18. Wade
WADE
The ring sat in my jacket pocket like a stone, pressing against my ribs every time I shifted in the driver's seat.
I was driving to the rodeo grounds. The same road I'd driven when I'd met her there, when she'd been standing by the rails watching someone else ride and I'd thought she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.
I wanted her back. That was the only thing I knew for sure.
I wanted my wife back, and I had a plan for how to do it, and the plan started with showing up at the place she'd asked me to go.
God, I was an idiot.
I'd had the divorce papers for a week now.
They sat on my desk at the ranch house, unsigned.
I kept thinking if I just waited long enough, if I gave her enough time to cool off, she'd realize she didn't mean it.
She'd come home. I'd tell her I was sorry for whatever I'd done wrong, and we'd go back to normal.
That was the plan. Show up at the rodeo grounds, tell her I'd heard her, tell her I'd make time for the things she wanted. Win her back.
The ring had been in my pocket every day since she left.
I'd found it on my pillow the night she left, sitting there like it didn't mean anything.
Like ten years could just come off her finger and get left behind on a pillowcase.
I'd picked it up and put it in my pocket, and I'd been carrying it ever since, waiting for the right moment to give it back to her.
Waiting for the moment when she'd put it back on and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.
I pulled off the highway onto the access road that led to the grounds.
The fence posts were the same ones that had been there a decade ago, weathered gray and leaning in places.
I'd driven this road a hundred times in the early years of our marriage.
We used to come out here on weekends, back when I still rode sometimes, back when I thought I had all the time in the world for things that didn't make money.
My phone was on the passenger seat. I'd been texting her for days, and every message I sent looked the same when I read them back.
Where are you? Then We need to talk. Then I want to see you.
Then Please just call me. Then I can fix this if you'll just tell me what's wrong.
Every single one of them was about what I wanted.
What I needed. What I thought she should do.
Jesus. I hadn't asked her a single question that wasn't about me.
The last message I'd sent her was two days ago. Why won't you answer me? Like she owed me a response. Like she hadn't already answered me by leaving in the first place, and I was just too damn stubborn or too damn stupid to hear it.
I reached the main gate and pulled through.
The rodeo grounds spread out in front of me, empty and quiet in the middle of the week.
The arena sat to the left, rails intact but the dirt inside it rutted and uneven from last season.
The stands were just bleachers, nothing fancy, the kind of place where people came to watch their neighbors ride and didn't expect anything polished.
It wasn't much to look at. It never had been.
But Callie had loved it here.
I parked near the rails where I'd seen her that first time and cut the engine.
The silence that followed felt too big, like the kind of quiet that makes you notice every damn thing you've been trying not to think about.
I sat there with my hands on the wheel and let myself remember the marriage we used to have, back when it still felt like something I was part of instead of something I was just keeping running in the background while I worked.
We used to come here on Sunday afternoons.
She'd pack sandwiches and we'd sit in the bed of my truck and watch whatever event was going on, and she'd tell me about the animals at her rescue, the ones she'd pulled out of bad situations and gotten healthy again.
She'd get excited talking about it, her whole face lighting up, and I'd think about how lucky I was that she'd picked me. That she'd wanted this life with me.
I'd forgotten that part. When she'd married me, she'd handed the rescue over to Jolene. I'd thought that meant she didn't need it anymore, that she was happy just being my wife, being part of the Rutledge family. I'd thought I was giving her everything she could want.
God, I was in over my head here, and I didn't even know how deep the water was.
She'd asked me to come here with her. I remembered that now, sitting in the truck with the rodeo grounds empty all around me.
It was seventeen days ago, which said everything about how much attention I'd been paying.
She'd asked if we could drive out to the rodeo grounds that weekend.
Just the two of us. Just a few hours, she'd said.
We could take the horses and ride out like we used to.
And I'd waved her off. I'd told her every day until the end of the month was spoken for.
I'd said, Yeah, we'll figure something out.
I promise, okay? And I'd already had my phone in my hand.
It was one promise on top of so many others over the years that they all blurred together into one long mountain of reasons why I couldn't make time for the things she wanted.
My chest felt tight, like something inside it had been wound too far and was about to snap.
She'd tried to tell me about Shelby. I remembered that too, now that I was sitting still long enough to let the memories come.
Callie had told me how Shelby talked to her, like she was in the way.
She'd told me Shelby acted like she wasn't there, like she was just part of the furniture.
She'd used words I should've heard, words that should've made me take her side and tell Shelby to back the hell off, but I hadn't done any of that.
Callie, you're making a mountain out of an anthill.
That's what I'd said. I'd told her she was reading too much into it, that Shelby just had a lot on her plate, that maybe she should try being friendlier.
