And Then There Was Her

by Tagan Shepard

  There were always others. There probably always had been. Something in Madison knew that. The way she had been before Robert, the way she’d partied and talked Kacey into public sex all over town, the way she let her animal instincts take over. There was so much they didn’t know about each other, now that Madison thought about it.

  She sat down on the concrete floor in the dark cellar and put her head in her hands. She didn’t just cry, she sobbed. She broke down. She fell apart. She let the realization that she had nothing left in this world wash over her and she cried even harder. She’d heard Kacey call her a slut and she knew it was true. She felt Kacey’s hatred in the way she had shaken her and she wrapped it around herself. She wallowed in all that she had lost and let it spill out of her.

  Madison felt a hand on her shoulder. She tried to lift her face. Warm fabric pressed against her hand and she grabbed it. The smell of clean cotton and a hint of mint overwhelmed her senses as she pressed CS’s bandana into her face. The hand was gone almost instantly, but she still felt CS’s presence.

  A long time later, when Madison could control herself enough to breathe, she forced the tears away. A lifetime later, her sadness came to a shuddering stop. She looked up, wiping the last of the tears from her cheeks with the thoroughly sodden bandana, to thank CS. She was gone. Madison looked all around, but the winemaker was nowhere in sight. She was alone in a cold basement.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Much to Madison’s surprise, the sun rose the next morning. She was awake to see it, curled into the fetal position on a lounger on her deck. Everything had crumbled and burned around her in the last twenty-four hours, but the sun still rose. She didn’t have the energy to respond physically. She felt it for all of a second or two before she went back to feeling nothing at all.

  Yesterday’s warmth didn’t come back with the sun. Madison was cold. Freezing cold. Hollow inside. Emptied out from the tears that wouldn’t stop. Hollow from her loneliness and her shame. The whole night had passed with her here on the lounger until she watched the stars fade in the dawn light and the sun replaced the moon.

  The crunch of gravel underfoot caught her attention. She would have moved her head to see who was passing, but she didn’t have the strength. When he came into view, Boots waved at her, offering a friendly smile, but didn’t come over. He kept his boots pointed to the stables and didn’t alter his course. That was for the best. From his distance, he wouldn’t see how swollen and puffy her face, how red her burning eyes. She wondered if he knew what had happened the night before. If everyone knew.

  Minerva Hills was, after all, a small, closed community. Everyone talked. There were no places for secrets to hide. A wave of nausea rippled through Madison and she squeezed her eyes shut against it. She knew the whole world would know all the sordid details of her humiliation soon enough. At the very least, people would wonder where Kacey had gone. The waitress wasn’t likely to return either. Like most of the restaurant staff, she probably lived off property, so she had no incentive to return. It lessened the chances of scandal if they both left, but it also doubled the suspicion. Besides, as CS said last night, there are always others. How many women would arrive at work to find out their hooking up days were over?

  Madison’s head spun. She’d been through this for countless hours, chasing the same thoughts and fears around her head all night. The tears came again now. At least they were quiet. She was too exhausted to break down again.

  CS emerged from her apartment behind the stables, just a flash of movement in the distance, but one that Madison was able to focus on to stop her racing mind. She watched CS look up in her direction, then make her way up the hill.

  Uninvited, CS made her way onto the deck. The nearest lounger to Madison was so close that CS’s knee brushed hers when she sat. A tiny flicker of warmth entered Madison’s world, but it only served to remind her how cold she was. She shivered, but otherwise remained motionless.

  “How are you doing?” CS’s voice was gentle and quiet.

  Madison took a long time to answer, as much because her throat was dry and cracked as the need to consider the question. “I don’t know how to answer that question.”

  “Did you sleep at all?”

  Madison shook her head, but the movement snapped her moorings loose and she thought she might float away. She closed her eyes again, listening to the silence CS allowed to stretch between them, and feeling better for it.

  Her mind wandered to Kacey’s accusations last night. Her insistence that Madison was a slut, and that it made her actions acceptable. To the night she met Kacey. She decided she had to tell it.

  She kept her eyes shut hard as she spoke so she wouldn’t have to see CS’s reaction. “We met at a club in Boulder. I can’t remember the name. It was loud and I was there with friends who drank hard and danced hard. I loved the way blacklights sparkled in good tequila.”

  CS stirred and leaned in closer.

  Madison cleared her throat. “I noticed Kacey noticing me. We were both the hot center of our respective groups, and her friends kept inching closer to mine. By the end of the night, I knew she would follow me anywhere, and she did. I didn’t even have to ask. Just walked over, took Kacey by the hand and led her to the door. I never even asked her name.”

  Madison didn’t know how to stop talking now that she’d started. She finished in a rush, “I went out again the next night and she was there. I took her home again. We danced to the same tune every night for a week before Kacey finally asked my name. Two days ago, I thought it was a love story for a new generation. Untraditional but no less romantic. Now it sounds like a cautionary tale.”

  Madison’s voice petered out but her mind kept spinning. Their story should have ended long ago. It ended exactly as it should have. Now the memory of their one-night stand that accidentally turned into a relationship felt tainted as it probably always should have. She thought she would feel better with CS knowing the story. Instead, she felt embarrassed and dirty.

