27. Scarlett
— ? —
Scarlett
Wyoming plates at the curb.
I’m still in my robe when I see them through the window. Coffee in hand, twenty-three pages spread across my kitchen table, Beck’s handwriting blurring together as I try to make sense of what he’s written.
And there’s Camille Wheeler, climbing out of a beat-up Ford truck with Wyoming plates.
She looks different from how she did at the dinner. Less polished, more tired. Her hair is in a messy ponytail and she’s wearing jeans and a flannel shirt that’s seen a lot of highway miles.
I should get dressed and make myself presentable before I answer the door. But she’s already climbing the stairs, and something in me doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me scramble.
I open the door in my robe.
“Scarlett.” She looks me up and down, taking in the bare feet, the messy hair, the coffee cup clutched like a weapon. “Bad time?”
“You could say that.”
“I’ll be quick.” She doesn’t ask to come in. Just stands on my landing with her arms crossed, studying me with cool eyes. “I’m on my way back to Wyoming. Wanted to say something first.”
“Say it, then.”
“You know we look better together, right?” She says it casually, like she’s commenting on the weather. “Me and Beck. At that dinner, anyone who saw us would have thought so. Same world, same background, same everything.”
“Is that supposed to hurt me?”
“It’s supposed to make you think.” She tilts her head. “Two years you had with a man like that. What did you do with them? Hid in a barn. Let his mother seat you at table nine. Never once walked into a room and took his arm like you had a right to it.”
“You don’t know anything about my marriage.”
“I know you didn’t fight for it.” Her voice sharpens. “I know you made yourself small and quiet and easy, and you let him slip away without saying a word. You didn’t lose him to me, Scarlett. You handed him over and then acted surprised.”
I set my coffee cup on the railing. My hands are shaking, and I don’t want her to see.
“That’s not what happened.”
“No?” She takes a step closer. “Then tell me what happened. Tell me how a woman ends up at table nine at her own husband’s event. Tell me how a woman watches another woman take credit for her work and doesn’t say a single word.”
“I was trying to be-”
“Easy. I know. That’s the whole problem.” Her eyes are sharp, cutting. “You were so grateful to have him that you forgot to keep him. You stopped asking for things. You stopped expecting things. You made yourself so low-maintenance that he forgot you were there.”
The words hit me like a slap.
“He didn’t forget me.”
“He spent six months flying to Salt Fork and talking to me about everything except his wife.” She shrugs.
“He talked about the horses. About Josie. About the ranch and the business and every single thing that didn’t have feelings attached to it.
And I kept waiting for him to talk about you, and he never did. ”
“Then why are you here?” My voice is shaking now too. “If I’m so forgettable, why did you drive all the way from Wyoming to tell me about it?”
“Because I spent months watching a man love someone who wasn’t there.
” Camille’s voice drops. “He was miserable, Scarlett. Every time he got in that helicopter to fly home, he looked like he was going to a funeral. And every time he came back, he was worse. And I kept thinking, where is she? Where’s the woman who’s supposed to be fighting for this? ”
“I was raising his daughter. I was running his barns. I was-”
“You were hiding.” She cuts me off. “Just like he was. Two people hiding from each other in the same marriage, and I was standing in the middle wondering how the hell nobody noticed.”
I want to argue. I want to tell her she’s wrong, that she doesn’t understand, that our marriage was more complicated than she could possibly know.
But the words won’t come.
Because she’s not wrong, not entirely.
“I loved him,” I say. It comes out like a confession. “I loved him so much I couldn’t breathe. And I was so afraid of losing him that I stopped asking for anything. I thought if I was just good enough, just quiet enough, just grateful enough-”
“He would love you back?”
“He did love me.”
“I know.” Her voice is different now. Softer. “That’s the part you don’t understand. He loved you the whole time. He just didn’t know how to show it, and you didn’t know how to ask for it, and you both got so good at hiding that you forgot you were doing it.”
I’m crying. I don’t know when I started, but the tears are streaming down my face, and I can’t stop them.
“I left him,” I say. “Because I couldn’t stand it anymore. Because hearing him call me an easy keeper was worse than anything else he could have said. Because it meant he saw exactly what I was doing, and he liked it, and he told you about it like he was proud.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know.” I wipe my face with the back of my hand. “He says he’s changed. He says he needs me. He gave me twenty-three pages of everything he did wrong and asked me to come see the barn he’s building.”
“Are you going?”
“I don’t know.”
Camille is quiet for a long moment. Then she nods, once, like she’s made a decision.
“You really love him that much, don’t you.”
It’s not a question.
“Yes.” I hear myself say it. “I love him so much it makes me stupid. I love him so much I left him because I couldn’t stand watching him leave me first. I love him so much that I’ve been sitting at that table all morning reading every terrible thing he wrote about himself and I still want him back. ”
Camille smiles. It’s not cruel, not mocking. Just tired.
“That’s all I needed to hear.”
“What?”
“I came here to make you say it.” She starts down the stairs. “Because he’s never going to stop working for you, and I needed to know if it was worth it.”
“You were testing me?”
“I was giving you a chance to fight.” She pauses on the third step, looks back up at me.
“Months I spent at Salt Fork, and he never once talked about me. It was always you. The mare who was cast for a big movie because of how shiny her coat is. The first time Josie said Daddy. The way you looked when you were working with a horse. He just didn’t know that’s what he was doing. ”
I stare at her, tears still wet on my face.
“Go see the barn, Scarlett.” She goes down two more steps. “Stop hiding. Stop being easy. Walk in there and take his arm like you have a right to it.”
Then she’s gone. Her truck starts up, pulls away from the curb, disappears around the corner.
I stand on my landing for a long time, looking at the empty street.
She played me. She walked up here and said all the things that would make me angry, and I fell for it, and I said everything I’ve been refusing to say for months.
I am furious.
But underneath the fury, there’s something else. Something that feels like relief.
I love him and said it out loud. And now I can’t take it back.
I go inside and close the door. The twenty-three pages are still spread across my table, Beck’s handwriting covering every inch.