9. Lo
— ? —
Lo
The barn looks like someone tried to throw a party and a funeral at the same time.
Streamers hang from the rafters, red and white, the colors of Jesse’s album cover, and there’s a folding table against the far wall covered with beer bottles and a cake that says “See You Soon” in blue frosting.
Half of Ridley is here, plus the crew, plus Sloane in the corner with her phone, always with her phone.
I’m standing near the tack room door with my hand behind my back.
The pregnancy test is in my grip, plastic edge digging into my palm.
I’ve been holding it for twenty minutes, waiting for a moment that keeps not coming.
Jesse’s been pulled from conversation to conversation, old friends, neighbors, people who want to shake the hand of the hometown boy who made it big.
Every time I think I’ve found an opening, someone else appears at his elbow with a story or a question or a request for a photo.
The letter is in my jacket pocket. I can feel it against my hip, the sharp corners of the folded paper, the weight of words I haven’t shared with anyone.
HE’S MINE, COWGIRL.
I push it out of my mind. One disaster at a time.
“Lo!” Martha appears at my side with a plate of cake. “You have to try this. Donna made it from scratch. The frosting’s got bourbon in it.”
“Maybe later.”
“You feeling okay? You look pale.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
“You’re always tired lately.” She peers at me with the particular concern of a woman who’s raised four children and can smell trouble from a mile away. “You sure there’s nothing going on?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.”
She doesn’t look convinced, but she lets it go. That’s the thing about small towns, people notice everything, but they also know when not to push.
I watch Jesse across the barn. He’s laughing at something Cal said, his head thrown back, his whole body loose in a way it hasn’t been since he got home.
This is the Jesse I remember. The one who fits here, who belongs here, who looks right standing in a barn surrounded by people who’ve known him his whole life.
He catches my eye across the room. Smiles. Mouths something I can’t make out.
I smile back.
The test is slick in my sweating hand.
I need to tell him. I need to pull him aside, find a quiet corner, put this piece of plastic in his hands and watch his face and know, finally, whether I still have a husband or just a stranger who shares my bed.
I start toward him.
“Jesse!” Donna intercepts him first, pulling him into a hug that lasts too long. “We’re so proud of you. The whole town is proud of you.”
“Thanks, Donna. Means a lot.”
“You come back soon, you hear? Don’t let those Nashville people steal you away forever.”
“I won’t. I promise.”
Another promise. I add it to the tally.
I’m five feet away when Sloane steps into the center of the barn.
She’s holding a glass of champagne, where she got champagne, I don’t know; the rest of us are drinking Lone Star from the bottle, and she’s got that look on her face. The one I’ve learned to dread. The one that means she’s about to do something that benefits Sloane and nobody else.
“Excuse me!” She taps the glass with a fingernail. The sharp sound cuts through the chatter, and people turn to look. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have an announcement.”
Jesse frowns. “Sloane, what are you-”
“I know this isn’t the time or place, but I can’t keep it to myself anymore.” She puts a hand on her stomach, and my blood turns to ice. “I’m pregnant.”
The barn goes quiet.
I can hear the horses shifting in their stalls. The creak of the rafters. The distant sound of a truck on the highway. Every other noise has stopped, sucked into the vacuum of Sloane’s words.
“And before anyone asks-” She’s smiling now, that bright performer’s smile, the one she uses for cameras. “-yes, Jesse’s the father. It happened in Nashville, after the awards. We’d both had too much to drink, and one thing led to another, and…” She shrugs. “Well. Here we are.”
I can’t breathe.
I can’t move.
The test is still in my hand, hidden behind my back, and Sloane is standing in the middle of my barn telling everyone I know that she’s carrying my husband’s child.
Jesse’s face has gone white. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I know it’s a shock.” Sloane’s voice is gentle, understanding, the voice of a woman comforting a man who’s just received difficult news. “I wasn’t sure how to tell you. I’ve been trying to find the right moment, but there never seemed to be one, and then tonight felt like-”
“You’re lying.”
“Jesse-”
“I never touched you. Not once. Not ever.” He looks around the barn, at all the faces watching, at the phones that have appeared in hands, at me standing frozen by the tack room door. “This is insane. This is absolutely insane.”
“I know you’re scared,” Sloane says. “I was too, when I found out. But we can figure this out together. We can-”
“There is no ‘we.’ There is no ‘together.’ I don’t know what you think happened, but I have never-”
He stops.
He’s looking at me.
Everyone’s looking at me.
I should say something. I should defend him, support him, tell everyone that my husband would never do this, that Sloane is a liar and a manipulator and everything I tried to warn him about.
But I don’t know that. I don’t know anything anymore.
