Chapter 2 #3
They all mounted their horses and started on the trail.
It was a more advanced ride, because they all had experience.
Denisha had done competitive dressage, and Anna had grown up on a sprawling ranch.
Lydia had done show jumping, and while Addison had never been competitive, her father had considered it essential that she learned to ride properly.
It was one of those aspects of an accomplished lady.
And Addison was very accomplished.
She had learned to ride in the English style, she had learned piano, flute, and for a while, she had taken up pennywhistle, but that had been just an interest of her own.
She had tried painting, had dabbled in sculpture, and mosaic.
Her father had kept her and her brother in lessons all throughout their childhood, because it was important, he said, that people had interests, that they had something about them to keep them occupied, and the undertone of that was that if you didn’t, then you would be hollow, and anything could come along and fill that hollow space.
Including the gardener.
As had been the case with their mother.
So, Addison knew she had to do a little bit of everything, a jack of all trades, master of none was a phrase that often stuck out to her, but the one thing she had mastered, she supposed, was the art of making people interested in the little bits that she did.
It was why, she thought, she would be a good mayor for the town.
Because she was interested in a lot of things, because she knew the sorts of things that people might want to do when they came to town.
This trail ride was definitely going to be something that she recommended to her followers. Even just a few minutes in she was sure of that.
It started on a trail that led deep into some trees and wound along a river.
The promise was that it would eventually wind up the side of a mountain and provide a view of the famous painted hills in Mustang River.
They weren’t the painted hills that people thought of when they thought of the painted hills, part of the John Day National Monument area out near Bend, but they looked similar.
Mounds of fine sand shot through with ribbons of gold and red, and thick black paintbrush strokes that went against the grain.
Like a divine hand had reached down and added just a few more details to the landscape before calling it finished.
They would be having dinner at that view. It was quite an expensive package, but worth it, Addison thought, and her father had been happy to pay for it.
That thought made her feel slightly uncomfortable. Yes, her father was paying for the wedding, which was traditional, but there was something about it that served to remind her of how much she had because of him.
It was easy for her to feel like all of this was her own accomplishment sometimes.
Because she was relatively accomplished, she had a degree, she had started a business, she had a good reputation around town, she had a robust following online.
But the bulk of her life was bankrolled by her father, and a lot of what she had access to was based around his generosity.
Strings attached.
She rejected that thought.
It wasn’t going anywhere, and it didn’t help anything.
Though, once she banished that thought, she was forced to engage with Walker.
“So where do y’all know each other from?”
“I’m from here,” she pointed out, not irritated, but like it was perfectly reasonable Walker might’ve forgotten, because he was such an important figure now. Prominent, she supposed, in his own way, which was a strange thing to realize.
“I remember you,” he said, and she was a little bit worried that Anna was going to fall straight off of her horse.
“I met her at college,” Denisha said.
“So did I,” Lydia said. “We were roommates.”
“The three of you?”
“Yes. For all four years. It was great.”
It had been great. It had been her first real taste of independence, a moment in her life when she had been disconnected from the pressure of being a Carey.
From carrying her father’s good reputation, and her mother’s bad one.
“And how about you and that fiancé of yours?”
He turned just slightly on his horse when he asked the question, and her heart slammed against her chest. She didn’t know why.
Maybe because she and Walker never made conversation, but she needed her body to realize that this was just him doing his job. He would be this interested in anybody, because it was a normal thing to ask a bride when you were doing a whole wedding, and wedding events at the ranch.
“Oh we… high school,” she said.
He should know that.
He did know that, she knew he did. He was probably just working off of a script. Maybe he was thinking of her as someone he had never met before. Maybe that was what was helping him do his job.
It made her cringe internally. Her relationship with Walker had been strange in high school.
She’d been mean to him. The realization made her cringe.
She often thought of it as badgering, or teasing when Walker came up in her thoughts, but the truth was, she’d been mean.
But he was Walker Grayson. A legendary bad decision at Mustang River High School.
