24. Beck
— ? —
Beck
My mother’s house is all white walls and tall windows and the kind of quiet that costs money.
She built it after my father died, on the far edge of the Cooper property, close enough to the main operation to keep an eye on things but far enough to have her own space. I’ve never liked it here. It’s too clean, too careful, too much like living inside a museum.
I find her in the sunroom, surrounded by orchids and afternoon light. She’s reading something and she looks up when I walk in.
“Beck.” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
I put the letters on the table in front of her.
She looks at them. Her face doesn’t change, my mother has spent sixty years learning how not to react, but I see something flicker behind her eyes.
“Where did you get these?”
“Camille brought them. On her way back to Wyoming.” I sit down across from her. “She kept them because she never trusted you. Turns out she was right.”
My mother picks up the first letter. Reads it like she’s never seen it before, even though she wrote every word.
“I was trying to protect you,” she says finally.
“By sabotaging my wedding?”
“By giving you options.” She sets the letter down. “Camille understood you. She knew what this life requires.”
“And Scarlett didn’t?”
“Scarlett came here with nothing but a mare and a duffel bag and wanted your barns.” My mother’s voice is sharp now, the careful mask slipping. “She didn’t understand the family. She didn’t understand the business. She didn’t understand you.”
“She understood me better than anyone.”
“Did she?” My mother leans forward. “Then why did you spend six months flying to Salt Fork? Why did you talk to Camille instead of your wife? Why did your marriage fall apart, Beck, if she understood you so well?”
“Because I was a coward.” The words come out hard. “Because you handed me an escape and I took it. Because it was easier to run than to stay and do the work.”
“I didn’t make you run.”
“No. But you made sure I had somewhere to go.” I push the second letter toward her. “You bought Salt Fork and you contacted Camille and you put her right next to me, knowing exactly what might happen. You planned this, Mother. From the beginning.”
She’s quiet for a long moment. The orchids sway slightly in the breeze from the air conditioning.
“Camille was family,” she says finally. “She understood us. And Scarlett… Scarlett was a stranger who wanted things. The barns, the program, the name. I watched her take and take and take, and I worried about what would be left when she was done.”
“She wasn’t taking. She was building.”
“That’s what it looked like to you because you’re blindly in love.”
“That’s what it was.” I stand up. “You tried to stop my wedding. When that didn’t work, you tried to end my marriage. You brought Camille back, you gave her a cottage, you put her in my path and waited for something to happen.”
“Nothing happened.”
“Something happened!” My voice echoes off the white walls. “I lost my wife. I lost my daughter. I lost everything that mattered because I was too busy running to a place you built for me to run to.”
My mother’s eyes are wet. That stops me cold.
I’ve seen my mother cry exactly once in my entire life. The day we buried my father, she stood at the graveside with tears running down her face, silent and dignified, and then she wiped her eyes and never cried again.
Until now.
“I was trying to protect you,” she says, and her voice breaks. “The way I couldn’t protect this family from your father’s choices.”
“I’m not Dad.”
“No.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“But you were making the same mistakes. Finding someone outside the marriage to confide in. Disappearing instead of dealing with your problems. I watched your father do that for thirty years. I know you’d do it too someday when the money got too big and I just knew that you wouldn’t be able to handle both your marriage and business, so I thought…
I thought if I gave you a better option than the ones he found… those whores…”
“Camille wasn’t a better option. She was a trap.”
“She was supposed to show you what you were missing.” My mother’s voice is small now. “She was supposed to make you realize what you had at home is not enough.”
“That’s not how it works.”
“I know that now.”
We sit in silence. The sunroom is too bright, too full of things that are supposed to be beautiful but just feel empty.
My mother is crying. Tears streaming down her face, her careful composure completely gone. She looks old in a way I’ve never seen before. Old, tired, and broken.
I should leave. I should walk out and drive to Dallas and never come back.
But she’s my mother. And she’s crying. Despite all the manipulation and the schemes and the letters, she was trying, in her own twisted way, to protect me.
I reach across the table and take her hand.
She looks up at me, startled.
“I’m not forgiving you,” I say. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”
She nods.
“But I’m not leaving either.”
We sit there in the sunroom, surrounded by orchids and afternoon light, and I hold my mother’s hand while she cries. I don’t say anything or try to make it better.
I just stay.
That’s all I can give her right now. But it’s something.
When she finally stops crying, I let go of her hand and stand up. She doesn’t ask me to sit back down. I don’t offer.
I pick up the letters from the table and walk out of the sunroom, through the too-white house, into the afternoon sun.
I get in my truck and I drive home.
I don’t know if I did the right thing, if staying was weakness or strength, if holding her hand was forgiveness or just exhaustion.