I look at Jesse’s face, the shock, the confusion, the desperate need for me to believe him, and I think about all the nights he didn’t come home.
All the phone calls he took in other rooms. All the times Sloane was there and I wasn’t, in hotel rooms and tour buses and green rooms, while I was here mucking stalls and mending fences and waiting.
It happened in Nashville, after the awards show.
He was in Nashville for the awards. He called me that night, late, slurring his words. Said the party went long. Said he’d had too much to drink.
“Lo.” Jesse takes a step toward me. “Lo, you have to believe me. I never-”
“Did you tell her about our anniversary?”
He stops.
“She knew I cried. She knew private things, things I only said to you, things I trusted you with.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
It sounds flat and far away, like someone else is speaking through my mouth.
“So don’t stand there and tell me nothing happened.
Don’t tell me she made it up. Because she knew things, Jesse. Things I only meant you to hear.”
“I don’t know how she-”
“Did you sleep with her?”
The question hangs in the air. The whole barn is holding its breath; every eye, every ear, every phone recording this moment for posterity.
“No.” His voice cracks. “Lo, I swear to God, I never-”
“Did she read my messages, or did you tell her?”
His face changes. Something shifts, confusion giving way to a different kind of horror.
“She has access to my phone,” he says slowly. “For work. I gave her the password months ago so she could handle things when I’m on stage.”
The admission sits there in front of the whole barn.
“I went back to my room alone. I never touched her.”
“That’s what you’re telling me.”
“Yes. That’s what happened.”
He says it like the words should be enough. I used to believe everything that came out of his mouth. Then he looked into a camera and told the world he was single. Then he gave his manager the password to every private thing I’ve ever said to him.
Something breaks inside me. Something I’ve been holding together with wire and hope and stubborn determination. It cracks down the middle and falls apart, and what’s left is just me, standing in a barn full of people, holding a pregnancy test behind my back like it means anything at all.
“Wow,” I say.
My voice is steady. I’m proud of that.
“Lo, please-”
“Congratulations, Jesse.” I bring my hand out from behind my back. The test catches the light, two pink lines visible even from across the room. “You got both of us pregnant.”
I walk to the folding table. I set the test down between a bottle of Lone Star and the cake that says “See You Soon.” I make sure it’s face up, make sure everyone can see it, make sure there’s no mistaking what it is.
Then I step back.
The silence is absolute.
Jesse stares at the test. At me. At Sloane. Back at the test. His mouth is open, his face a mask of shock and horror, and I watch him try to process what just happened.
“Lo-” he starts.
“Don’t.”
“You’re-”
“I said don’t.”
He takes a step toward me. I take a step back. He stops.
“I was going to tell you,” I say. “I’ve been trying to tell you for days.
But there was never a moment. There was always a phone call or a meeting or Sloane needing you for something urgent.
” I laugh, and it sounds nothing like a laugh.
“Turns out she was busy too. Building her own little family while I was building mine.”
“This isn’t - I didn’t know she was going to-”
“It doesn’t matter what you knew.”
“It matters to me.” The words come out raw.
“Does it?” I look at him. Really look, the way I’ve been afraid to for months.
“Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you’ve built a whole life I’m not part of.
A life where you don’t wear your ring and you tell the world you’re single and your manager announces she’s pregnant with your baby in our barn. ”
“That’s not my baby.”
“You keep saying that.”
“I know I didn’t-”
“You don’t know anything.” I’m not yelling. I refuse to yell. I refuse to give them the satisfaction of watching Jesse Cooper’s wife fall apart in public. “And neither do I. That’s the problem.”
I turn to leave.
I make it three steps before I walk straight into the videographer.
He’s a kid, maybe twenty-two, holding a camera rig that probably cost more than my truck. He’s been filming the whole thing, of course he has, that’s his job, capturing content for the label’s social media, and now he’s standing right in my path, camera pointed at my face, red light blinking.
I’m wearing a hay-covered t-shirt. My hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail. I’ve got dirt under my fingernails and tears on my face and I look exactly like what I am: a woman who just found out her whole life is a lie.
The camera captures all of it.
“Move,” I say.
He doesn’t move. He’s frozen, caught between doing his job and basic human decency, and the camera keeps rolling.
“I said move.”
Someone behind me, Cal, maybe, or one of the neighbors, pushes the kid aside. I don’t stop to see who. I just walk. Out of the barn, into the night, across the yard toward the house.
I look back from the doorway. Jesse looks at me. Looks at Sloane. Looks back at me.
He doesn’t move.
He just stands there, caught between two women claiming to carry his children, while the whole town watches and the internet waits.
Across the yard, the videographer raises his phone. “Dude, this is going everywhere!” he shouts. “I’m uploading now!”