‘Peace offering!’
Maddie ignored Cooper and his outstretched hand which held a bunch of yellow roses. She walked towards him, then around him, and threw the handmade Western saddle she was carrying expertly across the back of her favorite dappled gray mare, Arabella.
‘Maddie, please… Talk to me.’
Tightening the girth before untying the reins from the paddock fence, Maddie led the mare slightly away before stepping up in the stirrup. Swung effortlessly into the saddle and, looking down at Cooper from her mount, she said, ‘What are you doing here, Tom? What do you want?’
‘I came to apologize.’
‘And you thought a bunch of roses would do the trick? Way to go, Tom.’ She turned away from him and lightly tapped Arabella with the heels of her cowboy boots.
‘Walk on.’
‘Wait, Maddie, please… We need to sort this out.’
Ignoring him she gently pulled on the left rein. Turned down a sandy path, which seemed to be Cooper’s cue to dump the roses and follow.
Jogging behind her but not getting too close to Arabella’s hind end, cautious of her back off from me kick, Cooper tried again. ‘Maddie, stop! Wait… I’m sorry… Maddie…! I need to talk to you.’
‘Oh, I think you’ve done enough of that. You certainly talked alright, and the message is loud, clear and very much received. But hey, at least I know you never loved me and maybe now I can let go of the idea that you ever did. Why don’t we look at it as you’ve done me a favor and leave it at that… Make sure you close the gates on your way out.’
Sprinting round to get in front, as Maddie tapped into a trot, Cooper grabbed hold of Arabella’s bridle, bringing her to a stop, much to her clear annoyance and stamping of hooves.
‘Of course I loved you.’
‘No you didn’t, not really; I just happened to be there at the time you needed somebody, that’s all.’
‘You’re wrong, Maddie, I know how I feel.’
Maddie laughed with hurt and scorn. ‘You don’t know how you feel. You don’t even know who you are. The only thing you feel is with her, with your ghost, with Ellie. Anything else, especially love, you don’t feel. You know sometimes I don’t recognize who I’ve become. There were often days I’d wake up secretly wishing and praying that Ellie was really dead. That somehow I could prove it… I wanted her dead, Tom, so we could get on with our lives! Do you hear that? What kind of person does that make me?’
‘Maddie…’
She shook her head and said, ‘Just go home, Tom.’
‘I know what I felt when I saw your face light up on the day Cora was born, and I know what I felt when it was you I woke up to in the morning, I know what I felt when I made love to you, Maddie. And I know I want to feel that again, but you’re right; at the moment it feels like I’m empty. Numb. All regular emotions wiped away. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know I love you. It just makes me not be able to feel it, and be the person you deserve to be with. I wish I could make you happy. Be together again. How it should be. How it was.’
‘How it was? You’re looking at our marriage through a rose-tinted lens. When I think about it, and look back, I don’t know anything about you. What you think. What you feel. I don’t really know your friends and I don’t even know who your family are. You kept it all away from me. Everything’s a secret and it always has been. Why, Tom? Even when we got married there was nobody there on your side, apart from our mutual friends.’
‘There was Beau.’
‘Beau. One person.’
‘What do you want me to do? Conjure up people who aren’t there? My mom died when I’d just turned nine and she had no family to speak of apart from Beau. And as for my daddy… well…’ He trailed off for a moment, pictured John, refused to feel guilty, refused to acknowledge it as a lie for a lie’s sake. ‘Who knows where or who he is… So you see, Maddie, there isn’t anybody else. Which means there aren’t any secrets.’
‘Who are you kidding? There are always secrets. Listen, Tom, I’m so tired, I just can’t do this anymore, and I know we have to work together and co-parent and that’s all fine but it’s the us part of it I can’t do anymore.’
‘I know and I’m not asking you to, because I can see how much I’m hurting you.’
‘It’s not just me though is it? It’s Cora as well.’
‘Cora means everything to me.’
‘No Tom, the idea of Cora means everything to you, but do you ever think about how she feels when you break promises to her? When she spends her birthday watching the door for you?’
‘Come on Maddie, you know it’s not that simple.’
‘Oh but it is, it really is that simple and that’s the point and the problem… Listen, I need to go.’
‘Just give me another minute.’
‘Why? So it’s more difficult for me when I say goodbye? My heart’s broken, Tom, and I’m not quite sure how to put it back together, and seeing you makes it a whole heap harder… You know every day I worry about you. Worry if you’ll take one too many of those pills you tell me you don’t take anymore. Worry if you’ll fall off that edge you’re always standing on, when I’ve taken my eyes off the ball. And I worry when you don’t come home at night, or I don’t hear from you, that you’re lying somewhere with a bullet in your head. I don’t think I’ll ever stop worrying about you but I don’t want to worry so much and so often. Not anymore. So I need you to let me go this time. And if you love me like you say you do, Tom, you’ll do just that.’