23. Beck
— ? —
Beck
Camille’s truck is parked in my driveway when I get home.
Wyoming plates. The same beat-up Ford she’s been driving since college, held together with rust and stubbornness. She’s sitting on the tailgate, her boots dangling, watching me pull up like she’s been waiting a long time.
I park and get out. The gravel crunches under my feet as I walk toward her.
“Cam.”
“Beck.” She slides off the tailgate. She looks more tired than she was at Salt Fork, shadows under her eyes. “I was hoping to catch you before I left.”
“Left for where?”
“Wyoming. Home.” She says the word like it means something. “For good this time.”
I should feel something. Relief, guilt, but mostly I just feel tired.
“You came to say goodbye?”
“I came to give you something.” She reaches into her truck and pulls out two envelopes. Cream-colored, expensive paper. The kind my mother uses for formal correspondence.
“What are these?”
“Read them.”
I take the envelopes. The first one is addressed to Camille, postmarked two years ago. The week before my wedding.
I open it.
Camille,
I know we’ve had our differences, but I’m writing to you as a mother who loves her son. The wedding is in five days. If you ever loved him, if there was ever anything between you that matters, I’m asking you to speak up. Before it’s too late.
Roselle
The words drop through me like a stone.
“Keep reading,” Camille says quietly.
I open the second envelope. This one is postmarked last summer.
Camille,
I’ve purchased a property in west Texas. Salt Fork Ranch. I’m looking for someone to manage it. Someone I can trust, someone who understands the family. The position comes with a cottage on the property and a salary commensurate with your experience.
I think you know why I’m offering this to you. I think you know what I’m hoping will happen.
Please consider it.
Roselle
“She wrote to me before your wedding,” Camille says. “Told me to speak up if I ever loved you. I was engaged to someone else. I thought it was a trap. So I threw away the RSVP and pretended I never got it.”
“And the second one?”
“Came last summer. After my divorce.” She takes a breath. “I was alone and your mother was offering me a job and a place to live and a chance to see if there was anything left. So I took it.”
“You knew what she was doing.”
“I suspected.” Camille meets my eyes. “But I wanted to see you. I wanted to know if the feelings I had at seventeen meant anything anymore. And I thought… I thought maybe if I spent enough time around you, I’d figure it out.”
“And did you?”
“Yeah.” She smiles, but it’s sad. “I figured out that you’re in love with your wife. That you’ve been in love with her the whole time. That everything you talked to me about. The problems, the frustrations, the doubts, all of it was just you being too scared to go home and deal with it.”
I don’t know what to say.
“I should have told you about the letters,” she says. “I should have shown them to you the day I got to Salt Fork. But I was selfish. I wanted to see what would happen.”
“What did you think would happen?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugs. “That you’d wake up one day and realize you’d made a mistake? That you’d look at me and see something you’d been missing?” She shakes her head. “Stupid. I know. But I was lonely, and your mother made it sound like there was a chance, and I wanted to believe her.”
I look at the letters in my hand. My mother’s handwriting, neat and precise.
She tried to stop my wedding. She planted Camille next to me. She built this whole thing on purpose, piece by piece, letter by letter.
“You read the first letter and said nothing,” I say slowly. “And you read the second letter and came anyway.”
“Yes.”
“Go home, Cam.”
She nods like she expected that. “But I’ll visit my childhood house first. After that, I have one more stop.”
“Where?”
“Your wife’s apartment.” She holds up a hand before I can speak. “I’m not going to cause trouble. I just… I need to say something to her. Something I should have said months ago.”
“What?”
“That’s between me and her.” She climbs back into her truck. “Goodbye, Beck. Take care of yourself.”
She drives away. I stand in the driveway, holding my mother’s letters, watching her taillights disappear.
Then I get in my truck. But I don’t drive toward Dallas.
I drive toward my mother’s house.