Everything I Left Unsaid(48)

“I don’t know. He must have felt something for her to stick around…”

“Maybe he loved you. Thought of you like a daughter.”

My breath was broken and sharp and hurt inside my body.

“I think…I think you’re right.”

Smith had stood behind me at Mom’s funeral, his hand on my shoulder. Holding me up when I wanted to fall down.

Don’t marry that boy, he’d said when Hoyt and I announced our engagement.

It’s fine, I’d said. We’re in love, I’d said. Hoyt’s a good man, I’d said.

“He’s the man I fired,” I told Dylan. “After Mom died, there was another…person who started helping me with the farm and I…I was convinced I had to fire Smith.”

Oh, it was awful to remember. A sickening day.

Hoyt convinced me—I don’t remember what words he used, what argument he could offer that would turn me against the one person in my entire life I could count on. My only friend. All I remembered was his hands around my wrist, holding me so hard I thought the bones would break. Like he’d just grind them to dust.

“Annie,” Smith said. “I can’t leave you here alone. I can’t.”

“I’m not alone, Smith. I’m married, and my husband and I are making some changes.”

“You regret it?” Dylan asked.

Regret, God. What a tame word. What a silly cage for all the awfulness I felt about Smith.

“When I think about it, I want to throw up,” I said.

Who knows how different my life would have been if I hadn’t fired Smith? I would have had help. Support. Hoyt would never have been able to sell that land. To hurt me.

And that’s why Hoyt convinced me that Smith had to leave. Because he knew.

“Do you know where he is?” Dylan asked.

“He had a sister in Wyoming. That’s all I knew. I…I made a point of not knowing.” Because I was a coward.

He made a low, rumbling sound of dissent. Like he had some problem with that, of my making a point of not knowing.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, baby. It’s late, and hangovers have a way of bringing out all the garbage. Go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning.”

I had my doubts that anything would be better in the morning.





The next morning the tractor was fixed and parked just outside the shed. Ben had changed the oil, too. And at the end of the day, Kevin shuffled out to the field to pay me for my third week of work.

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” he said, giving me the envelope with the small amount of cash tucked inside. The rest paid the rent on my trailer.

“I wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Yeah, I heard about your little party. Next time—”

“Keep it down. We will.” If there was a next time. The one-two punch of Bebe and the kids being gone seemed like a pretty rare event. And frankly, I wasn’t entirely sure I could survive another night like that.

The hangover had nearly swallowed me whole.

“No. Invite me. I love a good girls’ night.”

Once again I had no idea if he was joking or not.

“You seen Ben around today?” he asked.

“No, why?”

“Nothing. Just haven’t seen him. He usually comes up to the office to get a paper. Didn’t get one yesterday, either.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” I said, thinking about that cough he had. How he hadn’t looked all that good yesterday on the bridge.

“Yeah. You’re right,” Kevin said, and lumbered off in his Adidas shower sandals toward the ice-cave office.

Christ, I thought, is that it? Really? Kevin was just going to turn around and not check on Ben? Who might be sick?

We keep to our own, he’d said when I first met him. And he wasn’t joking.

I put my cash in my pocket and headed back over to the laundry building to grab my things from the dryer. I’d had to rewash everything because it spent that night I’d been so drunk in the washing machine, getting stinky.

Tiffany was out in front of her trailer, emptying a bucket of water in the bushes.

“Hey,” I said with a happy leap in my chest at the sight of her.

She turned and gave me a wan smile.

“Still feeling rough?” I asked.

“So rough. Oh my God, Bucket-o-Colada was a bad idea. But your hair looks f*cking awesome.”

“It’s really dry,” I said, feeling the brittle edges.

“Yeah. You gotta condition the shit out of it.”

“I’ll have to get some next time I go to town.”

“Wait.” Tiffany went back inside her trailer and came out with a few foil sample packs. “Take these—”

“I can’t,” I said, thinking about Phil and her kids and how she’d said they were late on all their payments.

“Take them,” she said. “Please. It’s…it’s nice to give someone something for a change, you know?”

I nodded and took the packets, shoving them in my pocket with the money.

I was so rich all of a sudden.

“Your kids must be coming home soon.”

Her pale face lightened at the mention of her kids. “Yeah. Mom’s gonna drop them off in an hour.”