Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Banshee
Bex isn’t here today.
Earl has a chemo appointment in San Antonio—the long kind, the all-day kind, the kind that hollows him out and leaves him gray and shaking in the passenger seat while Bex white-knuckles the wheel home.
She texted me this morning.
It was short. Matter-of-fact.
The text of a woman who’s handling everything and still finding room to keep me informed:
Earl’s chemo today. Won’t be at the compound. The paint mare’s left front needs checking.
I can still feel her.
That’s the thing I wasn’t prepared for.
Not the guilt—I expected the guilt, braced for it, knew it would come the way you know a storm is coming when the pressure drops.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the way she stayed in my body after she left it.
The phantom press of her hands on my chest.
The weight of her thighs around my hips.
The sound of my name in her mouth—Lee—like she was reaching for something deeper than the word.
I showered. Changed. Stood in my quarters and pressed my palms flat against the wall and breathed, and her scent was still on my skin like a brand I can’t scrub off and don’t want to.
The compound is quiet without her.
I didn’t realize how much space she’d started to fill until the space went empty.
Even the barn sounds different.
The rhythm is off—I don’t hear her truck first thing in the morning, no boots on the aisle, no low voice greeting the horses like colleagues she respects.
Just me and the animals and a silence that used to feel like sanctuary and now feels like something I’m rattling around inside.
I do the evening rounds.
Feed. Water. Check on Passage—the gray mare is fully recovered, bright-eyed, eating well.
Check on the bay—standing calm in his stall, ears forward when I approach, no flinch.
Check on the paint, the geldings, the yearling.
Everyone is stable and everything is in order.
I go back to my quarters and sit on the bed.
The photo of Rose watches me from the nightstand—blonde hair, blue eyes, the smile that could talk you into anything.
I look at her face and the ache is there. The same ache, but it’s different now.
Layered.
Complicated by the memory of dark hair, calloused hands, and a body that is nothing like hers pressed against mine in a tack room that still smells like both of us.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I know what I did—I know what it felt like, what it meant, how the earth moved and how the walls came down.
I just don’t know what happens next.
I’ve spent years knowing exactly what my life was—grief, work, horses, the ring, the silence—and in one evening Bex took all of it apart with her hands and her mouth and the way she looked at me after, and I don’t know how to put it back together.
I’m not sure I want to.
I pick up my phone.
Not to call anyone.
My thumb moves on its own, navigating to a place I haven’t opened in years.
The voicemail folder.
The graveyard of every call I refused to answer, every message I refused to hear, every attempt Bex made to reach me through the walls I’d built.
Sixty-three voicemails.
I stare at the number.
Sixty-three, spanning over the entire time since Rose died.
The timestamps tell their own story—clustered thick in the first months, spacing out gradually, thinning to a trickle that never quite dried up.
She adjusted the frequency but never stopped.
Sixty-three times she called, got my voicemail, and chose to speak into the silence anyway.
I’ve never listened to a single one.
I press play on the first message.
Dated eleven days after the funeral.
Her voice fills the room.
Younger. Rawer.
The voice of a twenty-six-year-old woman who just buried her best friend and is calling the man who won’t answer his phone.
“Lee. It’s Bex. I know you don’t want to talk. I know you’re—I don’t know what you are. But I need you to call me back. Please. I can’t do this alone. Earl can’t—he’s not—” A breath. Shaky. “Just call me, okay? Please.”
Eleven days after the funeral, she was already alone.
Earl was drowning in his own grief.
I had disappeared into the club, into Shadow’s company, into the silence that felt like the only thing I could tolerate. And Bex was calling.
Three weeks after the funeral.
“Lee, pick up the damn phone. She was my best friend. You don’t own the grief.” A pause. The anger deflating. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just—I need to talk to someone who understands. Please. Just call me back.”
She was right.
I acted like the grief was mine—exclusively, possessively—a territory I’d staked and fenced and refused to share.
I took the grief , made it a fortress, and locked everyone out. The woman who loved Rose longest stood outside the walls and shouted until her voice gave out.
Six weeks.
“I went to her grave today. Brought yellow roses. Remember how she said they were the only flowers that smelled honest? I sat there for an hour. Talked to her. Told her you won’t call me back. She’d be so mad at us, Lee. Both of us. You for disappearing and me for—” Long pause. “For everything.”