  “So you think you deserve that sort of treatment from her?” CS asked, her voice cold as the morning.

  “I think she was right,” Madison finished weakly. “She was right about me.”

  “No. She wasn’t.”

  There was barely a breath of pause between her words and CS’s. The confidence of her denial made Madison finally look up. To her surprise, CS’s eyes matched her words. There was no judgment there.

  She accepted the denial because she was too tired not to. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” CS’s eyes went hard as frozen granite. “Anything that you did with her, that’s between the two of you. Everything you did, she did too.”

  Madison hadn’t thought of it that way, but somehow the knowledge that they were both sluts didn’t make her feel much better. She nodded and CS seemed to understand that she meant that as an end to the conversation. Madison’s throat burned and weariness washed over her again. If only she could make herself go inside and lie in bed, she could sleep for days. She couldn’t do that, though. Couldn’t go lie in that bed with the sheets that smelled like Kacey.

  “Did anything happen when you came back here last night?” CS asked.

  “No. Kacey was already gone. She didn’t leave a note or anything. Just…vanished.”

  Madison felt her features twist at the memory.

  “I can get her back here if that’s what you want.” Madison opened her eyes to see CS staring at her own hands, clenched in her lap. “I shouldn’t have just kicked her out without talking to you. Asking what you wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t have known what answer to give.” The pain in CS’s eyes when she looked up made Madison’s heart break all over again. She hurried on, “The job is yours to give away.”

  “If you want to try and make it work with Kacey…”

  “I don’t.”

  “If you did, she can come back. I won’t stop her.”

  “That’s not what I want. Besides, it doesn’t matter. She’s gone
.”

  “Okay.” CS said with a resignation that sounded less than permanent.

  Madison tried to push herself up, but only made it as far as her elbow. “I suppose that means I need to leave too.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “The cottage was part of your deal with Kacey…”

  “You’re going to stay.” CS softened her tone. “If you want to. My accountant informs me that having an artist in residence is a significant tax deduction. Please stay.”

  She couldn’t tell if this was a bad joke from CS, but she didn’t have much choice in the matter. Beyond the fact that she had nowhere to go, she couldn’t lift her arms right now, much less pack up her house.

  “I’ll stay until I decide what I want to do.”

  “My contract with Kacey was for a year, the cottage is yours at least that long.”

  “CS, that isn’t fair to you. You can make so much money on this…”

  CS stood abruptly, cutting off Madison’s words with the movement. “You need sleep.”

  Madison’s face paled at the thought of those sheets again. “I can’t.”

  “You have to.”

  “No, I mean…I don’t think I can stand up.”

  “Oh. Let me help?”

  Madison nodded, using all her strength. CS leaned down and hooked an arm around her back. She set Madison’s feet on the ground and helped her stand. The motions were so practiced, so clinical. She wondered whether CS had to help her sick father stand in his last days.

  “My god,” CS whispered. “You’re frozen.”

  Madison pressed close to her, feeling her heat like a furnace. She began to shiver uncontrollably and her knees were weak. She wrapped her arms around CS’s neck, drawing her warmth as close as she could.

  “I was out here all night. I forgot to bring a blanket.”

  It was slow going up the stairs, CS having to help her more than Madison liked. CS took her to the bathroom and set her down on the closed toilet while she turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature. Steam billowed from it within moments, the moisture already working its way into Madison’s skin.

  “Promise me you’ll get warm and get some sleep?”

  CS knelt in front of her, worry still etched in the tiny lines beginning to show on her tanned face.

  “I don’t think I have much choice at this point.” The steaming shower beckoned to her and her eyelids hung heavily on her face. “I’m asleep on my feet.”

  “Take a shower first. You’ll feel better.” For a heartbeat she rested her hand on Madison’s knee. “Send for me if you need anything, okay?”

  Once Madison agreed, she slipped out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut behind her. It took Madison an age to stand and peel out of her clothes, but CS was right, the moment the warm spray hit her skin, she felt enormously better. She hadn’t made the water too hot, in deference to Madison’s extreme cold, and Madison had to turn up the heat in intervals. She allowed the water to carry away last night.

  As soon as Madison turned off the water and wrapped herself in the thick, terrycloth robe she loved so much an odd noise filled the house. She stepped into the bedroom to see fresh sheets on the bed. The sound was the washing machine churning away in the mudroom. Madison knew from the empty feel of the cottage that CS was gone, but she had stripped all trace of Kacey from the bed before she left and even started the wash so Madison wouldn’t have to clean the smell off them herself.

  Dropping the robe to the floor and slipping blissfully between the layers of crisp, clean cotton, Madison wondered if she had said something about Kacey and the sheets out loud. She couldn’t remember having done so, but how else would CS have known? The thought died in her brain the moment her head hit the pillow and she fell dreamlessly asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Madison didn’t get out of bed the next day. Tears seeped so deeply into her pillow that she threw it to the ground but when she reached for the other, she couldn’t stop thinking of it as Kacey’s. She didn’t slip it under her head but wrapped both arms and both legs around it, crushing it close as she sobbed.

