“But we’re leaking money, Libby. It seems to me the last thing we want to do is leak more money. How would we pay it back? And Emma would never sign off—”
“Don’t worry about Emma,” Libby said. She did enough worrying about Emma for the both of them, and besides, that was a bridge she would cross when she came to it.
“Okay, sure, we won’t worry about Emma,” Madeline said, calling her bluff. “She owns as much of this ranch as we do, but we won’t worry about that because she’s sooo predictable.”
That was true—Emma was a loose cannon, a chess piece that had fallen off the board. “Look, all I’m saying is that if we had some money to advertise our place, and to make it so people will want to come here, we might get enough business so that we aren’t leaking money. I figure we need at least six events a year just to break even.”
“I don’t know,” Madeline said with a shake of her head. “We have no tangible reason to borrow.”
“Right now, we’re just talking about it.”
Madeline bit her lower lip. “Okay,” she said. “As long as we’re just talking about it. I’m going to go get the bowls.” She walked out of the kitchen, ending the conversation.
Madeline didn’t say more about it. She came back to the kitchen with the bowls and talked about what she’d done in town that day, glossing over the conversation about the ranch. In Libby’s mind, Madeline was always glossing over things. She wondered if Madeline truly feared setting her off into some manic explosion.
To be fair, Libby sometimes feared it, too. She still couldn’t wrap her head around what she’d done. It was so unlike her, so unlike how she’d ever been. The little green pills she took each day were supposed to keep her calm and even-tempered, and Libby supposed they did. She felt fine. Almost normal. Her explosion of anger at Ryan’s truck and, according to Dr. Huber, her very loud and very vile shouting, had come after several days of not sleeping or eating, of trying to sort things out in her head. That afternoon, after it happened, Libby had felt as if she were standing at the end of a very long tunnel. She could hear voices of people around her, but the voices had not seemed real. In fact, to this day, Libby still wasn’t sure if they’d been real.
Maybe Madeline remembered more of that afternoon than Libby did. Maybe that’s why she tried so hard not to upset Libby. Someday, maybe Libby would ask Madeline—when she thought she could bear to hear all the details.
When Madeline left a half hour later, Libby walked into the living room and stepped around four dogs, who were arranged in various poses of canine rest. She watched the taillights of Madeline’s SUV bump down the drive.
When the lights disappeared, Libby stared out into the early evening, picturing Gwen in the kitchen of the house where Libby had lived with Ryan and the kids. She could imagine Gwen using the old, red Dutch oven to make dinner—six-year-old Max loved lasagna, and eight-year-old Alice loved pizza—while she told Ryan about her run-in with his ex-girlfriend.
She wondered how Ryan looked as he heard about it. Did he squirm just a little? Did he think back to his own encounter with Libby earlier this week in the parking lot of the grocery store? It had been an awkward moment—Libby hadn’t seen him, not until she happened to look up, and there he was, walking toward her, his head down, too. They’d both stopped. “Hey,” he’d said. “How are you, Libby?”
What was she supposed to say to that? Miserable. Crazy. But of course you know that. “Fine,” she’d said.
And then she had realized she was standing too close to him, that she was in violation of her restraining order. She’d started to walk away, but Ryan had said, “I’m sorry, Libby.”
That had stopped her in her tracks. “Huh?”
“I’m sorry,” he’d said again, and damn it if he hadn’t looked sorry. “About what happened between us.”
Libby had been so surprised that she couldn’t quite grasp what he was apologizing for. “I have to go,” she’d said, as if that weren’t obvious, and she’d hurried away, that damn restraining order on her mind.
But since then, she’d wondered what he meant. Was he saying he’d made a mistake? Or did he tell Gwen about it that night, the two of them laughing at how she’d fled?
Libby was reminded of one snowy night early last winter, when she’d been in the kitchen where Gwen was now. She was making cinnamon rolls, and Alice was twirling around in her little dance shoes, telling some convoluted story of a princess. Libby remembered the way Ryan had looked at his daughter, and then at Libby. He’d said, “You are so good with them. God, I love you, Libby.”
That was a year ago. One lousy year.