13. Beck
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Beck
The bourbon isn’t helping anymore.
I’ve been sitting in this chair for three hours, watching the shadows move across the ceiling, trying to figure out how I ended up here. Beck Cooper, who has all the money in the world to make himself happy, is sitting in the dark like a kicked dog because his wife took their daughter and left.
The ring is still on the counter. I walked past it this morning and couldn’t make myself touch it. It just sits there where she left it, throwing little points of light across the wood.
I hear the door open. I don’t turn around. There’s only one person in this house who walks in without knocking.
“Drinking alone in the dark.” My mother’s voice cuts through the silence. “That’s a new look for you.”
“Mother.” I don’t bother getting up. “Little late for a visit.”
“It’s nine o’clock, Beck. Not everyone keeps vampire hours.” She crosses the room and settles into the chair across from me, her posture perfect, her expression giving away nothing. “We need to talk.”
“About what?”
“About this mess you’ve made.”
I laugh, and it sounds ugly even to my own ears. “Which mess? The one where my wife left me? The one where the whole county heard me call her an easy keeper? Or the one where I’ve been flying to see another woman for six months?”
“All of it.” She folds her hands in her lap. “I can fix this, Beck.”
“Fix it.”
“Yes. It’s not as complicated as you’re making it.” She leans forward slightly. “The next dinner, the next event, you put Scarlett at the family table. Right next to you. You make her feel important. You let her see that she matters.”
“And Camille?”
“You seat Camille where Scarlett can see her.” My mother’s voice is smooth, practiced. “Somewhere visible but clearly beneath her. Let Scarlett understand that the other woman doesn’t matter. That she’s nothing.”
I stare at my mother. The woman who taught me how to ride and how to balance books and how to shake hands like I meant it.
“That’s your solution? Musical chairs?”
“It’s worked before.” She meets my eyes without flinching. “That’s how I handled your father and Denise Halloran for years.”
The name knocks the breath clean out of me.
Denise Halloran. The woman my father kept in an apartment in Houston. The woman he visited every other week for more than a decade while my mother smiled and played hostess and pretended everything was fine.
“You knew about Denise for years.”
“Of course I knew.” My mother’s voice is cool, detached. “I knew about all of them. And I managed them. I made sure they knew their place. I made sure your father knew his place. And I made sure this family stayed together.”
“By lying.”
“By being smart.” She stands up and walks to the window, looking out at the land that’s been Cooper land for four generations.
“You think marriages survive on honesty, Beck? They don’t.
They survive on management. On knowing when to look the other way.
On making sure the people who matter feel like they matter, even when they don’t. ”
“Scarlett matters.”
“Does she?” My mother turns to face me. “She’s a woman with a mare and a duffel bag who wanted your barns. And you gave them to her. You gave her everything, and she still wasn’t satisfied.”
“She wasn’t satisfied because I was lying to her.”
“She wasn’t satisfied because women like her are never satisfied.” My mother’s voice is sharp now, the careful mask slipping. “They want more. They always want more. And the moment you stop giving, they leave.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?” She walks closer to me, and I can see the lines around her eyes, the gray at her temples she’s been dyeing for years. “I was in her office, Beck. Dropping off the seating chart.”
I go still.
“There was a calendar on the wall. Red marks.” She pauses, letting that sink in. “She knew about Salt Fork for god knows how long, and she was waiting to see if you would tell her.”
“You saw that.” My voice comes out rough. “You saw that calendar and you didn’t say anything to me.”
“What was I supposed to say? That my son was making the same mistakes his father made?” She shakes her head. “You wouldn’t have listened. You never listen.”
I stand up so fast the bourbon sloshes over the rim of my glass.
“We’re not you and Daddy.”
My mother looks at me for a long moment. And then she smiles, and it’s the saddest smile I’ve ever seen on her face.
“Not yet,” she says quietly. “But that’s how it started. That’s exactly how it started.”
The words hang in the air between us.
I think about my father and his trips to Houston, the perfume on his collar and the jewelry he’d buy my mother afterward, like he was paying off a debt. I think about growing up in this house, watching my parents move around each other like strangers, performing a marriage instead of living one.
I always swore I’d be different. I always swore I’d never be him.
And here I am. Standing in his den, drinking his bourbon, listening to his wife tell me how to manage my mistress.
“I think you should go.”
My mother’s eyebrows rise. “Excuse me?”
“I’m not going to manage Scarlett. I’m not going to seat her somewhere strategic and make her feel important while I keep lying to her face.” I set the glass down. “That’s not marriage.”
“Beck-”
“I need to think. And I can’t do that with you telling me how Daddy did it. Besides, I’m not a cheater.”
She stares at me for a long moment. Hurt flickers across her face and then the mask slides back into place.
“When she doesn’t come back,” she says quietly, “don’t say I didn’t try to help.”
Then she’s gone.
I stand in the den for a long time after she leaves. The bourbon is still burning in my chest.
I reach into my shirt pocket. The piece of paper is still there, soft from being handled, the edges worn. Tripp’s handwriting, messy and certain.
Dr. Alan Kramer.
I’ve been carrying it around for days. Telling myself I don’t need it. Telling myself I can fix this on my own, the way I fix everything, with money and charm and the Cooper name.
But I can’t fix this. That’s the whole point. I can’t manage my way out of a marriage I broke with my own hands.
I pick up my phone. Dial the number before I can talk myself out of it.
“Dr. Kramer’s office.” A professional woman’s voice. “How can I help you?”
“I need to make an appointment.” My voice sounds strange to my own ears. “As soon as possible.”
“Of course. Can I ask what this is regarding?”
“I’m trying not to become my father,” I say. “And I don’t know how.”
There’s a pause. Then, softer, “We have an opening Thursday at two. Would that work?”
“Yes.” I write it down on the back of Tripp’s paper. “Thursday at two. I’ll be there.”
I hang up and look at the paper in my hand. Thursday. I have a few days to figure out how to sit in a chair and tell a stranger all the ways I’ve failed.
I put the paper back in my pocket and walk to the kitchen. The ring is still there, catching the light from the window.
I don’t touch it.
But I don’t look away either.