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Beth hasn’t been naïve since she was thirteen years old, when she learned, all at once, that her mother was not the invulnerable, unfeeling machine Beth thought she was, but instead a human being, with breakable bones and conditional love. Somehow, at thirty-six, she gains back her naivete. Somehow, standing in yet another perfect meadow a twenty-minute ride from her new home outside Dillon, bracketed in her husband’s arms as he whispers his love for her right into her ear, she thinks that all the things that could break them are behind them now. She thinks she’s free, but that’s a child’s thought.
--
It started, of course, with a visit back towards the Yellowstone, something else she hadn’t thought of when making their swift exit. Kayce had called her, which had flushed her body cold with panic until he revealed the reason for his outreach: Tate had been asking about his pseudo-cousin, Carter, and Monica thought they should get the family together. Already it had been three months since the sale, the buildings on the ranch property all gone save for Kayce’s East Camp cut-out. As though sensing her apprehension, he’d said, “We were never out here much. I doubt you’d recognize the ground you were standing on, and if you want to stay overnight, we’d be happy to take the boy and you and Rip can stay in Bozeman. If that makes you more comfortable.”
“When are you thinking?” she’d asked him.
“Hell, I don’t know, Beth,” he’d said with a hint of a dry laugh in his throat. “I wasn’t confident this number would even be in service anymore.” She had chuckled at that and told him they’d be in touch.
Now her, Rip, and Carter were at the tail end of their two-and-a-half-hour drive back towards what was once her father’s ranch. They were going to have lunch at East Camp, let the boys play around, and set off before it got dark back to the safety of their own home. She could tell Carter was excited in the back seat, and though Rip’s relationship had been fraught and strained a time or two with Kayce, he seemed relaxed – pleased, even – in the driver’s seat, so Beth didn’t find herself too worried as they pulled onto the dirt road that took them up to the house.
They all got out of the car as Kayce and Tate came down the front steps, the two boys already bounding off to grab horses and explore the immediate vicinity.
“Monica’s just inside, finishing up lunch,” Kayce said, giving Rip a quick clap on the back before reaching for his sister. “How y’all been?”
Beth could probably count on one hand the number of times she and Kayce had hugged each other over the years, but it felt natural to step into the embrace. “Free,” she answered, kissing his cheek. “Now, I know no one in this house partakes, so I brought my own whiskey. Where are your glasses?”
The three of them breezed inside, Rip and Kayce sitting down in the front room to talk shop and Beth walking into the kitchen to find a glass and her sister-in-law. When Monica turned towards the sound of Beth’s footfalls, she had a smile on her face and the barest hint of a baby bump showing under her tight t-shirt. The color drained from Beth’s face, the smile dropped from Monica’s. Quickly, the younger woman pulled Beth onto a seat at the kitchen table.
“I didn’t think it was that obvious yet,” Monica offered. “Please know that I would have said something if I had realized. I never forgot our conversation, what you shared with me,” she said, grasping Beth’s hand.
Beth blinked back tears, composing herself. “Monica, you’re so fucking skinny I think I’d be able to tell when you had a big dinner.” The other woman laughed wetly, wiping a tear herself. “I’m so happy for you, really,” Beth said. “Tate needs another kid around and you are –” her voice cracked, “—you are an excellent mother.”
“Thank you,” Monica whispered. She took a deep breath, squeezing Beth’s hand. “To tell you the truth, I’m scared shitless,” she said, mouth tilting up in half a smile.
Beth squeezed back. “Normal, but unnecessary,” she sighed, rising up and walking to the kitchen cabinets, rummaging until she found a glass. Pulling a flask out of her bag, she tipped the contents in and took a sip. “Kayce won’t let anything happen to you and I’m here, for anything you need. You know that.”
“I do,” Monica said. The two women locked eyes, a softness between them that Beth had once thought she’d never be capable of. In the other room, the door opened once more, and they could hear Tate and Carter greeting the adults. The two women joined them, Beth clutching her drink and a pitcher of lemonade for everyone else, Monica with a platter of sandwiches.
