5. Lo
— ? —
Lo
The barn office is my favorite place on the ranch.
It’s small and dusty and the desk was old when Jesse’s father bought it, but there’s a window that looks out over the east pasture, and the light in the mornings is gold.
I used to sit in here with Jesse and do the books while he played guitar in the corner.
We’d work for hours, not talking much, just existing in the same space.
It felt comfortable and easy and married.
I haven’t sat in that chair in a year.
It’s almost noon, and Jesse’s been in the barn office since breakfast, on the phone with someone or other, the label, Sloane, whoever owns his time now.
I made sandwiches because I’m not sure he remembers to eat anymore, and I’m walking down from the house with a plate and two bottles of water.
The test is still in my nightstand drawer, untold.
Two days since the bonfire. Two days of Jesse on his phone, Jesse in meetings, Jesse apologizing and disappearing and coming back smelling like stress and whatever perfume Sloane wears.
I keep waiting for a moment, a real moment, just the two of us, where I can sit him down and tell him about the baby.
The moments don’t come.
I hear voices before I reach the door. Jesse’s voice, and then another voice, tinny, distorted. Speaker phone.
“…label wants the next album positioned very specifically.” Sloane’s voice, crisp and professional. “Solo artist. Independent. The whole rugged-cowboy-finding-his-way narrative. It’s tested extremely well with the eighteen-to-thirty-four female demographic.”
“I know what the label wants.”
“Do you? Because this conversation wouldn’t be necessary if you did.”
I stop outside the door. I shouldn’t listen. I know I shouldn’t listen. But my feet won’t move and my heart is hammering and something tells me I need to hear this.
“The marriage needs to stay buried,” Sloane continues. “No mention of a wife. No ring on camera, ever. No ‘Lo’ in any interview, any social media, any public appearance. The single-cowboy image is everything. It’s what’s selling. It’s what’s going to make the next album platinum.”
“I understand.”
“Do you understand that means she can’t come to events? Can’t be photographed with you? Can’t exist, as far as the public is concerned?”
“I said I understand.”
My stomach drops. I put my hand on the barn wall to steady myself.
“She doesn’t need to know any of this, Jesse.” Sloane’s voice has softened. Conspiratorial. “You know how she gets. She’s already paranoid about us. If she finds out the label wants her kept hidden, she’ll spiral.”
“She’s not paranoid.”
“She accused me of wanting you. At dinner. In front of the crew.”
She didn’t. I didn’t. I mentioned it to Jesse in private and he laughed at me.
“That was private,” Jesse says, and I feel sick.
“Nothing’s private anymore. That’s the point.” A pause. “Look, I’m trying to help you. Both of you. The less she knows about how this works, the easier it is for everyone. Just keep her out of it. Keep her on the ranch, keep her happy, and let me handle the rest.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Jesse’s voice is tired. Resigned. “Keep Lo out of it. Nobody finds out about her. I mean it.”
I close my eyes.
Nobody finds out about her.
That’s what he said. My husband, the man who promised to love me forever, just told his manager that nobody can find out I exist. I’m a secret. I’m an embarrassment. I’m the livestock handler who needs to be kept out of sight so his career can flourish.
“Good,” Sloane says. “I knew you’d come around. You always do.”
I hear his boots on the office floor, then on the wooden steps outside. Through the slats of the barn wall, I watch him walk away from the building, heading toward the stock pens at the far end of the property. His shoulders are hunched. He doesn’t look back.
The speakerphone is still on. I can hear the faint hum of the open line through the window.
Then Sloane’s voice again, but different now. Warmer. More intimate. Talking to someone else. Someone who must have been in the room with her the whole time, staying quiet.
“He’ll come around.” A low laugh that isn’t Jesse’s answers her. One of the crew, maybe. Someone she brought with her. “They always do.”
“Give it another few months,” she continues. “The wife situation will resolve itself. It always does, once the money starts flowing. He’ll realize what he can have out there, and she’ll realize she can’t compete, and it’ll be over before the second album drops.”
“You think?”
“I know.” She sounds smug. Certain. “I’ve seen it a dozen times. Small-town girl, big-time star. The math doesn’t work. He just needs time to figure that out.”
“And you’ll be there when he does?”
“Someone has to be.”
They laugh together. Quiet, conspiratorial laughter that makes my skin crawl.
I look toward the stock pens. Jesse is a distant figure now, leaning against the fence rail, too far away to have heard any of it. He made his choice in that office, to hide me, to keep me out of it, and then he walked away before she showed her hand.
I set the plate of sandwiches on the step.
The water bottles go next to it.
I walk back to the house.
My hands are shaking. My whole body is shaking. I make it to the kitchen, grip the edge of the counter, and stand there trying to breathe.
He’s ashamed of me.
That’s what this is. My husband is ashamed of being married to me. I’m bad for his image. I’m bad for his brand. I’m the small-town girl who doesn’t fit the narrative, and the solution is to pretend I don’t exist.
Nobody finds out about her.
