My Cowboy Husband Neglected Me Ignored Our Baby for Another Woman's novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Dawn

Dean's letter says he is coming home and not to tell Jesse. Jesse arrives at sunrise, says he has not heard from Dean, and Hattie sees a text on his phone that says otherwise.

I read my brother's letter at my father's kitchen table at midnight, with Daisy asleep in my old bedroom.

It was one page, written in pencil, in Dean's cramped capitals.

Hat. I know you don't want to hear from me.

I'm coming home in the spring. I have something to put right.

I need to say it to your face.

Don't tell Jess you heard from me. He'll try to protect you, and he'll make it worse.

I'm sorry about the money. I'm paying it back. Dean.

I read it twice.

Five years ago we buried our father.

The week after, Dean took every dollar from the sale of the cattle and drove off in the dark.

I told Jesse that night I never wanted to hear my brother's name again.

Jesse had been Dean's best friend since they were six years old.

He had nodded and never said it once, not in five years.

I folded the page and put it in my coat pocket.

At dawn, somebody knocked on the screen door.

It was the widow from down the road, with a thermos in one hand and a paper sack in the other.

She was seventy and kept six horses and had looked in on my father's house every week since he died.

"Saw your headlights come up the drive last night," she said.

"I'd been leaving the porch light on. Figured somebody would need it."

"You left the envelope?"

"It came in the mail box last week. I put it on the step yesterday evening."

"Why not give it to Jesse?"

"I didn't want it lost in your husband's pile."

She set the thermos on the table and looked at my face for a while.

"The whole county saw that picture, honey," she said. "Nobody thinks you did anything wrong."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

She put a biscuit in front of me and told me to eat.

I was halfway through it when I heard a truck on the gravel.

I knew the engine.

Jesse came up the drive slowly and stopped at the fence.

He got out with a bakery box in one hand and a small wrapped package in the other.

He hadn't shaved, and his shirt was the same one from the kitchen the night before.

I stepped out onto the porch and shut the screen door behind me.

"You can't come in," I said.

"I know." He held up the box. "I'm not asking to."

"Then why are you here?"

"I brought Daisy a cake from town. And this."

The package was small and tied with a red ribbon.

He had always been bad at wrapping things.

"She's asleep," I said.

"Then I'll wait."

He sat down on the bottom step and put his elbows on his knees.

I stood above him with my arms crossed.

Neither of us spoke until the sun cleared the barn roof.

Then the screen door opened behind me, and Daisy came out in her pajama top with her hair standing straight up.

"Daddy!"

She ran down the steps and into his arms before I could stop her.

He closed his eyes and held her.

"Happy birthday, sweet pea. I'm late."

"You missed the candles."

"I know. I'm so sorry."

"I saved them," she said, and she pulled three stubs out of her pajama pocket.

I had not known she'd taken them.

Jesse looked up at me over her head, and I saw his jaw working.

"Can I?" he asked.

I took the lighter from my coat and handed it to him.

He pushed the stubs into the top of the bakery cake.

He lit them with a hand that wasn't quite steady, and Daisy counted to three.

They blew them out together.

She clapped, and he laughed, and then he stopped laughing and pressed his face into her hair.

I put my hand on the porch rail to steady myself.

He reached up to take Daisy's weight, and his knuckles brushed the back of my hand.

Neither of us moved for a moment.

I knew that hand, with its split thumbnail and the white line across the knuckle where a gate had caught it.

I took mine away.

When Daisy ran inside to find the widow and her biscuit, Jesse stood and brushed off his jeans.

"Hat, I'll tell you all of it. I swear I will. I just need a little time."

"Then I have one question first."

"Ask."

"Have you heard from my brother?"

His face did not change.

That was how I knew to look harder.

"Dean?" he said. "No. Not in five years. You know that."

"All right."

"Why?"

"No reason."

He nodded and took out his phone to check the time, and the screen lit up in his hand.

I read it upside down before he turned it over.

A text from a contact labeled D.

Did she find it yet?

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