Rip stood when they entered the room to greet Monica. He took a stutter step when she put the tray down and straightened back up. His eyes went straight to her belly, then to his wife’s face. Beth smiled faintly and nodded once, most in the room oblivious to their communication. It’s okay, she mouthed to him, and he nodded once back at her, just as imperceptibly. Hugging Monica, Rip whispered a congratulations in her ear. She smiled and patted him on the chest as they broke apart.
Lunch passed pleasantly, the topics staying superficial – where the rest of the bunkhouse ended up, how the ground was in Dillon, how many heifers had Kayce ended up with. The boys bragged about their roping and compared bruises, scrapes, and scars. Though they had been able to tell driving up that the lodge and barn were razed, conversation never turned to what became of the ranch, probably more for Rip’s benefit than for Beth’s.
Carter and Tate went back out, a BB gun and some cans between them. “Not too long, baby,” Beth called after Carter, “we have to get going soon.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he called back, and they were gone. Silence enveloped the house without them.
“I gotta say,” Kayce sighed, leaning back, “it’s nice to see them have childhoods.”
Rip chuckled. “Amen to that, brother,” he replied, taking a sip of his drink.
Kayce eyed the other man a moment, assessing. “It’s nice to see you like this too, Rip. Lighter, almost. Less serious. I guess we’re all out from under the weight of this place.”
Rip leaned back himself. After a long pause, he said, “This place gave me everything. The weight it asked me to carry was worth the reward of being here.” He took his wife’s hand in his and raised it to his lips. “I know it was different for the two of you, and I’m sorry for it. But I was never a killer because of this place. That was in me before.”
“You’re not a killer, Rip,” Beth answered sharply. “You were a protector, always. You stood between the ranch and the danger that came at it. Please don’t feel guilty about it now because you lived through it.” She got up and crawled onto his lap, not caring about their audience. “You saved my life, baby,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “You saved my life a thousand times. All you did, you did selflessly. Don’t take that away from yourself.”
He shifted underneath her, uncomfortable. “Okay, darlin’,” he acquiesced. “Okay.”
“I can never thank you enough, Rip,” Kayce added, remorseful that his comments had spurned this trajectory of conversation. “We were never close, hell, we didn’t like each other if I’m honest, but you helped get my son home. Never asked for a goddamn thing in return.”
Rip swallowed heavily, looking into Kayce’s eyes, seeing the sincerity there. “Thank you,” he said gruffly. He squeezed the arm around Beth’s waist. “Got all I need right here.”
Monica smiled at the two of them and stood. “Let me pack up some leftovers before you hit the road,” she said, and everyone stood to start saying their goodbyes.
The drive back home was muted, Carter napping in the back seat as the sun started to lower behind the mountains. Beth looked at the side of Rip’s face as he drove. He seemed contemplative, but not upset, lost in thought in a way his forward-thinking mind wasn’t used to. He jumped just a bit when she put her hand on his thigh, then settled.
Carter woke as they parked in front of the house. “I’ll go get started,” he said, yawning as the three of them got out of the car.
“Muck the stalls,” Rip called after him. “I’ll come out in a second to help move the cows around, get them grazing a little further out.”
Rip followed Beth into the house as she put their leftovers away. When she turned to face him, he was still lost in thought, chewing on something in his mind that was starting to make her nervous. She sat at the kitchen table and patted the seat next to her. Silently, he sat.
“What’s on your mind, baby?” she asked him. “Talk to me.”
“What you said about me,” he responded, his blue eyes searching her face. “About being a protector, not a killer.”
“Well, you are.”
“I’m a killer too, Beth.” He paused, looking down into his lap. “Not just for your father, or the ranch. For me.”
“No, baby,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. “With your father, it was –”
“Not him,” Rip interrupted. He took a breath in. “God damn, I haven’t thought about this in a long time,” he muttered. He looked back at her face, steeling himself. “Do you remember Rowdy? From when we were kids?”