  The tears dried with the inevitable memories of Kacey in the barrel room. Her wail of anguish mutated into a roar of fury and she flung the pillow across the room. Twisting the sheets between her hands, she screamed until her throat ached as much as her heart. For the rest of the day she vacillated between anger and sadness.

  She slept at some point, and in the morning a swollen bladder and aching back forced her to stand. The sight in the mirror sent her back to bed, this time burying herself beneath sheets and blankets to keep from searching for her phone. All day she fought the urge to call Kacey, to beg her to come back and apologize for whatever inadequacy had sent her into another woman’s arms. On the third day she hated herself for even considering a reconciliation. On the fourth day she made herself shower.

  The shower made her hungry but food made her ill. The moment her bagel touched her hollow stomach, Madison heard the waitress’s moans and threw up everything. She sat on her bedroom floor and flipped through the photos on her phone that documented her life with Kacey. Most of them were grainy or out of focus, taken in the dim light of bars. She’d thought often of printing some of them. Making an album to commemorate their relationship as it grew. The idea now made her laugh until she cried.

  Someone knocked on her door during the fifth day, but they didn’t come in. Her phone battery had died and she’d decided not to plug it in, lest she cave in and send a text or an email in her emotionally damaged state. She didn’t remember anything else from the fifth day.

  It wasn’t until the sixth day that Madison woke up angry and stayed that way. When she pictured Kacey cheating, she didn’t wonder what she’d done wrong, she wondered why she’d been so shocked. The thought took her to the bathroom to brush her teeth. As she turned on the shower she remembered the terrible things Kacey had said to her that night. This time the words didn’t sting but reminded her of other terrible things Kacey had said to her. The way she had belittled her art and dismissed her feelings. The way Madison’s needs always came second to Kacey’s.

  While her coffee brewed, Madison spent less time wondering what life would look like without Kacey and more time wondering why she had wasted so many years twisting her life into Kacey’s. She walked into her studio, stewing over the way Kacey had regarded giving her this space a waste. Only watery sunlight showed through the windows today. The clouds obscured any hope at warmth, bathing her wheel and kiln in a gray, lifeless glow.

  No urge to create pulled at her. No desire to work. Storm clouds made her turn her back immediately. Sadness was creeping back and she wanted to keep it at bay as long as she could.

  When she returned to the kitchen, she plugged in her phone without turning it on. She forced herself to eat breakfast. She took her coffee to the couch and waited for the clouds to break and bring light back into her life. They never did and her good mood only lasted until her stomach rumbled again at midafternoon. She ignored it and by evening she was crying again, but at least she had made it downstairs. It was a victory she would accept.

  The next three days were spent on the couch, each one with fewer tears than the last. Some days she was awake with the sun and saw CS emerge from her apartment over the stables and start the work of the vineyard. Some days she did not see another living thing in the winter-cloaked vineyard. She barely qualified as one herself. Eating became more regular, even if showering didn’t.

  On the tenth day after Kacey left, Madison sat on her couch, hugging her knee to her chest and staring out into another gloomy day. Every day had been gloomy. No rain, but the clouds had blocked the sun and turned Madison’s life into an eternal twilight. Today, like every other, she sat here unmotivated, self-pitying.

  A flash of color crossed her vision and she thought for one hopeful moment that the sun had finally emerged from behind the clouds. It was Boots, wearing a shirt in a chipper shade of green and carrying a b
ag of groceries. He waved at her and she found herself waving back, even smiling.

  She dragged herself off the couch in time to notice her stained, pungent sweats before Boots burst through the door.

  “Hey there, stranger,” he called on his way to the refrigerator.

  “Hey, Boots.”

  His smile only faltered for a moment when he turned to look at her, but he quickly turned back to his task. She dropped onto a barstool and he tossed her a granola bar from the box he was stashing in the cabinet. She toyed with the wrapper but didn’t open it. He ate his in two bites, his cheeks bulging like a cartoon chipmunk as he chewed, watching her.

  Swallowing noisily, he said, “I couldn’t help noticing that Kacey’s gone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  “No.”

  “You want me to go?”

  She thought about it for a moment, and determined that, in addition to being heartbroken, she might also be lonely. “No.”

  His grin was worth the uncomfortable conversation. It lit the room in lieu of the sun and actually made her feel a little better. Grabbing the jar of beans and rattling them in her direction he asked, “Want me to make coffee?”

  “God no,” she said, pushing off the counter to her feet. “You make terrible coffee.”

  He feigned outrage for the time it took her to walk around the counter, then relinquished the task to her, dropping onto a stool. While she performed the ritual of grinding beans and measuring water, the ache started to leave her shoulders and back. The weight on her chest lessened with each movement. The sun peeked out from a gap in the clouds as she poured milk into his cup.

  “Violet threw another shoe yesterday,” he said, grabbing his mug and breathing in the aroma with obvious enjoyment. He had certainly converted to the idea of afternoon coffee.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s just doing it for attention.” He laughed and then continued, “Have I told you about that stubborn horse when she first arrived?”