and forgetting them by the sink.
Gage folds the coat, taking longer over it than a coat needs. “I had an idea.”
I wait.
“You could come home for a weekend. Bring Cricket. We could show you the room finished, let you see everybody.”
“Everybody at the ranch?”
“The staff would love to meet her. Beryl could come over.”
I smooth the paper bag on my knee. I can picture the kitchen, the bed, the ease of knowing where the clean towels are. I can also picture leaving again while he asks why two good days have not changed my mind.
“It’s a long drive for her.”
“We could take our time.”
“That isn’t the only problem.”
He looks toward the doorway. Cricket makes a sleeping noise, and we both pause. She settles without waking.
“People keep asking about you,” he says. “About both of you.” He glances at me before continuing. “We could take one picture in the yard. Tell them we’re together as a family.”
I put the bag down.
“Have you arranged that?”
“No. I haven’t booked anything or asked anybody.” He looks offended that I thought he might have, and I see him remember why I asked. His gaze drops to the coat. “Yesterday, when you left me with her while you showered?—”
“That meant I could shower.”
He turns the folded coat over. “Yesterday felt different.”
“Don’t arrange a picture.”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I want them to know you’re my wife.”
“They knew I was your wife when they put Tawny beside you.”
“I know.”
“What would the picture say? That I came home and everything’s fine?”
“It could say we’re working on it.”
“Are we?”
“I thought we were.”
The edge in his voice is familiar enough that my stomach contracts. Then he looks at me and waits for an answer. He does not tell me I have misunderstood.
“You’re meeting your daughter. We’re talking. I’m still trying to get through a day without crying because I can’t find a clean shirt.”
“I could help more if you were home.”
I put my hand flat on the porch rail. The wood is warm from the sun.
“I have help here. I have Cleo. I have a place where I don’t wake up thinking I’ll see that tour truck in the lane.”
He looks toward Mercy in the paddock. He promised nobody would load her or take her to that truck. Later the same day, I found her in the yard with a groom holding her lead. I remember how badly I wanted to believe him.
“I wanted people to see us together again,” he says.
“They saw you tell them I wanted Tawny beside you. That I’d chosen to stop traveling so you could have a full season.”
He looks down at the coat.
“I told Tawny it was finished. I told you.”
“You ended the campaign. You haven’t told those people I never agreed to it. You said I was happy about the thing I left you over.”
“I know.”
“If I stand beside you smiling with Cricket, they’ll think your story was true. That I had the baby and came home, just as we planned.”
He runs his hand over the folded sleeve. “I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
“Then think about it before you ask me to be in the picture.”
I wait until he looks at me.
“And you still haven’t told me what happened between you and Tawny. What you said about me. What you let her think she could have with you.”
“We can talk about it.”
“We will. I’m not posing for a photograph that makes people think we already have.”
He sits back. For a while we hear only the fan inside and Cleo’s son calling to somebody by the barn.
“I miss having you at the table,” Gage says.
I did not expect that. I look at him, and he is looking at the empty paper bag.
“I keep buying the wrong amount of food. The housekeeper puts the extra away, and I eat it later, and I still buy too much the next time.”
He held my hand across the kitchen table in May, and I almost let myself believe the argument had ended. Then Tawny called. She already knew the things I thought we had been saying only to each other.
I look at the hand resting on the coat. I still want it around mine.
“I miss you too,” I say.
He looks up so quickly that I have to finish.
“That’s been part of the problem.”
Cricket wakes before he can answer. I stand slowly, and he moves the bag out of my way. Inside, I lift her from the bassinet and settle on the sofa. She is hungry and impatient. I ask Gage for the cloth on the chair, and he gives it to me.
He stays while I feed her. We talk about the coat, then about a mare at home whose owner cannot decide whether to sell. It is familiar work talk, and I want more of it.
When Cricket finishes, I ask if he will hold her while I eat. He takes her, tucking her close as he has learned. She fusses, and he walks the small length of the room until she goes quiet.
“Tomorrow still works?” he asks.
“Yes. After breakfast.”
He nods. “I’ll bring breakfast. If you want.”
“Eggs. I have bread.”
“Eggs, then.”
The afternoon has not gone the way he wanted. He is still making tomorrow’s plan with me. I let myself believe in that much.
I eat the sandwich Cleo left in the fridge. Gage stands by the window with our daughter, telling her quietly about Mercy. I listen without correcting the part where he makes the mare sound more cooperative than she is.
Before he leaves, he puts the green coat in Cricket’s drawer. I let him find room for it himself. When he comes back, he has folded the paper bag small enough to fit under the sink with the others.
“I won’t ask for the picture again,” he says.
“Good.”
I want to kiss him goodbye. The wish catches me while I am holding the door, so strong that I almost step forward. I stay where I am and watch him go down the steps.
When the truck leaves, I close the screen and return to my daughter. She is awake, studying the light on the wall. I lie beside her on the floor for a few minutes while she is on her tummy and tell her about the green coat she will eventually grow into.