The Cowboy's Convenient Wife

by Joanna Bell

  I remember standing frozen to the spot in the silent office – just as I did in my condo when I read that 'anonymous' letter about my husband – until the sound of voices approaching sent a surge of adrenaline into my blood. Panicked, I slapped the top blank pages onto the others and then shoved them all back into the box. I could hear my dad's secretary's voice – and then my dad's own voice – fast approaching.

  I got the lid back on the box with less than a second to spare before he walked into the room.

  "Astrid!" He exclaimed, grabbing my wrist and pulling me back into the main part of the office. "What – what are you doing in there?!"

  But he didn't catch me. He caught me in the room, but he didn't catch me snooping. Thank God.

  ***

  So my dad sent that letter about Cillian. I knew he didn't personally send it, of course. He paid someone else to. Like he paid someone else to take photographs of the married man who tried to sue him in the intimate company of someone who was very much not his wife.

  My father always did say he would do anything for me. Sometimes he would take my face in his hands when he said it, and look me right in the eyes. Sometimes he would make me repeat it back to him.

  "What would I do for you, Astrid?"

  "Anything, Daddy."

  "You know it."

  He sent the letter. It was him. I knew it was him.

  I was angry – furious, actually. I wasn't a child anymore. My personal life was my business, not his. It wasn't his job, or his right, to go digging into my affairs, regardless of how real a parent's motive to protect their child is.

  But I was also devastated – more devastated than I was angry. Because if my dad had that letter sent, then its contents were true.

  William Walker does not fuck around. A former president said that, about my father. Every now and again my mother repeats it, always with a smile on her face and usually when her husband has secured some new deal or won a big negotiation.

  William Walker does not fuck around.

  I had to call Cillian. There was nothing else to do. I had to know for sure – for 100% sure – if he did those things the letter said he did.

  Shaking like a leaf, I picked up my phone.

  Chapter 24: Cillian

  When I freaked out that day on the mountain, I told Astrid it was because I didn't want her to leave. Which I definitely did not. But that wasn't the reason I almost passed the fuck out beside the stream where we ate my crappy sandwiches. The reason for that was the look on her face when I got angry. It was the look I couldn't, for a few brief seconds, quite place.

  Until I could. Until I remembered with sudden clarity where I'd seen that exact same expression before: my mother's face. And it was long enough since she died that had Astrid Walker not looked at me with that same confused woundedness in her eyes, I'm sure I would have gone the rest of my life without ever remembering that look specifically.

  It wasn't just the expression, either. It was the circumstances. I remembered precisely why my mother's features would arrange themselves in the same pattern Astrid Walker's did that afternoon. It was when my dad was raging. When he was screaming at her, threatening, throwing shit around. He was worse when he was drunk but drunk or sober didn't really matter, Jack Devlin was always a menace. If he was around you knew it didn't matter how good of a mood he seemed to be in, you just knew that sooner or later it would all go to shit.

  My mother died never understanding him. She died never knowing what it was that turned the man she loved into a monster so often, and with so little provocation. I hated my dad for that. I hated him. I hated him for hurting her, for scaring her, for driving her out into the storm that killed her.

  You remember hate. You remember anger. These are huge emotions, and they bury themselves deep in your heart. Jack Devlin was the only parent we had left, and we were all so very young when we lost our mother. Of course we clamored for his approval, his respect, his fatherly pride – everything children clamor for from their parents.

  But I never stopped hating him. I never forgave him for what he did to my mom. I kept it to myself, of course – you don't grow up on the Devlin Ranch without learning to keep your true feelings to yourself – but I never forgot the hate.

  I forgot that expression, though. For almost 20 years, I forgot. My mother was a kind woman, so disinclined to cruelty that it confused her even in other people. That's what that look was. That's what it was on my mom's face, and that's what it was on Astrid Walker's face when I was yelling at her the same way my dad used to yell at his own wife. When I couldn't deal with a sudden onslaught of negative emotion – just like my dad. When I interpreted a woman's kindness as a rebuke – just like my dad.