Images, unwelcome, of her pulling a lanky young man into the back of a pickup, watching Rip’s face in the windshield, sprung to her mind. She swallowed around the new lump in her throat and nodded.
“It was after you left for college. He and I were camping out, protecting the herd from wolves, when he started running his mouth about you.” He paused at her sharp exhale. After a moment, he continued. “Things got heated, and we fought. He pulled a knife and, Beth, I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but I did. I told your father about it, and we got rid of the body, and I got my brand that night.”
It was as though the air had gone out of the room, as though the monster she had been trying to outrun her whole life suddenly had her by the throat. The truth rose in her like a siren, ringing and ringing and hollering in her ears until:
“It’s my fault,” she whispered.
“What?” he asked, eyes snapping to her face. Her eyes were glazed over with tears, distant, horrified.
“I am the worst thing that ever happened to you,” she said, not knowing if she was shouting or merely mouthing the words. She could barely hear over the sound of her own breathing, her own blood pumping. “All I’ve ever done is hurt you, take from you, take from us. I’m so sorry, Rip. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”
Rip grabbed her by the shoulders as she tipped forward, pressing her into his chest, suddenly unsure and nervous for a different reason. “Honey,” he said tentatively, “I’m not blaming you. You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just saying –”
She launched herself backward, almost tipping the chair. Standing up, she went to the sink, gripping it to keep her afloat. “You never blame me because you’re the best man to walk this earth, but that doesn’t make how you see it true.”
He stayed seated, trying to make himself smaller for her. It had been a long time since he was unsure what Beth needed, but he had no idea now. He could see the tremor running through her frame.
“Don’t go fighting yourself now, Beth,” he warned. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Yes, I do!” she shrieked. “You don’t even need the whole picture to see that, to see how fucking terrible I have been for you, for years.” Her breath came quicker as she choked back a sob.
“The whole picture is I love you, baby,” Rip said softly. “That’s all that matters.”
“No, it’s not,” she argued. “It’s not the whole picture.” She shook her head, starting to rock back and forth in place.
“Okay, then you tell me what it is, Beth. Whatever you’re thinking about has been haunting you a long time, so you tell me what it is and I’ll help get rid of it.”
“When I –” she choked and took in a rattling breath. Rip stood quickly, suddenly afraid she might pass out, but came no closer yet. He didn’t want to spook her now.
“When I was fifteen, and we had that pregnancy scare, I lied. The test was positive.” Beth let out another sob and crossed her shaking arms over her stomach.
Rip’s mouth went dry. “I thought you couldn’t get pregnant, Beth.”
“I was so fucking scared, and Lee would have gone straight to Daddy, and I thought he was going to fucking kill you, so I asked Jamie for help. And he took me – he took me to the clinic on the reservation so no one would know who we were. He had me wait in the car so he could fill out the paperwork and he told me it was safe but they – they –”
“They sterilized you,” he completed, voice cold. “Without telling you it would happen.”
She couldn’t help the gravitational pull of his voice on her body anymore; she turned to look at his face. There was a restrained fury there, spilling over his cheeks in the form of tears. She had never been more afraid of losing him in her entire life, but he deserved to know the monster he chose to sleep next to. He deserved to make that choice anew with all the facts.
“I killed our baby,” she said, her tremulous voice pushing the words out as if they scraped her throat. “And then I killed any future chance we would have had for another one.”
“You said Jamie signed the paperwork, Beth,” Rip spit out. She flinched at the sound of her own name. “Did he know what they were going to fucking do to you?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And when did you fucking find out, huh?” he snorted like a raging bull. “When did they think to loop in the one person actually fuckin’ affected by it?”
If her brain was still processing information, Beth would have been heartened by the fact that his indignation seemed to only be on her behalf, but the words were just individual sounds to her, and the tone was a tidal wave of the anger she had been fearing for over twenty years.
“They fucking –” she gagged over the sink, stayed half facing away from him, body cowered, “they fucking showed it to me when I woke up.”
“Fucking piece of shit,” Rip seethed, and took a step toward her, and Beth did the one thing that she had never done when she knew it was Rip reaching for her: she flinched.