I'd answered every feeling she brought to me with logic, like feelings were problems to solve instead of things I was supposed to just hear and believe.
Jesus Christ, I'd told my wife she was wrong about her own life.
The question she'd asked me before she left was sitting in my head now like a splinter I couldn't dig out.
Why do you think I left? That's what she'd said, standing in Jolene's doorway with her hand on the door and her face so tired I barely recognized her.
And I'd given her an answer. I'd told her it was about the time I was spending on the Bradshaw deal.
I'd told her if she just waited until the deal was done, I'd have more time for her.
I'd been so damn sure I was right.
But sitting here in the empty rodeo grounds, the place she'd asked me to go and I'd never gone, I could see that much.
The answer I'd given her was wrong. It wasn't about the time.
Or it wasn't just about the time. It was about something bigger than that, something I'd been doing to her for years without even noticing I was doing it.
There was more to it than that, and I couldn't see it yet. I only had the sense of it, large and old and sitting just behind everything I'd said to her, and that some part of it was mine.
Ugh. My stomach turned over, sick and ashamed.
I was starting to understand it now. Not all of it, not the whole picture, but enough to know I'd been wrong about nearly everything I'd thought was true. I'd been wrong about it being the time. That had been the easy answer, and I'd handed it to her like it was the true one.
But I still didn't have the whole answer.
There was something else, something I couldn't quite see yet, some part of it I was still missing.
I could feel it sitting just out of reach, like trying to remember a word you know but can't bring to your tongue.
It had something to do with the work. The night feedings.
The dogs. The orphan calves I'd been taking care of since the papers came, the ones I hadn't even known needed taking care of until I'd had to do it myself.
I'd been doing her work for a week now, and it was breaking me.
I was exhausted. I was behind on everything.
I'd forgotten the seven o'clock Bradshaw meeting until it was nearly eight, walking back toward the house with two missed calls from Travis and a text from my mother on my phone, and I hadn't gone.
It wasn't the deal I was ashamed of losing.
It was that I'd never once seen the work that had kept the place standing.
Callie had been doing that work for ten years. Alone. At night. While I slept, while I worked, while I built my empire and took the credit for the Rutledge name and never once thought about who was actually keeping that name from being a lie.
God, what had I done to her?
The rodeo grounds were still empty. She wasn't here.
She wasn't coming. I didn't even know if she knew I'd come, if it would matter to her that I'd finally shown up at the place she'd asked me to go.
Maybe it was too late for showing up to mean anything.
Maybe she'd already moved past the point where me being here would change a damn thing.
I pulled the ring out of my pocket and looked at it sitting in my palm, small and gold and worn smooth from ten years on her hand.
I'd thought bringing it here would be the romantic gesture that fixed everything.
I'd thought I'd find her here, give her the ring back, tell her I was sorry, and she'd come home.
But she wasn't here. And even if she had been, I didn't have the right words yet. I didn't have the answer to her question. I had part of it, maybe, enough to know I'd been wrong, but not enough to know how to be right. Not enough to know how to be the husband she'd needed me to be all along.
I'd been reaching out to her on my own terms for days. Texting her what I wanted, when I wanted, asking her to come back without ever asking her why she'd left in the first place. Telling her I could fix it without ever admitting I was the one who'd broken it.
I put the ring back in my pocket.
She'd asked me for a divorce. She'd asked for it clearly, standing in the ranch house with her voice steady and her decision already made, and I'd spent the days since then trying to talk her out of it.
Trying to win her back. Trying to get what I wanted without ever stopping to think about what she needed.
Well, I was done with that.
If she wanted the divorce, I'd give it to her.
I wouldn't fight it. I wouldn't show up with the ring and some half-baked apology and expect her to forgive me just because I'd finally figured out I'd been wrong.
She'd asked me for something, and for once in our marriage, I was going to listen to what she'd actually said instead of trying to logic her out of it.
The wind picked up, blowing dust across the arena in thin spirals that disappeared as fast as they formed. I sat in the truck and watched the empty rodeo grounds and thought about my wife, the one who'd asked me to come here with her.
She wasn't here. But I was. And maybe that didn't matter, maybe it was too late for showing up to count for anything, but I'd finally done the thing she'd asked me to do.
I'd come to the rodeo grounds. And I'd stopped trying to win her back on my own terms.
Maybe that wasn't enough. Probably it wasn't. But it was the only thing I knew how to do that looked anything like listening, and listening was the thing I should've been doing all along.
I stayed until the sun started dropping toward the horizon, turning the dirt orange and the shadows long. I wouldn't fight the papers she'd asked me to sign, because she'd asked me to, and that was reason enough.