  I hated Jack Devlin for what he did to my mother. And then one day I caught myself doing the same thing to a woman I loved – and I couldn't even begin to deal with it. That's why I lied. That's why I told Astrid my sudden strange behavior was due to not wanting her to leave. It was a pretty convenient lie, not easily identified as the emotional sleight-of-hand it was.

  Thank God for that grizzly. Astrid came back down the mountain thinking I saved her from a bear. Maybe I did. But the bear saved me, too. He saved me from myself. He saved me from the self-loathing that started crawling through my veins the moment I recognized the hurt in Astrid's eyes as the same hurt I used to see in my mother's. I caused that hurt. Not Jack Devlin. Not a hungry bear. Me.

  I mean, it didn't last long. Scaring the grizzly away and then taking Astrid's desperate little clutches and sighs in the stables afterwards gave me at most a few more hours of relief. It didn't even last until she was gone, because I was already back to my angry, spiteful self by the time I dropped her off at the airport.

  You might think an experience like that would give me a new understanding of my dad. You might think it would give me some insight into a man I always saw as a 1 dimensional tyrant. You would be wrong. All hearing Jack Devlin's bitter words pouring out of my own mouth prompted me to do was add one more name to my list of Official Hated Assholes Who Don't Deserve Shit. That name? Cillian Devlin.

  Don't get me wrong, I never really liked myself. You don't grow up the way us Devlin boys grew up and end up liking yourself. But I don't think I fully, actively hated myself until Astrid left. That was when the real fun started.

  ***

  I was at the bar when she called. The last place on earth I should have been. And in spite of it not even being 10 o'clock, I was already well past buzzed. It's not like I had a lot of options. It was either sitting at home wallowing in self-pity and loneliness or getting wasted. Unsurprisingly, I chose the latter.

  "Fuck!" I yelled over the shouted conversations and the music when I saw her name on the screen. "Shit!"

  I ran out the back door into the parking lot, cursing myself for spending the days since she left drunk off my ass.

  You dumb asshole. You absolute piece of shit. Now you're gonna get officially dumped.

  "Astrid?"

  Even then, at the exact moment before she spoke, part of me hoped she was calling to say she was at the airport in Billings again and she wanted to stay married and she wanted to move to Sweetgrass Ridge and could I come pick her up and take her to a hotel so we could fuck until dawn.

  She was not calling to say any of those things.

  "Hi."

  That was enough for me to know. Just that one word was enough. It was all there in her voice: the tension, the disappointment, the letdown, the end.

  "Hey," I replied, sobering up a little – but not enough. "How are, uh – are you OK? You sound –"

  "Did you drug your brother and break up his relationship with his pregnant girlfriend?"

  I lurched backwards.

  "Uh –" I replied, my mind spinning with the effects of more beers than I could count. "Uh – what? My – who? Jackson?"

  I was stumbling over my words just as I was stumbling around the parking lot out back of the Lone Pine Bar. I knew what Astrid was asking,
though. And I knew what it meant. It meant it was over between Astrid Walker and Cillian Devlin, even if I did apologize and beg her forgiveness for how I treated her. Because I did do what she was asking me, and she wasn't the kind of girl who was going to be OK with it. That's why I didn't tell her about it in the first place.

  "Thash –" I began, before stopping and trying again. "That's why I – that's why – I didn't tell you. Thash why I didn't tell you. I – I miss you. I'm sorry I – I'm –"

  Her voice cut through my rambling like a cold blade. "Did you do it? Please, Cillian. Just tell me – tell me you didn't."

  It probably wouldn't have gone much better if I'd been sober. But being drunk did add a little extra dash of awfulness.

  "You don't know my brother," I said, before repeating myself in a louder voice: "You don't know my brother!"

  "Have you been drinking?"

  I think Astrid loved me. I certainly can't think of any particular reason why – but I think she did. That's why she sounded so desperate during that phone call, and so lost when she realized I had done the thing she so badly wanted me not to have done.

