10. Beck
— ? —
Beck
The highway stretches out flat and brown in front of me, and I can’t remember the last time I slept in a bed.
It’s been ten days since she left, and I’ve told myself every single one of them that she just needs time.
That she’ll cool down. That the flowers I sent will soften her, or the calls she won’t answer will pile up until she feels guilty, or Manny showing up at Lucy’s door will remind her that I’m trying.
She declined the flowers. Sent Manny away without opening the door. Let every call go to voicemail.
I’ve drafted maybe fifty texts. Deleted all of them. What do you say to a woman who heard you call her an easy keeper on a radio the whole county was listening to?
I’ve been to Salt Fork twice because that’s what I do when the house is bad. That’s what I’ve always done. When things get hard, I get in the chopper and I go somewhere else. Somewhere I don’t have to see Ines looking at me like I’m a gum she scraped off her shoe.
The ring is still on the counter. I can’t touch it or move it. Every morning I walk past it and every morning it’s still there, catching the light, reminding me of everything I broke.
My phone slides off the seat as I take a curve, and I reach under to grab it without thinking. My fingers brush something else.
I pull it out.
Josie’s blue cup. The one with the handles on both sides, the one she won’t drink from anything else. It’s wrapped in a dish towel, tucked under the seat like someone put it there on purpose.
It had to be Ines. The night Scarlett left, while I was standing in the yard in my socks watching my wife drive away with my daughter, Ines must have come out and put this in my truck.
So I’d know what I lost.
I pull onto the shoulder. I put the truck in park. I hold this stupid blue cup in my hands and I think about Josie’s face when she drinks from it, the way her eyes get big and serious like drinking water is the most important thing in the world.
I think about the last time I gave her a bath. I can’t remember. I think about the last time I put her to bed. I can’t remember that either.
I cry even though I don’t mean to.
Beck Cooper doesn’t cry on the side of the highway like some broken-down fool who can’t keep his life together. But the tears come anyway, and I sit there with my forehead on the steering wheel and I let them.
When it’s over, I feel empty. Hollowed out. Like someone reached inside my chest and scooped out everything that mattered.
I put the cup in the glove box and wipe my face. I pull back onto the highway and drive home.
Tripp is waiting at the round pen when I get there.
He’s leaning on the fence, watching one of the young horses move in circles, and he doesn’t turn around when I pull up. Just keeps watching. Like he’s been waiting for me to show up and he’s going to say whatever he came to say whether I want to hear it or not.
I get out of the truck. I walk over and lean on the fence next to him.
“Nice day,” he says.
“Tripp.”
“Weather’s been good. Not too hot yet.”
“Tripp.”
He turns to look at me then, and there’s something in his eyes I don’t like. Something that looks a lot like disappointment.
“You know who built this pen?” he asks.
I don’t answer. I know where this is going.
“Scarlett did before you even got married. Designed it herself, drew it out on graph paper, spent two weeks out here with a post-hole digger and a level.” He looks back at the horse. “I offered to help. She said no. Said she wanted to do it right, with her own hands, so she’d know it was hers.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” He pushes off the fence and faces me. “Because you got on a radio and called her a good horse, Beck. Every hand on this ranch heard it.”
“I know what I did.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“She just needs time.” I hear myself say it and I know it sounds weak. Like I’m trying to convince myself more than him. “She’ll cool down. She always does.”
Tripp laughs. It’s not a kind laugh.
“Cool down,” he repeats. “That woman packed her bags and took your daughter and drove to Dallas in the middle of the night, and you think she’s going to cool down?”
“She’s upset.”
“She’s gone, Beck. How are you this stupid?”
I don’t have anything to say to that.
Tripp shakes his head. He looks at me like he’s seeing me for the first time, and whatever he sees, he doesn’t like it.
“You know what your problem is? You think because you’re Beck Cooper, because you’ve got more money than God and more land than some states, you think that means people have to come back to you. You think she’s going to realize what she’s giving up and come crawling home.”
“That’s not…”
“That’s exactly what you think. I can see it on your face.” He steps closer. “But here’s the thing, son. She didn’t marry your money. She didn’t marry your land. She married you, the man, and you haven’t been that man in a long time.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know she built this pen with her own hands while you were in meetings. I know she designed a barn that you took hundreds of miles away. I know she sat at table nine while your mother put your childhood sweetheart at table one.” He jabs a finger at my chest. “And I know you got on a radio and said you don’t know what you feel about her, like she’s some problem you haven’t figured out how to solve yet. ”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then what was it like? Explain it to me. Because I’ve been watching you run that woman down for two years, and I kept my mouth shut because it wasn’t my place, but she’s gone now and somebody needs to say it.”
I want to argue. I want to tell him he’s wrong, that he doesn’t understand, that Scarlett and I have something he can’t see from the outside.
But I can’t. Because he’s not wrong.
“She’ll come back,” I say, and even I can hear how hollow it sounds.
Tripp looks at me for a long moment. Then he shakes his head and starts walking toward his truck.
“You don’t know her at all, do you,” he says over his shoulder. “You never did.”
He gets in his truck and drives away. And I stand at the round pen my wife built with her own hands and I think about everything I should have seen and didn’t.
The horse is still running in circles. Around and around, going nowhere.
I know how it feels.