29. Ramona
— ? —
Ramona
Dakota waits beside the equipment trailer with her phone unlocked. Her manager stands near the open door, and he steps aside as Julius and I approach.
I catch Julius’s sleeve before he can reach for the phone.
“I want to read it myself.” I keep my eyes on him until he nods. “I don’t want either of you explaining what I’m about to see.”
“I understand.” He lowers his hand and stays beside me. “I’ll answer when you ask.”
Dakota holds out the phone, looking at him instead of me.
“I brought it so you could see what actually happened.” She glances toward her manager. “Read it and you’ll understand. I wasn’t lying about him.”
I take it before she can draw it back. Two conversations are open side by side, one under his work number and one under the number he gave her in case she couldn’t reach him. She has chosen where the second one starts. I scroll upward while she watches.
Her manager points toward the bench inside the trailer.
“You can sit in there.” He holds the door while I approach. “Take the time you need.”
Julius waits outside until I look back for him. I don’t want to need him beside me while I read what he sent another woman, but I don’t want to sit alone with it either.
“Stay where I can ask you.” I move my bag onto the bench beside me. “You don’t have to stand at the door.”
He comes inside and sits, leaving space between us. His hands rest on his knees while I return to the screen.
***
The first messages are about horses. Dakota sends photographs, and Julius answers questions about training. There are jokes mixed in with the work, followed by conversations that have nothing to do with the animals.
I slow down when I reach the first message about riding.
He tells her he misses being good at one thing without having to think about everything else. I turn the phone toward him, keeping my finger beside the words.
“What did you mean by everything else?” I wait while he reads it.
“The ranch. Being responsible for people.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “And the things I wasn’t telling you.”
I switch to the work thread, the one that was supposed to be horses.
Between two questions about the gray mare, there’s the message with the hotel’s name in it.
I’ve read it before, on his phone. It looks different sitting next to the rest. The time matches the morning I stood beside the dresser with my coat over my arm, and he was answering her while I waited for him to look up.
I go back to the other thread. Farther down, he says he isn’t ready to go inside. Dakota asks whether we argued, and he tells her we didn’t.
I read that answer again before moving on. There was no fight to recover from. He hadn’t needed space after I yelled at him. He was sitting outside our house, choosing to stay in the truck.
My hand starts shaking, so I rest the phone against my knee.
“The night you wrote this, were you in our driveway?” I point to the message when he leans closer.
“I was.” He sits back once he’s read it. “That’s the one I told you about.”
I nod without looking at him. He’s admitting to it, but the admission doesn’t make me forget the evenings I checked through the window for his truck.
When I reach the message about waiting until I’m asleep, I have to wipe my face before I can keep reading.
Julius starts to move, then leaves his hands on his knees, and I keep scrolling.
Eventually, I reach the conversation from the night at the arena. I remember sitting in the truck taking the pins out of my hair. I remember smiling when he looked through the windshield.
Dakota tells him she misses her friend. His answer continues beyond the part posted online.
Julius: I need to talk to my wife about those things. We can still work together, but I need to keep my evenings for her.
I put the phone flat on my lap.
“That’s what you told me you wrote.” I turn toward him, trying to get my breathing steady.
“It is.” His eyes move to the screen before returning to my face.
Relief makes me cry harder. I cover my mouth until I can speak without having to start again.
“You should have let me read that yourself.” I lower my hand, holding his gaze. “I needed to see you say it before strangers got to decide what you meant.”
“I should have shown you.” He rubs his palms against his jeans. “I’m sorry you had to get it from her.”
I look at him instead of the phone. He hasn’t reached for it. He hasn’t told me to stop. He sat down when I said sit, and he’s still sitting there with his hands on his knees.
I go back to the screen.
There’s still more to read, and he waits while I finish.
When I reach the end, I put the phone face down on my knee. I’ve seen all of it now. What he really wrote is enough to end a marriage. I’m going to tell him tonight that I want to try living with him again anyway. I decide that here, on this bench, before I’ve gone back outside.