He changed trajectory immediately, rocketing backwards. His breathing heavy, Rip had his shoulders around his ears and his fists clenched.
“I would never,” he started, staring at the kitchen table, trying to count the scuffs on the table legs to calm himself down. “I can’t,” he shook his head. Turning toward her, he ordered, “Stay here,” and took five long strides out the room and out of the house, door slamming behind him.
She turned and threw up in the sink. Heaving great gasps of air into her lungs, she shakily searched through the cabinet to her right and pulled out her full bottle of Tito’s, crashing two or three martini glasses to the ground, shattering them. It took her a few tries, but she unscrewed the cap and took a long pull, sputtering as her high heartrate burned the oxygen from her lungs. Quickly, she stumbled back over to the sink gagging, but she kept it down.
Beth slid down to the floor, sobbing. She had done it now, she realized. She had been a fool before, thinking she was free. This was freedom, this was what freedom felt like when you were a liar, a monster, a thing that goes bump in the night. It was pain, it was loneliness, it was shame. Finally, the secret was out and, just as she had predicted, it cost her everything. Beth took another heavy pull from the bottle, then another. She could already feel it infecting her, having become more conservative in her vices since their move. “You got things to live for, darlin’,” Rip had told her. “Let’s spend a little time together, okay?” She scoffed between tears, between swigs. That won’t be a problem now, she thought.
Outside, Rip stalked to the barn, his footsteps heavy and quick. He flexed his hands trying to keep them from turning into fists, but it was no use. “Fuck!” he screamed in the middle of the barn aisle. He thumped his own chest in a desperate need to hit something and yelled again.
Carter came running from outside, the wheelbarrow he was rolling forgotten. “What?” he cried, stopping abruptly when he saw Rip’s shaking form. “What happened?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Rip yelled. “Just give me a minute and shut the fuck up.” Rip had left his hat somewhere in his haste; Carter could see that he was crying.
“Rip,” Carter whispered, suddenly even more afraid than when he had heard yelling.
Rip growled and scrubbed a hand through his hair.
“Okay,” he replied sharply, then repeated, softer, under his breath. “Okay, okay, okay.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “Let’s go to work,” Rip said, his fists finally unclenching, his shoulders finally relaxed.
“What the hell happened, Rip? Please,” Carter begged.
Rip shook his head, looking down at his boots. “Something happened to your mother, a long time ago,” he replied, “and I can’t tear the man who did it in half because he’s already fucking dead.”
They were both so shaken up that, as they began the end of day chores, neither realized what newer truth had slipped out with the old.
Inside, Beth was almost done with the bottle, her world narrowing to the corner of the room where she was huddled. Her breathing had evened out, but her tears were endless, streaking steadily and ceaselessly down her face. She could no longer feel them.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed. She closed her eyes for a moment to center herself and fished it out, wincing against the glare and swimming letters. Monica was calling her. Suddenly nervous, she conjured an ounce of focus and answered the call. “Everything okay?” she asked.
Monica paused on the other end of the line. “Yes, I just wanted to make sure you all got home safely, and let you know that it was good to see you. But, Beth, are you okay? You don’t sound well.”
“Oh, Monica,” Beth laughed, but her intake of breath after was a wheezing sob. “I’m not okay at all, actually. Haven’t been in a long time. I’m also quite drunk.”
She could hear rustling, like Monica was moving to a different room, more secluded maybe.
“Beth, is this about your baby? I can’t tell you how sorry –”
“There was no baby, Monica,” Beth said, and began to cry in earnest. “There was a positive pregnancy test, and Rip’s lack of a future, and Jamie’s assurances that it would all be okay, and a clinic on the reservation. Do you understand?”
“Oh, God, Beth,” Monica said. “Yes, I understand. God help me, I know what you’re saying. Just breathe, Beth. I’m so sorry that happened to you. Please breathe.”
“I lost everything,” Beth wailed, “the check just hadn’t come all the way due yet.”
