15. Callie
CALLIE
The barn smelled like hay and warm animals.
I scratched behind the brown goat's ears and watched her lean into my hand.
She made a low, satisfied sound in her throat.
Her eyes half-closed. I smiled. It was a small thing, but it mattered.
Jolene was three stalls down with the pig who had come in last week, the one with the infected hoof.
She had not said much since I had arrived.
Neither had I. That was fine. I did not want to talk.
I wanted to do this, to feel like myself again.
The goat nudged my palm, asking for more. I gave it to her and checked the water trough. Half full. I topped it off from the hose and moved to the next stall, where the old mare stood in the corner.
This was the work I knew. The work I had built.
I had started this rescue before Wade, before the ranch, before I married.
Out here, with the animals, I was still me.
I was still the woman who had driven out to failing farms and talked stubborn owners into surrendering starved goats and sick pigs.
I was still the woman who had bottle-fed newborn calves in the middle of the night and cried when they did not make it.
The mare in the corner stall stamped her front hoof.
I opened the gate and stepped inside. She was a rescue from two months back, too thin and skittish, and her ribs still showed under her coat.
But she was coming around. I ran my hand down her neck.
Her coat was rough under my fingers, but she did not pull away.
"Good girl," I said.
She huffed and turned her head toward the hay net. I smiled again. Progress. Slow, but real.
My thumb brushed across my left hand as I moved back to the gate.
Bare skin.
I stopped. The ring was gone. I had left it on Wade's pillow before I walked out of our house. Wade had it with him now. He would have picked it up and looked at it and wondered what it meant. Or maybe he had not wondered at all.
I pressed my thumb into the place where the ring had been. The skin was pale there, a thin white line where the gold had sat for ten years. My hand looked wrong without it. Naked. Empty.
Just a band of gold. Just a symbol. It should not have mattered so much, but it did.
The mare stamped again. I shook my head and stepped out of the stall. The latch clicked shut behind me. I wiped my palms on my jeans and moved toward the feed room.
Jolene glanced over from the pig's stall. "You good?"
"Yeah."
She looked at me for another beat, then nodded and went back to wrapping the hoof. She did not push. She never did. That was why I was here and not at the ranch.
The side door opened.
I turned and saw Shelby Bradshaw walk in like she owned the place.
She stopped just inside the doorway. Her gaze swept over the stalls, the hay scattered across the floor, the buckets stacked against the wall, the old tack hanging on hooks.
Her mouth curved, but it was not a smile.
It was something else. Something that made my stomach tighten and my shoulders go rigid.
"This is where you spend your time?" she said.
My spine went straight. I stayed where I was, near enough to see the perfect line of her lipstick, the way her hair fell over one shoulder without a strand out of place. "What are you doing here?"
"I thought we should talk."
"About what?"
She tilted her head. The overhead light caught the edge of her jaw, the smooth line of her throat. She looked perfect. She always did. Like she had stepped out of a magazine instead of driving out to a barn in the middle of nowhere. "About Wade."
Something cold dropped in my chest, but I kept my face still. I had spent ten years learning how to do that. "What about him?"
"Because you should know." She took a step closer. Her perfume hit me then, floral and sweet, too strong and too wrong for a place that smelled like animals and hay. "And because I wanted you to hear it from me."
"Hear what?"
She looked past me, toward the row of stalls and the animals inside them.
The goat bleated. The mare shifted her weight.
Then Shelby looked back at me. Her eyes were steady, like she was delivering news instead of a knife to the gut.
"Wade mentioned this place once or twice. He called it your little project."
Heat flared under my skin. Heat flared under my skin. My nails bit into my palms. "Get to the point, Shelby."
"He's been spending a lot of time with me lately," Shelby said. Her voice was light and easy. "I'm sure you've noticed."
"Prove it."
She laughed. It was soft, light, like we were sharing a joke.
Like this was funny. Like my marriage was something she could toy with and walk away from without a scratch.
"Your bedroom has the blue quilt your mother made.
The one with the stitching across the bottom that's come loose in the corner.
There's a photo on the dresser, you and Wade at the rodeo grounds the day you met.
The lamp on your side has a tear in the shade you keep saying you'll replace.
And the closet door sticks when you try to close it all the way. "
My throat closed.
Those details were small. They were nothing.
The kind of thing you noticed when you lived somewhere, when you walked past them every day and did not think about them.
But they were true. Every single one. Nobody would know them unless they had been inside.
Unless they had stood in my bedroom and looked around and seen the things that belonged to me and Wade.
God.
The goat in the stall beside me made a low sound. I heard it, but I could not move. My hand found the edge of the nearest stall door and gripped it, so hard the splinters dug into my skin.
"Wade and I have been together," Shelby said. Her voice was calm, easy, like she was telling me the weather or the time. "Intimately. For weeks now."
The words landed flat and heavy, like a stone dropped into still water. I did not move. My grip tightened on the rough wood.
"You're lying."