***
Dakota straightens away from the fence when we come out of the trailer. I put my phone beside hers and open the screenshot that cuts off his answer.
“The message ends here online.” I point so her manager can see both screens. “On her phone, he goes on to say he needs to keep his evenings for me.”
“You told Ben you’d deleted this.” I don’t lower her phone. “You kept every word.”
Dakota looks past me at Julius.
“I wasn’t going to let him pretend it never happened.” She grips the strap of her bag.
“Nobody’s pretending.” Julius stays beside me. “Answer her.”
I open the image that says his marriage made his life smaller, then hold it where Dakota can read it.
“Show me where he wrote that.” I keep her phone in my other hand.
She doesn’t reach for it.
“You’ve read enough to know he wasn’t happy.” She glances toward the people passing beyond the pens. “I wasn’t making that up.”
“That isn’t the question.” I step closer so she has to look at me. “Where is this message?”
Her manager moves beside us, his eyes on the two phones.
“Dakota, answer her.” He waits while she looks down.
“I changed that one.” She tightens her bag strap until the edge presses into her fingers. “It was what he meant.”
I feel Julius shift beside me, but I put my hand briefly against his arm. I need to ask this myself.
“What else did you change?” I hold her gaze while she looks toward him again.
“The one about last night.” Her voice is quieter now. “He was talking about a ride. I shortened it.”
I find it on her phone before she has finished. The whole message is there.
Julius: I can’t stop thinking about last night. Ramona had Pearl flat out along the rail with the lights on and I couldn’t stop grinning. I need to do more of that with her.
I hold the two screens side by side so her manager can see where the sentence was cut.
“You made it look as if you’d slept together.” I bring the image closer. “Did you understand that when you sent it?”
She presses her lips together instead of answering. I swipe to the next one and hold it up.
“And this.” I read it out so her manager hears every word. “She doesn’t know. She can’t know. Where is that one?”
Dakota’s eyes go to Julius, then to the ground.
“He never wrote that.” She says it to the dirt. “I did.”
Her manager asks whether she sent the images to the account that posted them, and she finally turns toward him.
“I sent them.” She pulls her bag higher on her shoulder. “I didn’t tell people what to think.”
“You left out the part where he told you to stop.” I don’t let her look away from me. “You put words in his mouth and sent them to people who know us.”
“He made me think I mattered.” Dakota faces Julius, her eyes wet. “You can’t stand there pretending you didn’t.”
“I’ve admitted that to Ramona.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “It doesn’t excuse what you did to her.”
“She gets you back, and I’m supposed to disappear?” Dakota takes a step toward him.
I move aside rather than put myself between them. Julius stays where he is.
“My wife hasn’t promised me a thing.” He waits until Dakota looks at him. “You don’t get to punish her because I ended those conversations.”
Her manager asks to photograph the messages we compared.
Before he does, I take my own pictures of both threads from the beginning and send them to my phone, and I check they have arrived.
Then I return her phone and pull up the screenshots Julius sent me of the texts that came to his phone, along with the one that came to mine.
“Were these yours, too?” I show her the first message, then the next.
She blots her cheek on her sleeve.
“I wanted you to stop acting as if he was happy.” She looks at me without denying it.
I put my phone away before I throw it at her.
“You could have sent me what he actually wrote.” I keep my hands down, although every part of me wants to move. “There was enough in there to hurt me. You still needed to make it worse.”
Her manager holds out his hand for her event pass.
“You’re finished here today.” He waits while she stares at him. “We’ll collect your things and leave.”
Julius touches my elbow gently.
“Do you want to go?” He asks when I look toward him.
“I need to wash my face.” I nod toward the wash station beyond the trailer. “Wait at the gate. I’ll come find you.”
He goes without asking me to explain how I feel about what I’ve read.
***
The paper towel tears when I pull it from the dispenser. I use it anyway, wetting a clean corner and pressing it beneath my eyes.
In the mirror, I can see where my makeup has run. I wipe it away until the crying stops showing.