“No, not everything,” Monica replied, crying herself. “You have us, and Rip –”
“Rip hates me,” she interrupted. “I told him and he’s gone. Carter will go with him, because I couldn’t let him call me Mama. I couldn’t take that gift from him because I knew I was hollow, poisonous, and now Rip will tell him what I did and he’ll know it too.”
“Beth, I think you’re having a panic attack. You need to calm down. Where is Rip? Are you saying he left? Do you want me to send Kayce to come and get you?”
“No!” Beth shouted, sniffing and trying to wipe at her face. “No, no, don’t tell him anything. I’m calm. I’ll –” she tried to stand and collapsed, the cabinets clattering behind her. She heard Monica yell her name through the phone. She tried again, slower this time, and wobbled forwards. Raising the phone back up to her mouth, she said, “I’ll take a warm bath, and relax. I’m okay, Monica, really. Thanks for the chat.”
“That’s not a good idea if you’ve been drinking, Beth,” Monica said frantically, but Beth was no longer listening, she was focusing all her attention on getting up the stairs.
“You’re a good sister,” Beth said breathlessly, and hung up.
“Shit,” Monica cursed as she heard the beeping of their dropped call. She immediately tried calling back, but the phone rang and went to voicemail. “Kayce!” she called through the house. He appeared in the doorway.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Start calling Rip and don’t stop until he answers the phone,” she demanded, already starting to dial Beth again.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “They not make it home?”
“Please just do what I ask, Kayce. It’s your turn to trust me, okay? It’s not for me to say what happened but I need you to get Rip on the phone.”
The tension simmering underneath his skin finally contained, Rip felt not better but stable as he closed the barn door on the horses and tried to come up with the first thing he’d say to his wife. Carter at least knew to keep himself quiet and out of the way, a quality that Rip would have to thank him for later. But first: Beth. What conversational road would be the least filled with potholes, with debris of the moments they had shared before? He had remembered earlier, while trying to calm down, the barely hidden devastation in her expression when she told him that he would resent her someday. It was a ridiculous notion then, and it still felt that way now, but at least he knew what reassurances he could start with.
All those thoughts left his mind when he pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw three missed calls from Kayce Dutton, a fourth already ringing. He stopped so abruptly on his walk back to the house that the boy almost ran into his back. Suddenly, the red that had receded now returned to his vision. He flipped open the phone violently.
“Did you know?” he snarled into the phone. “Did you fucking know what that piece of shit did to her when you spent all that goddamn time growing up defending him?”
Kayce scoffed. “Rip, I don’t even know what the fuck’s going on right now. Monica told me to call you and keep calling you until I got you. It’s something about Beth.”
The anger from before was washed with cold adrenaline. “What about Beth?” he asked.
“Wish I knew, trust me. But –” Kayce’s voice got further away and was replaced by a woman’s.
“Rip? It’s Monica,” she said breathlessly. “Where are you? You need to go home, right now. Beth’s very upset, and I really don’t feel good about it, okay?” Rip tried to open his mouth to respond but she cut him off. “I don’t care if you’re mad at her. That’s my sister and you’re closer, so make sure she’s breathing, please.”
Rip dropped the phone and barreled into the house. “Beth!” he called. Turning the corner, he saw the kitchen in disarray, broken glass, an empty bottle of vodka, the start of a trail of clothes that led up the stairs. Behind him, he could hear Carter’s choked inhale, his mumbling into what must have been Rip’s discarded cell. “Beth!” he called again and ascended the stairs, two or three at a time.
Their bedroom door was closed, soft lamp light coming through the crack underneath. Rip opened the door swiftly, but she wasn’t there. Instead, he found the last of her clothes trailing to the bathroom door.
“Stay here,” he told Carter. When he tried the bathroom, it was locked. He knocked loudly. “Beth, open the door right now.” He kept his voice stern but free of any anger.
“Monica says break it down,” Carter told him, and Rip did just that, taking a step back and pushing through the door and its weak lock with his shoulder.
