2. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
I wake up alone.
That isn’t unusual. Beck is an early riser, always has been, up with the sun to do things that don’t need doing anymore.
Checking fences, walking the pens, bothering the foreman.
Old habits from when the ranch actually needed him, before the money got so big that the ranch was just one line item among many.
But the bed is cold.
I press my hand to his pillow and feel nothing, no warmth or indent. Like he was never there at all.
The clock says nine-thirty. I slept late, which I never do, which means I must have been more tired than I thought. Josie will be up by now. Will be wondering where her mama is.
I pull on jeans and one of Beck’s flannel shirts, the blue one that smells like him, like cedar and that expensive bourbon he likes, and pad downstairs.
The kitchen is empty. Coffee in the pot, still warm. A plate of pastries on the counter that Chef Martin must have left before he went home.
No Beck or Josie.
I walk to the window. The trucks are all in their usual spots. The crew is moving around the pens like it’s any other morning. The world is turning the way it’s supposed to turn.
But my husband isn’t here.
I find Ines in the hallway outside Beck’s home office, running a dust cloth over the same picture frame she dusted yesterday.
“Good morning, Mrs. Cooper.” She doesn’t look at me when she says it. “There’s fresh coffee if you need it.”
“Where’s Beck?”
The dust cloth pauses just for a second. Then it starts moving again.
“Mr. Cooper took the helicopter at four this morning.”
Four in the morning. And he didn’t wake me. Didn’t say a word about leaving when he’d been inside me just hours before.
“Did he say where he was going?”
This time Ines does look at me. And there’s pity in her eyes that makes my stomach drop.
“I assumed you knew, ma’am. I assumed you’d be going with him.”
“Going where?”
“To Salt Fork.” She says it carefully, like she’s testing the words. “To see Miss Camille.”
I clench my hands.
“What’s Salt Fork?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
And there it is. The moment Ines realizes I don’t know. Her face shifts from careful to horrified, because she’s a kind woman and she didn’t mean to break something open.
“The new ranch,” she says quietly. “Hundreds of miles west. Mr. Cooper’s mother bought it last summer.
Miss Camille is running it now. She came back from Wyoming in October.
” Ines pauses, and I watch her decide whether to say the next part.
“I was flown out there a few weeks ago to help her settle into the cottage.”
Camille Wheeler, who disappeared to Wyoming and never answered our wedding invitation, is back.
Has been back since October. Is running a ranch I’ve never heard of, living in a cottage that our housekeeper helped her decorate, and my husband flew to see her at four in the morning without telling me.
“How often does he go there?” My voice doesn’t sound like mine.
Ines looks at the picture frame she’s dusting. Then she looks at the floor. Anywhere but at me.
“I think you should talk to Mr. Cooper about that, ma’am.”
“Ines.”
She flinches at the sharpness in my voice. I feel bad about that, but not bad enough to take it back.
“How often?”
“I don’t know exactly. But… often.” She meets my eyes finally, and I see it all there. The things she knows. The things the staff whisper about when they think I can’t hear. “You should talk to his scheduler, ma’am. Robert keeps the flight log.”
Robert Malone. Nervous and loyal to Beck in that particular way that men get loyal to Beck, like dogs, almost, eager to please. I’ve never thought much about Robert before. He’s just part of the machinery that keeps the Cooper empire running.
I find him in the hall outside the main office shuffling papers.
“Mrs. Cooper.” He smiles too wide. “What can I do for you?”
“The flight log.”
The smile falters. “Ma’am?”
“The helicopter. You keep a log of every trip. I want to see it.”
“I don’t think…”
“Robert.” I step closer to him, and I see him take a step back, and something ugly rises up in my chest. “I am asking you for a piece of paper that documents the movement of an aircraft that belongs to my husband. Are you going to make me ask twice?”
He gives me the log.
I take it to my office. Not the one Beck built for me last year with the bay window and the leather chair that I never sit in, but the real one, the cinderblock room at the barn where I actually work. Where the walls are covered in breeding charts and the calendar I use to track everything.
I sit at my desk and open the log.
He only went there five times for the first three months.
Then Christmas passed, and something changed.
Every week in January, sometimes twice a week. Three days in February. Six days in the first week of March. Five days the week after.
I think about all those nights he came home late. All those mornings the bed was cold. All those times he said he was checking the south pastures or meeting with the accountant or flying to Dallas for something that couldn’t wait.
I get a red pen from the cup on my desk. I go to the wall calendar and I start marking.
Every trip since October. Every time he’s been out there. Every lie about where he was going.
When I’m done, the calendar looks like it’s bleeding.
The door opens. Ines comes in with a cup of coffee. She sets it on my desk and looks at the calendar.
“When did it start?” I ask. “Really start?”
Ines stands very still. Her hands are folded in front of her, and she looks uncomfortable.
“I shouldn’t…”
“You’ve worked for this family for thirty years. You know everything that happens in that house. You knew about this before I did.” I turn to face her. “So tell me. When did it start?”
Ines looks at the calendar. At all that red.
She sets the coffee down and walks to the door. But she doesn’t answer.
That’s how I know it’s bad. Because Ines, who has weathered Beck’s father’s affairs and Roselle’s manipulations and every scandal the Cooper family has ever produced, can’t find a way to make this one sound okay.
She closes the door behind her, and I sit in my cold cinderblock office. I stare at the wall full of red marks, and I think about the man who danced me across the yard yesterday.
There she is. There’s my girl.
And another woman, hundreds of miles away, has been waiting for him to come.