The real messages hurt. The altered ones made me question nights I thought I understood. I don’t have to decide what to forgive while standing over this sink.
I throw the towel away and head toward the gate.
Julius is at the gate where I told him to wait. Beyond him, Dakota’s manager carries her bag toward a waiting vehicle, and she follows without looking back at either of us.
Julius watches me come, not her.
“Do you want to sit down?” He takes my hand when I reach him.
“I want to get out of here.” I hold on as we walk toward the truck.
***
Julius opens my door and waits beside it while I look back toward the arena. We came to watch a rodeo together, and I’ve barely seen a horse.
“I wanted a normal afternoon with you.” I rest my hand against the door.
“So did I.” He stays close without guiding me into the seat. “I’m sorry.”
I turn toward him and put my hand flat on the front of his shirt.
He covers my hand with his for a second. Then I climb in. He drives with his phone in the console, and I keep mine in my lap with the pictures of the full conversation saved on it.
When we reach the ranch, he takes the road toward the cottage without asking whether I want to go to the house.
I catch his hand before he can turn off the engine.
“I want you to stay tonight.” I wait until he looks at me. “Because I want you here. You don’t have to convince me.”
His fingers close around mine.
“I’d like to stay.” He switches off the truck with his other hand. “Do you want some time alone first?”
I shake my head, then let him open my door.
***
At the gate, I put the key into the lock without turning it. Julius stands beside me holding my bag, and I face him while I still know what I want to say.
“I believe you about the altered messages.” I keep the key between my fingers. “That doesn’t make the ones you sent disappear.”
“I know.” He puts my bag down so he can give me his attention.
“You let me read them today.” I look at his face. “You didn’t ask me to stop because it was hurting you. You didn’t try to make me feel guilty for needing to see.”
“I wanted you to have the answers.” He stays where he is, close enough that I could touch him.
“I’m still going to ask questions.” I turn the key, then leave the gate closed. “I might remember a message while we’re having a good day and get angry again.”
“Then we talk about it.” He waits until I meet his eyes. “I won’t tell you we’ve already dealt with it.”
I reach for his sleeve and smooth the fabric between my fingers.
“I want to try living with you again.” I have to look at the latch to get it out. “I don’t want to keep doing this from opposite ends of the ranch. I knew that already, in the trailer, before she said anything.”
His eyes fill. He stays still, although his hand lifts toward mine before he lowers it again.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?” He asks carefully.
“I’ve wanted you the whole time.” I put my palm against his chest. “That was never enough on its own.”
He nods, and I keep going while he listens.
“I’m not coming back to waiting while you decide what I’m allowed to know.” I grip his shirt. “If you’re unhappy, you tell me. If you can’t sleep, you wake me. You don’t find somebody else to talk to because my answer might be harder to hear.”
“I want us to keep going to counseling.” He covers my hand with his. “Moving home doesn’t mean we stop working on this.”
I lean closer until my forehead touches his chest.
“Good.” I close my eyes while he rests his cheek against my hair. “I can’t keep having the same argument in different parking lots.”
“I don’t want that for us either.” He puts his arm around me and holds me.
After a moment, I lift my face and kiss him myself. He waits for me to draw him closer, and when I do, his hand settles firmly against my back.
I still have a key pressed between my fingers and his messages saved on my phone. I let myself hold him anyway.
When we separate, he doesn’t ask about my ring.
I take out my phone before opening the gate and find the lawyer’s last message. Julius starts to look away, but I touch his wrist.
“You can stay beside me.” I wait until he turns back.
I type slowly and read the message before sending it.
Ramona: I want to pause the divorce. Please tell me what I need to do next.
Julius watches my thumb press send. Then he looks at me, his mouth moving before he manages to speak.
“I love you.” He reaches for my hand, and I let him take it.
“I love you, too.” I open the gate with my free hand. “When I go, we’re taking my things back together. Not tonight. I want to pick the day.”
He picks up my bag and walks through beside me, and I close the gate without letting go of him.