There was a thin sheet of water puddled on the floor around the bathtub, the bathmat soaked through. One of Beth’s arms stood up at an awkward angle, as though she had at one point been using it to prop her head up, but she had slipped too far down the slick porcelain. Her face was below the water.
Rip pulled her up roughly under the armpits, dragging her limp body out of the tub and onto the floor. Sitting her up, her face nestled over his shoulder like a baby, he slapped her hard on the back as she began to cough.
“That’s it, sweetheart, get it out. Just keep coughing, honey,” Rip soothed, still patting her back, his eyes wet and trained on a shoulder blade, watching it pulse in time with her coughs, proof of life.
“Is she okay?” Carter asked shakily, his lip wobbling like a child, face streaked with tears.
Rip looked at him in the doorway sternly. “Get back into the bedroom, Carter. She don’t want you to see this.” Carter walked backwards until his legs hit the bed and he sat, head in his hands.
Beth’s coughing subsided into heaving cries, her body shaking with exertion and with the chill. Rip shrugged out of his jacket, now soaked, and reached for a towel off the rack behind him.
“Let’s get you dry, baby,” he said softly, wrapping the towel around her back and rubbing furiously, trying to get her warm. “Nice and dry, how’s that?”
She croaked something and coughed twice more.
“What’s that, darlin’?” he asked, pulling her away a bit so he could look into her face.
“I’m sorry,” she wheezed.
He smiled gently at her and smoothed her wet hair down. “No, no, no, what’d I tell you about that? You never have to apologize to me, Beth. You hear me? Never.” His knees creaked in protest as he half-stood, bundling her up in the towel. “Carter,” he called, “off the bed. And pull those sheets down.”
Carter complied, his eyes down to avoid looking at Beth so exposed. He was still gripping the cell phone in one hand, Rip noticed, but it was closed. He had no idea how much Monica and Kayce heard, hadn’t even noticed if Carter had been talking to them.
Rip put her gently down on the bed, pulling the towel back and using it to dry her in earnest. She wasn’t shivering anymore, but her breath hitched every so often like she was holding back tears. She wouldn’t look at his face, but her body swayed, compliant for him as he toweled her off.
“Is she going to be okay?” Carter asked again, his voice hard and demanding save for the crack in the middle of his sentence, his fear pushing through.
“She’s gonna be okay,” Rip said decisively, and both sets of eyes in the room finally looked up at him. “She just learned not to get in a body of water fuckin’ wasted, but she’ll be okay.” All Rip’s energy went into keeping his eyes gentle, his mouth and voice even. Now that Rip’s and Beth’s eyes met in earnest, the rest of the room fell away, their worlds narrowing as they always had to each other. “I love you,” he whispered, and she could feel something inside of her slot into place.
Rip heard the door click closed after Carter’s exit. He fluffed the pillows behind her and delicately pushed her back to sit, covering her with the blankets. “Sit up for now, baby,” he said. “I want to make sure all that water’s out of you.” Beth nodded shyly back at him, pushing her knees up to her chest.
“I fell asleep, I think,” she said, looking at him sideways from where her head rested against her knees. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know you didn’t mean to, baby, but you gotta be more careful than that.” He took in a deep sigh and brushed her hair back. “Can’t keep scaring me like that, or my heart’ll leap clear out of my chest.”
“I won’t scare you again,” she vowed.
He chuckled lowly, feeling more settled now that she was safe and talking. “I don’t think you can promise me that, darlin’. You seem to be pretty fucking good at it.” She smiled half-heartedly at him but didn’t respond. “I’m gonna clean up the bathroom a little bit, but I’ll be back. We gonna talk about this tonight, or tomorrow sometime?”
“How about never?” she asked back.
“We have to talk about it, Beth. This is what’s been eating at you our whole lives, isn’t it?” At her small nod, he continued. “This is what wakes you up in the middle of the night, what kept you away. Because you thought you had done some terrible thing to me but, baby,” he tipped her chin up so she would look at him straight on, “you didn’t. Something terrible was done to you. You don’t need to feel guilty about that.” Rip wiped a tear away.