The hottest guy to ever grace the halls of that place.
He’d had all the girls eating out of his hand.
He’d had a reputation and a dangerous edge and he’d been unbothered by her in every way.
So sure, she’d been…not the best. But he’d never seemed to care.
That didn’t mean that he needed to be her biggest fan or anything, but she could understand why he was pretending that they had never met, had never known each other, and never would, really, as the question landed like vague professional small talk anyway.
“But you know, we dated junior and senior year, and then went our separate ways for a while. He went to medical school, and when he came back to establish his practice, we got back together.”
It was funny to remember that initial message. The text out of the blue while she had been sitting at home alone having dinner.
Wearing sweats and curled up on her couch, because it was the one place where she wasn’t visible and didn’t have to perform for anybody.
It had almost been like an offer to have a job interview.
Something that had occurred to her then and then she’d dismissed it. She thought of it more and more lately. She’d recently, jokingly, asked him for a performance review.
He’d laughed and asked her what on earth she was talking about. Which made her feel good. Or rather, it should make her feel good.
She and Alan made sense; that was the thing. And when he had texted her, there had been a tone of that in the message.
But Addison believed in sense. She didn’t believe in passion; that was for sure.
She didn’t want it because she knew that it was something that couldn’t be trusted.
She knew that.
But it didn’t make for a very good story. Maybe she needed to work on that. Maybe she needed to work on reframing it as a reconnection of two people who had once been in love finding each other again as adults, when they were mature enough to make a life together.
Or something. Because this felt like it needed to be workshopped.
“Right. He’s a… doctor?”
Well, there he was, indicating that he had some idea of who they both were.
“Yes. He is a doctor.”
He whistled, low and long, and to anyone else it might have sounded like he was impressed. She wasn’t sure. “A doctor and a mayor.”
“Well, I’m not the mayor yet,” she said.
“No,” he responded, “but I don’t think you have any real competition.”
“That’s flattering,” she said, “but I don’t know that that’s true. I’m young, and I’m a woman.”
“I think your father’s reputation precedes you.”
He hadn’t said it unkindly. If anything, it could be interpreted as something nice, but it made her grind her teeth together.
“For better or worse,” she said. “He is, of course, not without his critics.”
“Of course not,” he said. “But he also isn’t without his supporters, and you’re a lot further ahead than most people.”
“Yes. A genetic stepstool,” she said, and she said it a little bit sour, which really wasn’t fair, because she had only been thinking a moment ago that a lot of the things she had were because of her father.
That was true. There wasn’t anything wrong with recognizing that. But it was irritating when he said it, and she couldn’t prove it, but it felt like he was being deliberately provocative. Like he was diminishing her on purpose, trying to make her feel like her achievements weren’t all that… valid.
No jury would ever convict him, because he was just too handsome, and that was how the patriarchy worked. Well, and also how pretty privilege worked. And Walker Grayson had pretty privilege in spades.
“Have you ever run a campaign?”
“Have I ever run a campaign? Oh, I used to run a campaign every single day. Unofficially, and really, my job here is to run campaigns.”
She had a feeling there was a lot of unspoken history in those sentences, and she didn’t know how to parse it. It irritated her that she didn’t just know what he was getting at, because she felt like she should know, and she didn’t like that he was smug, and kind of making fun of her.
“Aren’t we all running a campaign?” Addison asked, smiling.
“I suppose so.”
“I’m actually helping manage the campaign,” Anna said, her tone a little bit stern, and that pleased Addison to an extent, because she didn’t play about the campaign, and that also meant that Addison probably wasn’t hallucinating the disrespect coming from Walker.
“Really? And how does one run a political campaign here in a town the size of a postage stamp? That is a genuine question.” He turned around and smiled again, and her stomach plummeted down to her toes.
“Personally,” Anna said. “You try to connect with people personally. To your point, she does have a reputation built into her name, but in a town this size, that is going to be the case for most people that have been here in excess of ten years. And if you haven’t been here for ten years, then you’re new. ”