For everything.
The guilt already there, six weeks in.
The weight of being the reason Rose was on that road, already settling into Bex’s bones, already becoming the thing she’d carry for years without anyone to help her hold it.
I keep playing.
At three months, she’s starting to get angry.
“You know what, Lee? Fine. Don’t call. I’ll handle Earl myself.
I’ll handle picking the headstone myself.
I’ll handle all of it myself because that’s what I do.
That’s what I’ve always done. But just so we’re clear—you’re not the only one who’s drowning.
You’re just the only one who’s been given permission to. ”
At six months, she’s gone from angry to sad.
“It’s her birthday. I made a cake. Chocolate with buttercream, the one she always wanted. Earl and I ate it on the porch. There was a place set for you. There’s always a place set for you.” Silence. “Happy birthday, Rose.”
One year.
“One year today. Three hundred and sixty-five days since the world stopped making sense. Earl and I went to the cemetery. He’s getting thinner.
Have you noticed? Of course you haven’t.
You haven’t seen him.” Her voice cracks.
“I miss you too, you know. Not just her. You. You were my family, Lee. Both of you. And I lost both of you the same night.”
I lost both of you the same night.
Rose on the highway and me into the silence.
Two deaths—one physical, one chosen. And Bex grieving both.
Eighteen months and her voice is quieter.
“Earl asks about you. Every time. ‘Have you heard from Lee?’ And I have to say no. I’m running out of ways to make it sound less terrible than it is.”
At two years, the calls come monthly now.
The anger is gone. What replaced it is worse.
“I got a dog. A mutt. Ugly as sin. Named him Hank because Rose always said if she had a dog she’d name him Hank after Hank Williams. He’s chewing everything I own and I love him. Thought you should know.”
She got a dog. Named him after a throwaway comment Rose made at a Sunday dinner about country singers and dog names that I barely remember but Bex held on to.
She was collecting Rose’s scraps. Keeping the pieces alive in whatever way she could.
Two months later.
“I shoed a horse today that reminded me of you. Big bay quarter horse, wouldn’t let anyone near his feet.
Owner wanted to twitch him. I told her to give me an hour.
Just sat in the pen and waited. Rose always said I was too impatient for everything except horses and her.
She was right about most things. I think about that a lot. ”
She’s telling me stories now.
That’s what these have become—not pleas, not demands.
Updates from a life I should have been part of, delivered to a voicemail box like letters to a man in a coma.
Christmas. Year two.
“Merry Christmas. I’m at Earl’s. He made tamales. Rose’s recipe. There’s an empty chair at the table. Two, actually.” A breath that sounds like it costs her something. “At least she has an excuse.”
I put the phone down and press both hands over my face.
I breathe through the pressure building behind my eyes, the tightness in my throat, the physical weight of two years of messages from a woman I abandoned.
I pick the phone back up and keep going, because I owe her this.
I owe every one of these messages the dignity of being heard.
At three years, the messages come less frequently—every six weeks, sometimes two months apart, but they keep coming.
“I’m in Lubbock for a client. Shoeing ranch horses.
Thinking about you because the foreman has this way of standing with horses that reminds me of you—patient, still, like he’s got all the time in the world.
Rose used to say that was her favorite thing about you.
The stillness. She said you were the only person who never made her feel rushed. ”
Three and a half years.
“I moved to Amarillo. New start. New clients. I’m trying. That’s all I’ve got—I’m trying. I hope you’re trying too.”
She put two hundred miles between herself and Sharp because the town where Rose lived and died was too heavy to carry every day.
I understand that.
I’ve been living twenty minutes from our old house, and I still take the long way around to avoid driving past it.
Three years, nine months.
“I went on a date. First one since—well, since before. He was nice. Polite. Held the door. Talked about his truck for forty-five minutes.” A sound that’s almost a laugh.
“I kept thinking about how Rose would’ve kicked me under the table and whispered ‘this man is putting me to sleep, Bexley, save yourself.’ I didn’t go on a second date.
Not because of you. I just—I don’t think I’m ready.
Maybe I’m like you. Maybe once is enough. ”
My hands tighten on the phone.
She went on a date.
A man held the door for her and talked about his truck and she sat there missing Rose and thinking about me.