He could see her having a hard time meeting his gaze again, so Rip kissed her forehead and let her off the hook. “Just relax, honey. I’m going to clean up a little bit and then I’m going to join you, okay? You and me, side by side in this bed, always, hear me?”
The last little bit of tension in her body drained away. “I hear you,” Beth replied, leaning back into the pillows and closing her eyes.
By the time he was done draining the tub, mopping up the water, discarding towels and clothes into the hamper, Beth was sleeping, the soft rise and fall of her chest a balm to his swirling thoughts whenever he peeked over at her. It had been long enough that the sun had fully set, the dim nightstand lamp now the only light in the room. With her breathing unimpeded and her mind finally quiet, Rip padded softly out of the room and decided to start on the rest of the house. When he opened the bedroom door, however, he found the clothes from downstairs folded in a pile out in front of the door.
Descending the stairs, he caught Carter sweeping up the last remnants of glass from the kitchen floor.
“I can do that, son,” Rip said quietly. Carter jumped anyway, surprised eyes red-rimmed and glassy still.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbled, tipping the dust and glittering pieces of glass into the trash bin. “I ate already, but I left you one of the sandwiches from earlier if you want it.”
Rip sighed and plodded over to the fridge, opening it and looking in as though it would hold more answers than what he wanted to eat. He grabbed a beer instead and sat at the table, fiddling with the cap in one hand while he took a long pull of his drink. Carter joined him, and together they sat in silence, both lost in thought, until Rip finished his beer.
“Monica was really freaked out,” Carter started. “What do you think Beth said to her?”
“That’s not for us to know,” Rip warned, “unless Beth wants to tell us.”
“So, you’re not going to tell me what any of this was about,” Carter said, agitated. “You’re going to leave me in the dark even though this is my house, too, and I care about her, too.”
“Carter,” Rip said sharply, then paused. They both looked up at the ceiling to make sure they hadn’t woken Beth. “I was kept in the dark a couple of decades,” Rip said ruefully, “I think you’ll be fine.”
“But what the hell does that mean?” Carter asked, his tone still desperate. “I saw the look on your face, Rip, when you were talking on the phone. I hadn’t seen that since you and Lloyd took off after her when she got attacked by her brother. You thought she was dying.”
“That bastard is not her brother,” Rip growled. The vehemence in his voice took Carter aback. Rip fought the urge to clench his hands into fists. Calmer, he said, “Son, I don’t know what she’ll be willing to share with you in the morning. Hell, I don’t know what she’ll be willing to say to me. This was scary, yeah, but it’s over. You and I have got her now, and we’re gonna be careful with her, right?” Rip looked pointedly at Carter, who met his eyes and nodded. “Beth is,” Rip sighed, “complicated. She’s not what other people say about her.”
Carter snorted. “She’s exactly what other people say about her.”
Rip’s mouth turned up in the briefest of smiles. “She is, but she’s also something else. Something that other people don’t ever get to see. Only you and I see it, so we’ve got to protect it. Protect her.”
“I know,” Carter said. He looked away. “I just thought she was happier here.”
Rip fiddled with the beer bottle, twisting it this way and that, examining it in the low light. “She is,” he said. “Today was a lot for her, but she is happier. I know she is.”
“But you’re not going to tell me why today was a lot.”
“No,” Rip said simply, “I’m not.”
“Okay,” Carter replied. “I’m going to bed,” he said, and they both stood, Rip patting Carter on the back as they went back up the stairs.
Rip woke Beth briefly in the early hours of the morning before he began his day, just to make sure she was okay and that she knew he had been there through the night, but they didn’t talk again until Rip and Carter made their way home for lunch. Beth was waiting for them, trying not to wring her hands or show any nervousness, but the boys knew the moment they entered the house that she was agitated.
“Come, sit for a second,” she told them, and the three sat together at the table. Rip took her hand immediately, and she smiled at him shakily.
“I have to apologize, for scaring both of you yesterday, and for leaving a mess. I won’t do that again,” she promised.
