8. Chapter 8
Imogen
Somewhere in the last month, Hart's Run stopped asking Della whether I was staying and started asking me what needed doing.
The surrendered gelding who wouldn't load walks onto the trailer now like it was his idea.
The off-track filly has an owner driving out from two counties away because, he said on the phone, he'd been told to ask for Imogen Mercer.
Della has quit introducing me altogether.
She says my name and lets the county fill in the rest.
Reed and I are separated. That is as far as I have gone.
I don't owe anybody the next answer yet.
I am at the ring fence with a lead rope in my hands when the gravel starts talking on Ferris Lane. I know the engine before I see the car.
Della sets down her wheelbarrow and discovers that the fence line nearest the yard needs her immediate professional attention.
Vivian Calloway steps down onto Della's gravel in shoes that have no business on it. She picks her way past the patched fencing, pearls at her throat, lily of the valley arriving half a step ahead of her.
For ten years I went to her house and sat where she put me.
She has never once come here.
"Imogen."
"Vivian."
"You'll forgive the lack of notice." Her voice is the soft, even register rooms go quiet to hear. "I no longer trust what telephones leave out."
She stops on the other side of the fence.
"Ten days ago, my son sat down at his father's desk and signed away nine generations of stewardship. The succession. The family office. Sorrel Gate, entire. Then he removed himself from the house he was born in."
The rope stops moving through my hands.
"He didn't tell you." For the first time since she arrived, Vivian looks genuinely taken aback. "Extraordinary. He threw away his inheritance over a woman he didn't even inform."
The snap of the lead presses hard into my palm.
I loosen my grip before she can see it.
"You blame me for this," I say.
"I hold you responsible, which is not quite the same thing and rather worse.
" She folds her hands. "But I did not come to litigate it.
I came because this madness is ten days old, which means it can still be unmade.
Positions can be restored. Everything can still settle into its proper place, if the cause of the disturbance can be persuaded to be practical. "
A pause, exact as a place card.
"End it quietly, dear. Stay away from the gala; your presence could only be misread. Let my son go back to the life he was raised to carry. You would find the leaving comfortable. I would see to that part myself, no lawyers, no unpleasantness. You were always a practical girl."
Girl.
Ten years, and I am still a girl she expects to move when told.
I set the rope over the fence rail.
"No."
Vivian waits.
There isn't more until I decide there is.
"What happens between me and Reed is between me and Reed. You have had a say in my marriage for ten years. You don't anymore."
Down the fence line, Della's hammer taps twice. Nobody at Hart's Run leaves when trouble arrives. They find work nearby.
"And if you want your son back in your life after this, you'll have to deal with the man he is now. I didn't ask him to give up Sorrel Gate. I didn't even know he'd done it."
Vivian looks at me for a long moment.
Her hand rises toward her pearls and falls again.
There is no dining room here. No seating to control. No polite audience waiting to follow her lead. She came all this way to tell me what to do, and I have told her no.
"You would let him do this," she says.
"He's already done it. You're the one who told me."
She leaves with nothing.
Her shoes pick their way back past the patched fence, the car turns in the gravel, and the sound fades down Ferris Lane.
Della wipes her hands on her apron, which is what she does before saying anything important.
"Coffee's hot," is all she says.
Then she goes back to the rail.
I don't follow her.
The lead rope is still where I left it. I pick it up and run my thumb over the worn leather while Vivian's words settle.
Ten days ago.
The night of Tru's crisis.
I see the county road again, black beyond my headlights. Vivian's car passing mine. Her taillights slowing beneath the Sorrel Gate arch.
By then Reed had already shut down the generators. He had already pulled Tru from the gala. He had already stood in front of Whitney and the staff and said my judgment came first.
Then Vivian arrived.
Sometime after that, Reed went into his father's study and gave up the house, the succession, all of it.
He never told me.
I think of Fallow Hill, the folder on Della's pine table, Reed watching my face while I read the deed. He had come expecting an answer from me.
This time he did the thing and kept it to himself.
No phone call. No letter. No reason I should feel grateful. Nothing at all.
My throat tightens.
I had spent the day of Tru's crisis waiting for the old Reed to appear. Waiting for the request hidden behind the apology, for some point when his good behavior would become something I was expected to repay.
It never happened.
He shut down the farm before I arrived.
He backed me in front of Whitney.
He asked what I needed.
When he stepped into Tru's space and I told him to move, he moved.
Then he let me leave.
I grip the fence rail and stare out across the ring.
I don't know yet what any of this means for us.
But I know what it means about him.
He did something enormous without knowing whether I would ever come back to see it.
The gala is four days away.
Tru stays safe in his barn, but his Devon win will still be the story of the evening. If I stay here, Vivian and Whitney will tell that story without me. I know how it will sound. I've heard it before.
I am tired of hearing my own life told in somebody else's voice.
So I will go.
Not as Mrs. Calloway, presenting a united front for the county's comfort. Not because Reed gave something up. Not because I have decided what happens to our marriage.
I haven't.
I will go because I rehabilitated Held in Trust.
And if they give Whitney my work again, I will be there to stand up.
In the cottage that evening I take the green silk out of the closet, the one dress I own because I love it and not because it was correct for something. I hang it on the door and set my barn boots beneath it, cleaned, oiled, and unmistakably boots.
For ten years I walked into Calloway rooms dressed to belong to them.
This time I'm going in as myself.