  At the time, though, it didn't feel like love. It felt like judgment. It felt like shame. Because underneath all the drunkenness and bravado and the years-long refusal to think about what went down between my older brother and me, I was ashamed. Astrid didn't shame me. I shamed myself with what I did. And since I was in no way prepared to face that truth, I became enraged instead. Just like old Jack would have done.

  "I've had a couple beers," I replied. "So what? Why do you care? You never met Jackson. You don't know what he was like! You don't know what he was like while we were growing up! You don't know –"

  "What was he like?"

  "He was a fuckin' DICK!" I bellowed, startling a passerby. "He was – he was – trust me Ash – Astrid, he was a total – he was a –"

  "But you did it? You're not saying you didn't do it. Cillian – really? You drugged him? To break up his relationship? Why did you –"

  "BECAUSE SHE WAS A GODDAMNED GOLD-DIGGER!" I yelled, one arm flailing wildly as I misjudged how close I was to a concrete wall and, in attempting to lean against it, almost fell over. "I DID IT TO HELP MY FAMILY!"

  It probably goes without saying but: I didn't do it to help my family. I did it to help myself. I did it to curry favor with a father who turned out to be an even bigger monster than any of us ever suspected. But I definitely did not do it to help my family. Even drunk me knew that.

  On the other end of the phone, Astrid made a funny noise. For a moment, I thought she was laughing. I wished she was with me in that parking lot, her arms wrapped tight around me and her face nestled into my chest. That's where she should have been. That's where she belonged.

  She wasn't laughing, though.

  "Oh my God," she whispered a few seconds later, her voice cracking. "You did it, didn't you? You actually did it. I thought maybe – I thought –"

  "Yeah I did it!" I snapped. "And I told you why. Life's not always pretty, Astrid. Sh – sometimes you gotta do bad things to – to –"

  "To what?" She cried, when I trailed off and forgot what I was saying. "Cillian – you drugged someone? Your own brother? And he left the family over it? Don't you – don't you even feel bad? Don't you miss him?"

  "NO!" I roared. "NO I do NOT fuckin' miss that piece of shit! You don't know – you don't know, Astrid. You don't know!"

  I should probably be glad I was drunk – and that she knew it. I'm not sure I would have said anything different if I wasn't, and then she would truly have known how little reason, how few excuses I had for what I helped my dad do to Jackson.

  We were silent for a few minutes as I staggered around the parking lot, torn between my own drunken bravado and a deep, terrifying sense of impending doom. It was over. I wasn't too intoxicated to realize that. She was leaving me. For good. And what the fuck was I going to do without her? How had she got her fingers so tightly wound around my heart in such a short amount of time? How did I let that happen?

  "You could go to jail for that, you know," she said eventually. "Do you understand that? You committed a crime. You –"

  I needed another drink. I needed the torture to be over so I could get back into the bar and drown the entire night in an ocean of alcohol. I needed, desperately, not to be feeling what it was making me feel to listen to Astrid's small, betrayed voice.

  "No one's gonna do shit," I replied. "Don't you worry about that. Thish – this – is Sweetgrass Ridge, did you forget that? My family owns this town. I – I rule this town! You could call the chief of police right now and he wouldn't do a goddamned thing! So jush – just say what you gotta say. Because I'm busy. Too busy to listen to a bunch of shit!"

  She didn't want to say it, though. So, after listening to her cry quietly for another couple of minutes and realizing I had to get another drink into me before semi-sobriety hit, I said it for her.

  "I did it, OK? I did it. I did it and I'm not sorry. He deserved it. That trashy little gold-digger deserved it too. That's what you wanted to hear, isn't it? That's what you called me to –"

  "That's not what I wanted to hear at all."

  Jesus, her voice. She sounded devastated. I couldn't take it. I couldn't take the self-loathing. I couldn't take the way it made me feel like my heart was shriveling up in my chest. I had to get back into the bar.