"Am I?" Her mouth curved again, that same not-smile. She looked amused. Like this was a game and she was winning. "You really believe that?"
I could not speak. The words were there, trapped in my throat, but they would not come. My jaw ached. My teeth were clenched.
She stepped closer. I could smell her perfume more clearly now, thick and cloying and invasive. It filled the space between us, crowding out the smell of hay and animals. "There's something else you should know."
I made myself look at her. My vision blurred at the edges, but I blinked it clear.
"I might be pregnant," she said.
The air left my lungs.
"With Wade's baby."
My knees went loose. I pressed harder against the stall door to keep myself upright. My free hand moved to my stomach, flat against the fabric of my shirt, and then I realized what I was doing and dropped it. My fingers curled into a fist at my side, nails digging into my palm.
Shelby's smile widened. She was watching me. She saw everything. She saw my hand move, saw my knees buckle, saw the breath leave my body. And she liked it. "I know you and Wade tried for years. That must have been hard for you."
I could not answer. My jaw was locked. My teeth were clenched so hard it hurt, a sharp ache spreading through my skull.
"I can give him what you couldn't," she said.
The words hit hard. My breath came shallow and quick. My body would not obey. My hand stayed on the stall door. My knees stayed loose. My throat stayed closed.
"Get out."
"Callie—"
"Leave. Now."
She held my gaze for another long moment. Then she turned and walked out, her heels clicking on the concrete floor. The door swung shut behind her with a soft thud.
The perfume stayed.
Floral and sweet. Wrong. It hung in the air like smoke, thick and invasive, and I could not get away from it. It was in my lungs, in my throat, clinging to my clothes and my hair. Everywhere.
Jolene was beside me. I had not heard her move. She touched my arm, light and careful, and did not say a word. She just stood there, her hand warm against my skin.
I pulled in a breath. Then another. My hand ached where it gripped the stall door. I looked down and saw my knuckles were white, bloodless. I made myself let go. My fingers cramped as I straightened them.
The bedroom details were real. The photo on the dresser. The quilt my mother had made, the one I had brought with me when I married Wade ten years ago. The lamp shade with the tear I kept meaning to fix. The stupid closet door that stuck every time I tried to close it.
Only someone who had been there would know.
No. There were other ways. A bedroom door left standing open. A guest who looked where she should not. Marlene, who might have gone through our house as she pleased and talked about it afterward. A photo on a dresser was not a secret. Neither was a quilt.
I wiped my palms on my jeans and picked up the bucket by the gate, as if there were still work to do. The handle bit into my fingers. I set it down again.
Still. The lamp shade. The closet door. Nobody described a closet door over tea.
Wade had asked me to step back from the rescue.
He had stood in Jolene's kitchen tonight and told me he believed me, told me the claim against me was not true.
But he had still asked me to walk away. He had asked me to leave the one place that was mine, the thing I had built before I ever knew him, and he had not stood with me when it mattered.
And Shelby had been in our bedroom. Our bedroom. The bed we had shared for ten years.
I stared at the empty doorway where she had gone. The perfume was fading, but I could still smell it. It clung to the air, refusing to leave.
She had not said it was a lie.
My hand went back to my left ring finger, searching for the band that was not there. Bare. I had taken it off. I had set it on his pillow and walked out. He had asked me to step back, and when I refused, he had just let me leave.
The baby.
She had said she might be pregnant. She had said it like she already knew, like it was just a matter of time before the test confirmed what her body was already telling her. Like Wade's child was growing inside her while I stood here with my finger bare.
We had tried for years. I had gone to doctors. I had let them run tests and ask invasive questions and poke and prod.
And now Shelby could.
No. I could not think about that. Not yet. Not here.
But the details.
The quilt. The photo. The lamp. The closet door.
Only Wade and I knew about the lamp shade and the closet door. Nobody else. Just us.
I let go of the stall door. My legs shook, but they held. I took a step forward. Then another. My body moved on autopilot, carrying me toward the door.
"I have to go," I said. My voice sounded thin, far away, like it belonged to someone else.
Jolene nodded. She did not ask where. She did not tell me to stay, to wait, to think it through. She just squeezed my arm once and stepped back.
I grabbed my keys from the hook by the door and walked out. I climbed into my truck and shut the door behind me, sealing myself inside. The engine caught on the second try. My hands found the wheel. My knuckles went white around it, just like they had on the stall door.
The road stretched out ahead of me, long and familiar and empty. I knew every turn, every dip, every pothole. I had driven it a thousand times. From the rescue to the ranch. From my old life to the one I had chosen when I married Wade.
The perfume was gone now, but I could still feel it in my throat. I could still smell it in my hair, on my clothes.
Shelby had stood in my barn and told me she had been with my husband. She had described my bedroom like she had been there, like she knew it as well as I did. She had said she might be carrying his baby. And she had not said it was a lie.
Wade would tell me the truth. He had to.
I pressed the gas pedal down and drove toward the ranch.