I think about the test in my nightstand drawer. The two pink lines. The baby I was going to tell him about, the baby I thought might bring him back.
How do you tell a man about his child when he’s already decided to erase you?
I hear the back door open. Jesse’s voice: “Lo? You here?”
I don’t answer.
He finds me in the kitchen, still gripping the counter, staring out the window at nothing.
“Hey.” He comes up behind me, puts his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Long day.”
“It’s not even noon.”
“Long morning, then.”
He turns me around to face him. His eyes search mine, and I don’t know what he sees there, but it makes him frown.
“What’s wrong?”
Everything. Everything is wrong. You’re ashamed of me and you’re hiding me and your manager is planning to replace me and I’m pregnant with your child and I can’t tell you because I don’t trust you anymore.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Lo.”
“I’m just tired.” I step away from him, away from his hands, away from the lie I can feel building between us. “I didn’t sleep well.”
“I know I’ve been coming up late every night since the bonfire. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Because it keeps being true.”
He sighs. “You’re doing that thing where you shut down instead of talking to me.”
“I’m not shutting down.”
“You are. You’ve got that look, the one where your face goes blank and I can’t read anything. Just tell me what’s wrong.”
I could. I could tell him everything. I could say: I heard your call with Sloane. I heard you agree to hide me. I heard her laugh about how the wife situation will resolve itself.
But I want him to tell me first.
I want to give him the chance to be honest. To come to me and say, “The label wants to hide our marriage, and I’m not going to let them.” To choose me over the machine, just once.
“I’m tired,” I say again. “That’s all. What time is dinner?”
“Dinner?”
“Are we eating at the usual time? I need to know what to cook.”
He blinks at the subject change. “Uh, six? Six-thirty?”
“Six works.”
“Lo-”
“I’ve got chores.”
I leave him standing in the kitchen. I walk out the back door and across the yard and into the barn, where the horses are waiting and the work is simple and nothing asks me questions I don’t want to answer.
I throw myself into it. Feeding, watering, mucking stalls, checking the pregnant mare who’s due in a few weeks.
Physical labor that doesn’t require thinking.
My body moves through the motions and my mind goes somewhere else, somewhere quiet, somewhere the words nobody finds out about her can’t reach.
Cal finds me in the tack room, cleaning bridles that don’t need cleaning.
“You’re scrubbing the leather off that,” he says.
“It needed a deep clean.”
“It needed a normal clean about six months ago. Now it needs you to put it down before you destroy it.”
I put it down.
Cal leans against the door frame. He’s known me long enough to know when to push and when to wait. Right now, he’s waiting.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I was thinking you looked like a woman with something heavy on her shoulders.”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing. But you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
I look at him. Cal, who’s been on this ranch since before Jesse and I got married. Cal, who watched Jesse leave on tour and watched me try to hold everything together. Cal, who found me at the bonfire and tried to tell me the song didn’t mean anything.
“What do you do,” I say slowly, “when someone you love decides you’re not worth knowing about?”
He’s quiet for a moment. “That a hypothetical?”
“Does it matter?”
“Might.”
I shake my head. “Never mind. Forget I asked.”
“Lo-”
“I’ve got to start dinner.”
I leave him in the tack room. I walk back to the house. I make dinner because that’s what I do, that’s what I’ve always done, that’s what a good ranch wife does while her husband pretends she doesn’t exist.
***
Sloane comes to dinner.
Of course she does. She’s been at every meal since she arrived, sitting at my table, eating my food, making conversation about industry things I don’t understand and don’t care about. Tonight is no different.
“The label confirmed the dates,” she says, cutting her steak into tiny pieces. “Three days out, then Phoenix, then Denver, then Salt Lake.”
I stop with my fork halfway to my mouth. “Three days?”
“The break got cut short,” Jesse says. He won’t meet my eyes. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?”
“Tonight. I was going to tell you tonight.”
“You’re leaving in three days.”
“It’s not ideal, I know.”
“You said two weeks.”
“I know what I said.”
“You said two weeks, Jesse. That’s what you told me. Two weeks at home, then back on tour.”
“Things changed.” He’s still not looking at me. “The label moved up the schedule. They need me in Phoenix earlier than planned.”
I stare at him. This man who promised me forever on our wedding night. This man who said he’d never be anywhere but here. This man who’s leaving in three days because the label snapped their fingers.
“Fine,” I say.
“Lo-”
“I said fine. Three days. That’s what we have.”
I don’t believe him. I don’t believe any of it. But I pick up my fork and I eat my dinner in silence while Sloane talks about ticket sales and merch revenue and all the ways my husband’s absence is making other people rich.
Three days.
I have three days to decide whether to tell him about the baby.
Three days to give him the chance to tell me the truth about what I heard in the barn.
Three days before he disappears again, into the machine, into the blur, into a life where I don’t exist.
I look at him across the table. He’s listening to Sloane, nodding along, not looking at me.
Three days.
It’s not enough.
It’s all I have.