  "Just fucking SAY IT!" I yelled. "JESUS! Stop torturing both of us and say you can't – say you can't –"

  But I couldn't finish the sentence. I couldn't get the words out of my throat.

  "I don't want to say it," she replied, crying harder. "I don't understand. I don't understand, Cillian. Why would you do something like that to your own br–"

  "You want to know why?" I cut her off, pushing my hair off my face and looking up at the dark night sky. "Because you don't even know me, that's why. You don't have any fucking idea who I am! So don't think you can call me up out of nowhere and start in on me for shit that happened years ago. It's none of your business, Astrid. None of your goddamn business!"

  "So that's it?" She asked. "That's just – that's it? That's all you have to say? So this is just – over?"

  "YEAH! IT IS! Now if you're finished I have something I need to get back to!"

  She didn't reply.

  "Last chance!" I yelled. "I'm serious. If you don't have anything else to say I'm going to hang up this phone and –"

  "Good-bye, Cillian. I hope – I hope everything works out for y–"

  I ended the call before she could finish her sentence. And then I headed back into the bar and ordered a triple whiskey. I knew things were about to go from bad to worse for me.

  "Here ya go," the bartender said, placing my drink down in front of me.

  I picked it up and swallowed it in one gulp. Yeah, shit was about to get real, real bleak.

  Chapter 25: Astrid

  I called my dad the day after my brief, ill-advised marriage ended. He was already on the boat sailing down the Amazon and the reception was bad.

  "Can I call you next week?" He asked, as a strong wind blew in the background and the call repeatedly dropped. "It's not really the –"

  "I just want to know if you hired someone to look into Cillian," I said, slowly and clearly so he could hear me – also to conceal the fact that I was furious. "Did you pay an investigator to dig all the skeletons out of his closet?"

  "If I – what, honey?"

  I repeated myself, more slowly and more clearly.

  "Well of course I did. I hope you didn't think your mother and I were going to let you marry some–"

  The call cut out again.

  "Dad?" I asked. "Dad? Are you there?"

  Halfway through a sentence, my father's voice came back:

  " – deal, Astrid. It's a natural instinct. You'll understand one day when you have children of your own."

  I rolled my eyes. "And did you send the letter?"

  "Did I send – what? Did I send a le
tter?"

  "Yes, the letter about Cillian. In a brown envelope with no stamps. To the condo. Did you send that?"

  There was silence on the other end. I couldn't tell if the call had been dropped again or if my dad just didn't know what to say.

  Once again, it picked back up in the middle of a sentence:

  " – send you a thing. To the condo? The last thing I had sent to the condo was –"

  The call dropped again.

  "Damnit!" I yelled, resisting the urge to throw my phone at the wall. "DAD! Just tell me if you sent the letter about Cillian! Just tell me! I know you did!"

  But my dad was gone, the connection finally cut by distance or weather or fate. I called back twice but it went straight to voicemail both times. A text message was immediately returned as undeliverable. They did warn me they wouldn't have cell reception during the trip, so I guess I was lucky I even got through in the first place. I got my answer, too. My dad admitted it. He did pay someone to dig into Cillian's life and background. That was all I needed to know.

  "Thanks dad," I muttered, walking into the kitchen to open the freezer, seeing it was empty except for a tray of ice-cubes and an old bag of frozen carrots and closing it again. "Thanks a lot."

  But I couldn't even be that angry at my father. Cillian did the things the letter said he did. He admitted it. He did them and no matter how I spun the issue in my mind, turning it this way and that, trying to find a point of view from which it looked less than terrible, I couldn't make it OK. Because it wasn't OK. There was no spin or excuse. There was no angle from which it became suddenly justifiable, understandable. There was nothing but a literal crime committed against a member of his own family – his own brother! And even if the pregnant girlfriend was a gold-digger – she was pregnant!

  And what if she had the baby? Was there some child out there without a father because of something Cillian did?

  ***

  I spent days drifting around my apartment, dwelling on the stranger I married and what he'd done, barely eating. I couldn't get my head around it. He didn't seem like the kind of person who would do something like that.