“You might want to talk to Monica, too,” Carter said. “She was plenty scared yesterday.”
Beth nodded. “I already talked to Monica and told her that I was thankful she got a hold of you two.” She squeezed Rip’s hand. “Now, I know you both might have questions, and I’m willing to listen to those questions, but I might not be willing to answer all of them.”
Carter opened his mouth to speak but Rip cut him off with a look. “No questions, Beth,” Rip said, “but we’ll hear what you’re willing to tell us. Whatever you want to say, we’ll listen to. Whatever you don’t want to say, we won’t.”
“Well, you know the long and short of it now, baby,” she said to Rip. Turning to Carter, she steeled herself and started, “When I was fifteen, I got pregnant and went to my brother, Jamie, for help in getting an abortion. I didn’t want my father to find out, so he took me to a women’s clinic that was on the reservation. What I didn’t realize until after my procedure, was that it was common in those days to receive a hysterectomy instead of an abortion when you went to the reservation.” At Carter’s look of confusion, she elaborated. “They didn’t just get rid of the pregnancy, baby, they got rid of my ability to be pregnant ever again.”
Carter’s eyes welled up with tears and he grabbed for her other hand. Linked to both her boys, she continued. “I told you once that I had broken Rip’s heart before. Well, that was why. He never knew that I was pregnant, that I had gotten the abortion or that this other terrible thing had happened. I buried it all and told him we couldn’t see each other anymore. And we didn’t, for a while,” she chuckled softly, “until it got too unbearable to be without him and I would come crawling back for a day or two, only to remember what I had done and run away again.” Beth looked at Rip, curious to see what she would find there, but he wore the same expression, the same devotion, he always wore when she spoke. “I strung him along like that for years before I finally got my shit together and let us love each other the way we wanted to.”
“So, what happened yesterday?” Carter asked, ducking under Rip’s glare at his question.
Beth sighed, pulling both her hands back to fiddle with them in her lap. “Yesterday was a lot of things at once. Seeing the ranch, and Monica being pregnant, took me back to all that pain. And Rip told me something that I didn’t know about that time I spent stringing him along and punishing him for the way I felt about myself, and the day just overwhelmed me, I guess.”
“And I left,” Rip said guiltily. “You thought I was angry with you when I left.”
Beth shifted in her seat. “Yes. But, baby, I was never going to think anything different. I have spent a long, long time imagining what telling you would be like, and never once did I think you’d forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive, Beth. Not from me to you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, wiping away a tear.
Carter stood to go back outside and give them a moment together but paused at the doorway. “Is this why I can’t call you Mom?”
A shudder ran through Beth at her memory of that day in the barn, a moment that could have been so easy that she instead tore apart. “Yes, baby. I ruined my chances at being a mother.”
Carter took two long strides back to the table and bent over her frame, hugging her close. “No, you didn’t,” he whispered in her ear, then stepped back and made his exit.
Beth wiped a few tears from her face, then met Rip’s open and gentle expression. She laughed self-deprecatingly. “This went much better than I thought it would,” she said.
Rip’s face turned serious. “Beth, I love you. When I told you that nothing could change that, when I vowed to love you forever, I meant it. I will protect you, always, you know that. But, baby, I can’t protect you from yourself. I can’t stop your mind from wandering where it wanders when it starts to get going. That’s the only piece of you I can’t outwrestle.”
“I know,” she said.
“So stop trying to read between lines that ain’t there, sweetheart. We’ve told each other the last secrets we ever kept from each other now, right?”
She ruminated for a moment and nodded. “Right,” she agreed.
“Well, then, it should be easy this time for you to trust me when I say there’s nothing in this world that’ll keep me from loving you. Nothing at all. Not even you.”
“I love you too, Rip,” she said.
He kissed her on the mouth, slowly, tentatively, almost like their first kiss all those years ago, when they were just learning each other and yet already etching the feel of each other into their bones. There was a poison inside each of them, things that they had done and that had been done to them that made them hurt. But in the other person, they had found their cure.
“I know,” he said. “I knew all along.”